> I love looking in through the outside window and seeing everyone on MacBooks, it’s busy, it’s exciting and yet you’ll get someone walking passed saying ‘Oh my god, look in there, everyone is on a laptop! What’s wrong with them! Why don’t they talk to each other!?’
This is funny, because it perfectly describes the difference in attitude between me and my father. He gets annoyed when he walks into a coffee shop and sees everyone on their phones and laptops. On the other hand, I think the atmosphere is quite cozy, and love taking my own stuff to work on to that kind of cheerful environment. I almost never start a conversation, but I do enjoy being around other people.
> I think the atmosphere is quite cozy, and love taking my own stuff to work on
I can remember a time (1980's and earlier) when the modern version of the coffee shop didn't exist.
The nearest equivalent was a bar: Dimly lit, filled with smoke, loud annoying music, aggressive people, and a waiter coming around every 10 minutes to ask/demand if you want another drink. If you dared bring in some papers or a book to read, you'd get dirty looks, rude comments, or worse.
Thank god for the modern coffee shop and the shift in attitude.
Yes, as far as I know the very first cafés in Europe opened in the 17th century in Vienna, Paris and London and then spread to Italy and the rest of the Austro-Hungarian empire over the following two centuries.
And yet the guy with "a PhD in coffee shops" in the original article says he thinks they contributed to political stability in 18th Century England because they give people a place to rant and feel better afterwards...
(I never was convinced that you feel better after a rant, though. Rather, you have just worked out your "angry muscles".)
Anecdotally I'm typing this in Harpenden, 30 miles north of Soho where the cafe scene has changed totally - 20 years ago there were hardly any now it's full of them. On the other hand the Soho cafe scene is not so different from that film of it in the 50s. The Stockpot shown only closed last year.
I remember those days. And I couldn't go into the bars, being in my teens in the mid-to-late 80s. The best option was the all night places like IHOP. As long as you tipped well and weren't loud, they'd let you hold down a booth with nothing but coffee for most of the night.
And then moved to a college town which already had 3-4 competing coffee shops in 1989. Felt like heaven. Doing homework on my old Powerbook. Sitting with friends, having a smoke, if by myself then reading something difficult and hoping a cute smart girl would notice.
Sorry if I implied the powerbook was being used in 1989. Didn't get that until my senior year. My brief reminiscence was more of a broad sweep of those years in that town.
In 1989 I was still using (at home) an Atari 800 with matching disc wheel printer. Though I spent far more time in the computer lab with its Macs until I got my early graduation present. Kinda miss the lab days. I made more friends there in the sleep-deprived craziness of the overnights than I did in the coffee shops.
It's interesting how long it took for the US to adopt them.
I wonder why the coffee shop culture wasn't exported earlier. I wouldn't compare Starbucks to European style cafés though. It's sort of like the McDonald's of coffee shops. Not a good experience if you're looking for quality coffee and a pleasant atmosphere.
Depends where you live. I grew up in scientific communities and there were always cafes. They were very much like coffee shops but the only choice was regular or decaf coffee.
Yea, but there were more little cafes(cafes that encouraged cousomers to stay.), books stores, magazine stands, and people just outside--actually talking to each other. The only look down was maybe a quick adjustment to the Walkman.
In high school, I worked in a little place called cafe Nuvo. No one had laptops, but they talked. They wrote in journals. They read books. Talked about philosophy, and politics. Business people did their paperwork there. It was a neat place, but run horridly by a dentist who didn't know how to run a business.
I recall even the fast foods joints encouraged kids/adults to hang out. I never felt pressured by establishment staff to order something, or leave.
Was it better than today? In a way? I definetly miss the book stores. It was easier to talk to people back then, at least least for myself.
I remember pubs in the late 90s: dimly lit, filled with smoke, quiet rock music, quiet people, waitress who'd drop by when you called her over. I could bring in all my books and write a term paper for an entire afternoon, and they never minded. It was glorious and, unlike the coffee shop, illegal nowadays.
My father used to blast me for years for being on my laptop all the time. Today he actually spends more time with his laptop at coffee shops than I do.
Interesting; tomorrow I'm going to ask five people this exact question just to see what happens.
EDIT: Obviously if you've read the article, it states this is like asking "do you know what time it is?" - that is it's an known excuse to start a conversation. Personally, I don't believe this, hence my experiment.
Can someone please explain (or point out a link to the rules in question) why is this post getting downvoted? I understand the parent comment is not very informative, but this one I found quite helpful as I had forgotten the quote in question and it is relevant to the "wi-fi password discussion" the grandparent has started.
Additionally I would simply love a bot like that going around explaining popular media quotes. I frequent the SpaceX subreddit and they have one explaining space related acronyms whenever any are found in the discussion. Makes reading it a lot more pleasant.
I think there's a HN cultural preference to avoid stream-of-consciousness tangents, so even clever or informative -- but off-topic -- replies to such tangents tend to suffer.
IMO this is the source of some people's impression that humour isn't welcome here. My experience is the opposite - on-topic (and funny) comments do well even if only a joke or quip, but off-topic humour sinks, even if clever and civil.
I'm quite lowbrow and really enjoy the more clever comment chains on Reddit, but I also appreciate the HN alternative, where attempts at pun chains, etc. sink to the bottom and on-topic thoughts rise.
If you really wanted to find out about the quote, it's just a google search away. For everyone else, it's useless pop culture trivia obscuring real content.
(The right way to do this would be to add a feature to the HN/reddit forum software that allows unobtrusive footnotes to comments. Acronyms could just be auto-hyperlinked (with short definition in the alt text) in the original comment.)
Why is the author so quick to assume that everyone sees gentrification as something bad? There's been vocal opposition to it, but it doesn't mean that everybody feels that way.
"seizing homes a family has owned for generations because of $150 owed in property taxes, even if that was just a clerical error; changing the locks while carrying out “repairs,” lying that the building is being condemned, or turning off utilities"
Wow. That's totally not cool. High-profile officials should be made resign over cases like those.
When they don't have it people want it, and when they get it, they don't want it. Run down cities, rust belt cities wish for gentrification, people who live in places going down hill wish for it too, it brings safer neighborhoods, better stores, more jobs, on the other hand people decry rising rents and "changing the character" of the neighborhood, as if unemployment and the transients didn't also"change the character" of the neighborhood.
Basically people want it both ways. Have their cakes and eat them too.
You're either ascending, or you're declining as a city. Things don't remain frozen in time. People age, buildings age, new people are born, commerce brings people in, those are the dynamics.
What people want is for their neighbourhood to be better, while not in the process being driven from their homes to make room for wealthier people. Maybe it's naive or a pipe dream.
Oh, certainly. If we could, most people would want control over what kind of "element" rich, poor, educated, uneducated, employed, unemployed, criminal, non criminal, etc. gets to move into their neighborhoods and cities.... But that has proven problematic, in the past. Not just in the US but in many places.
I don't think it's a binary either-or. People obviously want safety and opportunity. They also tend to want to preserve the micro-culture of their neighbourhood. "Globalisation" (whatever that is) feels homogenous and corporate. Some people don't want that, they don't want to live in a place that could be anywhere else. They want to own the land and property, not be priced out.
I'm quite surprised at people here suggesting that it's okay to displace the poor. It's not. Change, process and improvement are most effective when they take everyone along for the ride. Everyone's seen Gataca, right?
I'm sure there are plenty of alternatives to the current gentrification model. Plenty of low-cost housing, for one. Sensitivity from local councils who take a long-term view and try to protect local business, for another. A complex discussion, I don't have all the answers.
About "displacing" people, honest question: why people who already live somewhere (but rent and don't own) should be privileged compared to people who have the same financial ability, but didn't live at said place before? Why is being "priced out" of same place you already live at perceived as something worse than not being able to afford to move into some neighborhood to begin with?
BTW, apartment that I live in right now is already below the market, and if the landlord decides to adjust the price next year when my contract expires, I'll have to move. I don't feel that I'm privileged to some special treatment just because I already live here though: free market is what it is.
>Why is being "priced out" of same place you already live at perceived as something worse than not being able to afford to move into some neighborhood to begin with?
Because there are costs involved with relocating, which the former aren't being given any choice about. Finding a new place to live and moving there involves a lot of time, effort and stress. Not to mention any friends and family they're now less able to keep in touch with.
> Why is being "priced out" of same place you already live at perceived as something worse than not being able to afford to move into some neighborhood to begin with?
1) The people being priced out are often the people that made the neighborhood nicer to live in. Developers don't improve neighborhoods, people do. And these people are usually the first to go when developments move in and drive up the cost, because they are often the most vulnerable to the price increases. (Your artists, musicians, students, young families, folks on shoestring budgets opening hipster coffee shops and restaurants, etc)
2) It's not so much that all these people feel like they deserve to live in this one particular nice place. You don't see people complaining that they can't live in gated communities or mansions. It's that nearly every lower-class or middle-class urban place that was even slightly nice to live in is rapidly becoming "rich-people-only". Where does that end?
Are middle class people eventually going to economically banned from all urban environments nationwide? Because that's the trajectory we're currently headed in, unless some massive correction happens.
> why people who already live somewhere (but rent and don't own)
Renters are highest risk, but it's not just renters who get displaced. Property owners can also get displaced through gentrification -- owning property does not make someone immune to this problem
It's usually the people who move in (or not moving in) who change neighborhoods. It's the internal migrants, like in North Dakota, or immigrants or professional class who change neighborhoods for the better. This is why poor areas _want_ "gentrifiers" to come in to invigorate places in stagnation or decline. It's atypical for improvement to be grass roots.
Anyone who has lived in a typical urban core from the 90s knows that poor neighborhoods don't just start having cleaner streets, more shops and services out of the blue displacing liquor stores and repair shops and weeds.
> (Your artists, musicians, students, young families, folks on shoestring budgets opening hipster coffee shops and restaurants, etc)
But eh — those guys actually have to move _in_ to gentrification to happen. And before they move in, it's usually really ordinary poor people moving out: because, believe it or not, "starving" liberal art major is not as poor as an illegal immigrant family with 5 kids.
> It's that nearly every lower-class or middle-class urban place that was even slightly nice to live in is rapidly becoming "rich-people-only". Where does that end?
I'm not from US, so I may not be seeing what you're talking about exactly, but you're talking about late-stage gentrifying here. But early stage gentrifying is the opposite: it makes poor, awful areas into those nice middle-class areas to begin with. So by the time you (we're talking about low-middle class, right?) have to move out when the area is full of elite condos, there's another neighbourhood that just became trendy enough for you to move it.
> Property owners can also get displaced through gentrification -- owning property does not make someone immune to this problem
Don't see a real difference here: it's all just free market mechanisms regulating situations where a lot of different people compete for the same thing.
It's the Guardian. That's their thing. That paper employs an admitted KGB spy (after his spying was revealed.) Same paper that supported Stalin. The Guardian has a deep rooted history in the 'class' struggle. Not a condemnation, just context. It's the American Left equivalent of MSNBC or analogous to the right wing Washington Times.
One's a highly respected newspaper age old newspaper with a very well designed independent funding structure which at worst has a slight leftward bias.
It's a bit tongue in cheek. Also property / rent prices are a major problem in London. All sorts of people are trying to move here and there's an approximately fixed supply.
"what everyone hates about urban change and gentrification – first come the creatives and their coffee shops, then the young professionals, then the luxury high-rises and corporate chains that push out original residents"
I personally have no problem with it. And if we're talking about crappy and dangerous neighborhoods that are becoming upscale - I love it.
If anything I think it's the sort of process that benefits majority of population while extracting a cost on a minority. If we look at total effect, it's certainly net positive.
"...the California Legislative Analyst’s Office recently released some positive data backing up this point: Particularly in the Bay Area since 2000, the researchers found, low-income neighborhoods with a lot of new construction have witnessed about half the displacement of similar neighborhoods that haven’t added much new housing."
My uneducated guess might be that the new developments add more density and thus lower land/rent prices overall. I am not sure about that though.
In my city as well, new development often come with affordability requirements for the exact reason of not displacing the existing community.
Adelaide, Australia has a really cool process for careful urban development. The city makes sure many existing buildings stay put and that new developments accommodate them in various ways. It specifically limits high rises, with the term mid-rise mixed use zoning being able to describe most of the dense areas.
The quip about coffee shops, creatives then professionals still rings true. But it stops short of high rises, and intentionally tries to mix all residents and wealth brackets.
I can't help interpreting your opinion as, "it's ok to kick the poor people out, as long as the upper classes, government and businesses prosper." People aren't numbers to throw into a mean function. That "net positive" argument is what has been used to excuse globalization's "there have to be some losers" philosophy, which disproportionately affects those already in poverty.
A sense of community is one of the few things poor neighborhoods can offer their inhabitants. When those impoverished people are elbowed out and away from each other to make way for another coffee shop, it becomes hard to sympathize with the moneyed class's desire for late-night gourmet poke.
Edit: Taking a look at TulliusCicero's WaPo link is making me reconsider my position.
I basically trust the process of globalization. "You don't go to war with your trading partners." The main fault I pointed out has to do with a lack of protectionary measures for the sections of society most at risk.
I think this also has relevance to the gentrification debate, though looking into the data it seems like governments continue failing on that front. I wasn't smart enough to come up with an alternative to capitalism when I was 15, I'm not smart enough to come up with an alternative to globalization now.
I'd have thought, at least historically, wars were more likely with trading partners - they're going to be close and, by definition, they have stuff that you want.
To drill into a point of my quoted assertion: "You don't go to war without support from your trading partners." A world war is an exceptional case. I meant to point at national conflicts, specifically between equals. I think having to defend your ally is a separate problem.
I vote for Inter Planetary Commerce. Let's give Musk a $3T budget for a couple of years and see where we get. Plenty of jobs will be created if he can terraform Mars.
You think Musk is the right guy? He might be but his ability to build rockets and be a 'visionary' is directly proportional to the amount of funding he has received. It would seem like there could be others that could be even more effective than Musk if given the same resources.
I don't know a whole lot about the general outcomes of those slowly and progressively displaced by gentrification but in sufficiently small catastrophies (i.e. not Syria) the displaced lower classes often do better economically. For example, Katrina refugees who stayed away are reported to have more income and live in safer and less impoverished areas with better schools (e.g. [1]). The city is more diverse and affluent as well (look for Citylab article on this, I can't look up atm) so it might not be a selection bias thing.
However complaints all around are that social networks and cultures were destroyed. It seems that when it's time to move, people move towards economic opportunity rather than for culture, etc. Hopefully with time those social networks can develop into the next rich permutation.
Not really. The relocated people generally arrived in Houston with nothing because they were evacuated to Houston and had nothing to return to in NOLA. Houston took in some of the poorest of the poor. I lived in Houston during Katrina (and actually was a catastrophe insurance adjuster,) so I saw it first hand. Many of those people got healthy FEMA money and were able to restart in Houston. However to be fair, the crime rate in Houston did spike due to some of the influx and the problems it brought (such as NOLA gang members getting into disputes with local gang members.) Overall though, it seemed to be a positive for most involved. (It did result in a much elevated Cajun/Creole cuisine due to the NOLA cooks that relocated!)
Confirm. Born and raised in Houston but now in Austin.
Texas is not "the deep south", we opened our arms and our hearts to everyone who was displaced by the hurricane. Nearly every major city in Texas participated. Moreover, we've experienced enough hurricanes to know the depth and severity of damage that can occur – and will continue to occur.
Neighbors help each other in times of crisis. Who knows, in the future maybe Louisiana will have to return the favor.
The problem with the opposite position, that even the greatest net positive is invalidated if even a single person is inconvenienced[1] (which, reductio ad absurdum is what you seem to suggest), will obviously lead to practically no change ever. Indeed, it will most likely lead to decline, as any active attempt to change things will probably inconvenience at least a few people, while you can't pin such a charge against passive apathy, even if it long term inconveniences a much greater number of people.
Even the creatives with their coffee shops (generally considered the acceptable level of gentrification, a fact that is obviously totally unrelated to the fact that a substantial subset of people fretting over gentrification are creatives in coffee shops) probably displaces some local activity, perhaps a "brown cafe" loses some customers to the new coffee shop etc.
I recently went on a street-art themed walking tour of Shoreditch in east London, and the guide started the tour by explaining how in the late 80s the area was a total write-off with poverty, violence and prostitution left, right and center, and how entire houses changed hands for as little as £1 -- and ended it by railing against the building of new apartments. The irony of he, himself, being a recent transplant to the area (he alluded to his small-town upbringing, and he was much too young to have moved there pre-1990) did not seem to trouble him much.
Bottom line: clearly there is SOME level of positive development that justifies SOME level of inconveniences. Perhaps we should be a little better at articulating the positive benefits instead of knee-jerk defending those inconvenienced by progress and idealising the gritty urban semi-slums being displaced.
PS: I'm very happy the WaPo link is making you reconsider your position.
1: This article describes the plight of "the poor" being pestered with offer to buy their flats for cash, offers they are perfectly in their right to decline. That's being inconvenienced, not kicked out. http://www.wnyc.org/story/de-blasios-affordable-housing-figh...
So what's the solution here? How else would you improve those kinds of neighborhoods? Do you expect the poor people are going to suddenly all get better jobs and simultaneously decide to make their neighborhood nicer?
Define the problem first, then we can talk about a solution.
The problem (as I see it) is artificial scarcity of housing which creates artificially inflated and unaffordable housing costs. Depending on what sources you look at, there are around 4-6 empty houses in the US for every homeless person.
The solution to that would be to cease the state-sponsoring of fraudulent and dishonest sub-prime mortgage shell games like the one which climaxed in 2008 and let simply the market normalize.
Very good question, considering how abstract of a term "the market" is.
I suppose in a "normal market" if a surplus of supply exists affordability should increase as prices should decrease. That's Economics 101.
But in a market controlled by a monopoly/oligarchy, the price system is dictated by the recidivist whims of the super admins, rather than by the needs and desires of the user base or the physical reality of the resource(s) in question.
So in the current state of housing surplus, affordability has decreased as prices have increased.
>I can't help interpreting your opinion as, "it's ok to kick the poor people out, as long as the upper classes, government and businesses prosper.
I can't help interpreting the original argument as "we're fine with our people here (the artists), but we don't want those other people in our community".
> If anything I think it's the sort of process that benefits majority of population while extracting a cost on a minority. If we look at total effect, it's certainly net positive.
Absolutely. Otherwise we'd all be still living in wooden shacks tilling the fields. Change inevitably effects some people negatively, but without it things can't, on average, get better.
> "what everyone hates about urban change and gentrification – first come the creatives and their coffee shops, then the young professionals, then the luxury high-rises and corporate chains that push out original residents"
> I personally have no problem with it. And if we're talking about crappy and dangerous neighborhoods that are becoming upscale - I love it.
"everyone" in this context meaning "everyone who holds the views of the author"
Here in PGH, "everyone" would mean student activists who are busy decrying the tearing down of several high rise projects in a part of town that had been on a downward slope since the late 70's. Neighborhoods that only a few years ago "closed at dark" (literally) due to pervasive criminality are now economic hubs.
At least in this case, most people seem to be quite happy with economic development in what used to be no-go areas. Nonetheless, there's a vocal minority of affluent art students who are busy putting up graffiti about "preserving culture". You can't ever make everyone happy, but the author's "everyone" isn't in fact everyone.
I'm still confused, because in one sentence, you talk about affluence bringing luxury high-rises, while in a later sentence, you talk about activist art students who want to preserve graffiti.
Are the high-rises whose removal the students decry not the luxury ones, or is it a different group of activist students from those who like graffiti who are the ones who want to keep the luxury high-rises?
Or are the activist art students supporters of both luxury high-rises and graffiti? I'm confused :)
> "what everyone hates about urban change and gentrification..."
I don't mean to be inflammatory, but I've never understood exactly what "everybody" sees as the desired state.
When white people move out of urban centers, it is "white flight"... a negative phenomenon. When white people move into urban centers, it is "gentrification"... also a negative phenomenon.
Are white people just considered inherently evil, and their existence a negative phenomenon? Short of total income redistribution, and mandatory relocation (as ethnic groups tend to coalesce even without gaps in income)... what exactly is the inequality and diversity solution that "everyone" wants?
I see your point, but it's not just moving in/out. It's the subtext of why. I don't think anyone can be faulted for fleeing a neighborhood in the name of safety. The same can likely be said for moving into more impoverish areas that have the potential to grow into prosperous neighborhood. This holds true regardless of race.
If someone is just throwing those terms around just because people move in or out of neighborhoods, then they're missing the overall context of what those terms mean.
> what exactly is the inequality and diversity solution that "everyone" wants?
I don't think this can be easily addressed. Most people want their neighborhoods safe with drivable streets and walkable paths. Some see culture in the history of their neighborhoods. Others want modern architecture and amenities. It really depends on who you ask.
I don't think the people who are upset about both white flight and gentrification think of things in 'white people' terms.
Rather they focus on blacks (or whichever minority the whites happen to be fleeing or displacing). It's a natural liberal tendency to focus on the 'underprivileged'. I believe it stems from the (unconscious) belief that the whites will look out for themselves - but blacks et al need to be helped. White man's burden 2.0, if you will.
For example in today's NYT there is a long article about lack of black pitchers in the US baseball league (they don't count spanish speaking blacks as aa). And there is a regular recurring piece about lack of black players in certain NFL positions (while they're actually 70% of all players).
Meanwhile I've never seen a similar article about dearth of white players in the NBA or the NFL. To an outside observer this might appear racist - but the journalist writing these pieces probably think that looking out for minorities is just what good people do. And whites will manage to take care of themselves.
The coffee shops also served tea, and both were exotic novelties when the shops first opened. But tea became affordable as an everday drink for the common man much earlier because the British empire had access to so much of it.
For all our famed fondness for tea, we make the top 50 for per capita coffee consumption ahead of some of the countries we import it from too.
Commenting on this post while I'm at a coffee shop myself.
If I had to pick one city for having the best coffee shops, it would probably be Tel Aviv.
The coffee is great, all coffee shops are laptop friendly (and gladly provide you with the wifi password), and people are very open to social interaction with strangers.
At any given moment you'll find a designer working on a logo, an architecture student reading a post blasting gentrification, entrepreneurs discussing their new startup, or freelancers looking for a break from working at home.
Tel Aviv coffee shops are also very dog friendly, and that's always a great conversation starter.
I often find that "could you watch my laptop while i go to the bathroom?" followed by "hey, what are you working on?" is usually the best way to get to know new people.
I even find that I'm a lot more productive when I work at a coffee shop instead of an office. A coffee shop provides with just enough distraction and people watching when you need to take a break, but not enough that you completely lose concentration and focus.
The great advantage of SF is its astonishingly consistent climate. I can't speak to Tel Aviv at all, but I'd say make sure you're comfortable working at typical temperatures there - I think that's a key (and unnoticed) part of productivity.
Tel Aviv's weather is very comfortable. Hasn't snowed in tel aviv since 1951.
Summers can get hot and humid, but air conditioners are the norm, and dress code is shorts and flip flops. And Tel Aviv has an awesome beach you can actually swim in.
To quote wikipedia:
Tel Aviv experiences a Mediterranean climate with hot summers and generally mild, wet winters. The average annual temperature is 20.2 °C (68.4 °F). Average temperature of the sea is 18–20 °C (64–68 °F) during the winter, and 24–29 °C (75–84 °F) during the summer.
In January, the coldest month, the average high temperature is 18.3 °C (64.9 °F), the low temperature averages 11.1 °C (52.0 °F) and the average sea temperature is 19 °C (66 °F). August, the warmest month, averages a high of 30 °C (86 °F), and a low of 22 °C (72 °F), with the average sea temperature being 30 °C (86 °F). Generally, the summer season lasts about six months, from May to October. Three months – March, April and November – are transitional, while December, January and February are the coldest months. The city receives 528 millimeters (20.8 in) of precipitation annually, which mostly occurs in the months of October through May. Summers are generally dry, and the area experiences over 300 sunny days per year.
SF has a lot of advantages over Tel Aviv (Being closer to Bay area VCs, being closer to the US market and customers, time zone differences) - but I'm not sure weather is one of them.
Tel Aviv has a vibrant startup scene and lots of tech talent. Also - a lot of american expats. It's really easy to get by speaking only English and a few basic Hebrew words.
As a native to (greater) Tel Aviv now living in Berlin, I much prefer Oceanic weather.
~9 months of the year you'd be sweating if you go outside & do even the slightest physical activity, like leisurely walking or cycling (mostly due to the high humidity, it's not actually that hot most of the time).
Berlin is too cold for about 3-4 months per year but the rest of the time is pleasantly cool, like San Francisco or London: bad bathing weather, but good working weather.
Other problems of Tel Aviv: poor transit, the resulting bad traffic, air pollution (it doesn't rain often and occasionally gets sand storms in the summer), noise pollution. Costs are not as prohibitive as London, NYC, or SF but significantly higher than Berlin.
I guess if you enjoy LA, Tel Aviv might be for you?
As far as transit goes - if you live and work in Tel
Aviv, you can pretty much walk wherever you need.
This is a big if, as few Israelis can afford to live in Tel Aviv (we couldn't, despite earning significantly above median).
The average gross wage in Israel is 9,702.60 ils per month [1] (2277.78 Euro). According to a quick check [2] this gives a net of 8,302.57 ils per month (1948.94 Euro). A small apartment in good repair in a not-terrible part of Tel Aviv can easily cost ~6000 ils per month, before utilities.
Realistically if you work in Tel Aviv you either live in the suburbs, are in the top ~10% of wage earners, or are young and don't have a family to support (and live with roommates).
"A small apartment in good repair in a not-terrible part of Tel Aviv can easily cost ~6000 ils per month, before utilities."
We probably have different definitions of "not terrible part of tel aviv".
1BRs (What israeli's call 2 rooms) go for 4000 shekels in Florentine. Walking distance from the startup scene of Rothschild, and 20 minutes by bus to the google and checkpoint area.
Which is fine for a single guy. But would you want to raise kids in a 1BR in Florentine (polluted, noisy, somewhat rough population in adjacent neighborhoods)?
What are average wages like in NYC/DC? More than ~$30k gross, like in Israel? What is the transit like in NYC with regards to the ability of the middle and lower classes to live outside of Manhattan?
Remember that OP suggested Tel Aviv's bad transit is not an issue cause you can walk anywhere if you live in the city (mostly if you live somewhat near the center/downtown, but nm that for now).
Pre-tax average is in the 80k to 90k USD range for DC, though obviously double that if you're thinking about a couple. DC transit is fairly good in-city, going to the suburbs its branches rather than a grid system so the train lines will essentially take you from home to work and that's it.
Walkability depends on where you live. In the suburbs of DC (virginia/maryland), there's quite a few walkable neighborhoods but they're small and separated from the next walkable neighborhood by about 3-5 miles.
Are you non-Jewish by any chance? I've had a great time in Israel as a tourist, but often wondered whether I'd be able to fit in there as a non-Jewish (and non-American for that matter) person. I'm not overtly religious in any other way, and I have Jewish people in my family, but there's no way I can pass for Jewish in any extended conversation.
Not the parent, but I think it would be doable albeit awkward at times. But there a lot of not-so-great things about living in Israel compared to Western Europe and North America.
It's just that. a perception.
Everyone's a bit self aware, but the truth is that people around us are also very self aware.
People will look at you every once in a while, but they're looking at everyone else as well. People watching is fun, and a main reason people go to coffee shops.
If you ever do catch someone staring at you, just give them a friendly smile. They might even be waiting for a signal that it's okay to come over and ask what it is you're working on, because you seem very passionate about it.
I was working on a project at an airport - I had something like a six hour layover and set up at a nice table near the food court - I noticed I was being watched and smiled back. The kid came over to me and asked what I was doing. Seems he'd learned some HTML and JavaScript, but was being told in school that "real" programming was super-hard and not for him. We ended up spending about an hour talking about studying CS, how he could learn programming on his own and I eventually sent him away to catch his flight with my copy of the Rat-cover Python book.
He stayed in touch. Today, he's living his dream working on a rather awesome-sounding project.
I've done coding and other laptop work in coffee shops many times, and I'm usually acutely aware of my surroundings and people around me. I've never noticed anyone staring at me in a coffee shop.
Are you doing something unusual to bring this attention on yourself? Or do you live in a place with jerks? Also, what ethnicity were the people staring at you? Some cultures (like Indian) don't have the cultural aversion to staring that westerners do (though usually ones who come over here figure that out pretty quickly and stop it).
Laptops are a fantastic way for more introverted people to meet each other. Why do you think it's all the rage to paper your Macbook like a NASCAR driver's jacket? Sure, part of it is just the pure hustle of startups, and the low cost of logo stickers as marketing.
To a potential startup founders a few years out of college, the coffee shop full of laptops is going to feel just like the library during study week. (Maybe someone a lot younger than I am would say the college libraries just feel like coffee shops these days. Get off my lawn.)
Have you ever sipped a latte with your headphones on and caught someone's eye as they concentrated as intensely as you're trying to? Then did you notice the GitHub sticker and smile to yourself? Then did you notice the <STARTUP NAME HERE> sticker and know you would really have something to say to them? (Assuming you work up the courage, dang, they're gorgeous.)
If you don't want to spend time alone with strangers in quiet reflection, get your frappucino to go, and find a different social club, eh?
I have no problem with laptop cafes, I bring mine to cafes to work all the time. I really enjoy it. But I also see merit in cafes that establish a no cell, no laptop rule (sometimes just for certain hours of the day). That would be a draw for me (honestly, the no cell phone policy tends to be more of a draw than a no laptop policy).
To me, this is very much a one size doesn't fit all situation. It makes no sense to get into a huff when people are on their laptops in a cafe that permits this. That said, remarkably, some people get strangely enraged when one cafe or bar out of twenty (or hundred) establishes a no cell phone policy. Like, they aren't satisfied that they can have their way in 95% of coffee shops and bars, it has to be this specific one, right now (these folks, interestingly, often think the matter can be cleared up by simply reminding everyone which country we live in).
My family left the east coast when I was 9, so I don't really have any experience of commuter trains, but I think of this as the moral equivalent of people who won't shut up on the Quiet Car.[0]
Public and semi-public space is important to social interactions, but the extroverts tend to get all the say in how that space is designed. Because they're the ones that speak up, well, by definition.
I've dreamed many times about starting a cafe with a no-cell no-laptop policy, but just assumed I was a cranky bastard and the idea was insane. Your post suggests that maybe it's a thing, though - would you mind saying where you've found such cafes?
Wish I could, this is just something I read or hear about on the news, radio, and so forth every now and then, usually because someone got angry when they couldn't use their cell and was asked to leave and got angry about it and it becomes a "local interest kind of news story.
Bourbon and branch in SF bans cell phones, but that's a bar, not a cafe. I read about another one (a cafe) that bans cell phones and laptops for a certain section of the day, but I'd have to google around for it.
there are plenty of them here in NY. or, they'll ban before/after the busy period. you can't just buy a $3 cup and sit all day at a table that's costing the operator $10/day to lease. It's also really obnoxious, it makes a place seem boring when people are sitting around anti-socially with their laptops pretending to be studying.
It's a pretty unique American thing -- you can't just sit quietly, you have to always seem busy -- kind of like eating lunch alone.
Admittedly I've never been to Israel, but I'd argue that Ho Chi Minh City (and Vietnam in general) has by far the best cafe culture of any city in the world. Vietnam is the 2nd leading coffee producer in the world, and the past French colonial rule has deeply ingrained coffee (as well as baguettes) in the Viet culture.
HCMC has more cafes than any other city in the world, basically 2-3 cafes per block. While most cafes are quite simple, there are hundreds that are just as hip and modern (if not more so) as anything that you'd find in the western world. You also get unique types of cafes such as garden cafes with huge trees and waterfalls and pet cafes with fuzzy cats/exotic birds lounging about. Many open 24 hours as well.
Best part about it is from ordering a single coffee (for about $1), you get free tea refills all day. No one ever pressures you to leave and everywhere has very good quality, free wifi.
This link is pretty out of date (and mostly focuses on city center) [0] but shows some of the places available. You can also use Google translate on Vietnam's version of Yelp and click on some of the cafe collections to get a more thorough idea. [1]
On the same subject, Jon Myers wrote a great blog post a number of years ago about living and working in Saigon that opened up many remote worker's eyes to the city:
> A coffee shop provides with just enough distraction and people watching when you need to take a break, but not enough that you completely lose concentration and focus.
This right here is why I get so much done in coffee shops. It's almost like white noise that keeps you focused without day dreaming.
When I lived in Denver I was 100% remote worker and would work every afternoon in one of three coffee shops. One shop was a chain, but they were very friendly and eventually I knew all the people who worked there. The other 2 were local.
One of them was owned and run by this guy who literally loved coffee. He would talk about new beans he got that 'spoke' to him. His coffee is still some of the best I ever had. He also just let me run a tab and I would pay him every month.
The final place was more of a cafe. It was large, and would sometimes have live music starting in the late afternoon. It also had a lot of people who worked from there that I got to know. I asked the owner once if hanging out there all day bothered her and she said if people bought something once every hour or two she was coming out ahead. So I made sure to do that anytime I was there.
I miss working in random places, since they really led me to focus for some reason.
Do you mind telling a long-ago Coloradan the neighborhoods? Forty years ago I used to go to Muddy Waters of the Platte, which was 15th St. across the Platte & train yards from downtown. Apart from that, I remember one around Larimer & Speer, but not much else.
None of them were downtown. One was in Parker and the other 2 were in Aurora. Aurora is so big that there are very nice parts and very not so nice parts.
40 years ago, I'm guessing both of the places were still just plains. Now they are Denver suburbs. I liked being a 1/2 hour from the city and also so close to the wilderness. Probably one of the favorite places ever to live. If Denver had an ocean it would be my version of best place to live on earth.
Forty years ago, Parker was a fairly small town, and you were clearly out in the country for a while before you got there. Aurora was a well-populated suburb then, but as I recall it ended around Tamarack (?); anyway, there wasn't much if any of Aurora east of a line running N-S from the east end of Stapleton Airport.
So what you're saying is Tel Aviv coffee shops are ideal for tech workers? Got to remember most of the world could care less about the logo designer, the architect, the programmer, etc. It worries me that tech is becoming a social club where you're either in it it completely or out of it. What's it like to be a low-wage blue collar worker in SF outside of the tech industry? This post would make it seems like they have nothing to talk about.
Actually, no.
Tel Aviv Coffee shops are ideal for tech workers. And being in tech and commenting on hacker news, I obviously state that first of all.
But Tel Aviv coffee shops are packed with people of all types and shapes.
Whether it's a social worker unwinding after a long week at work, a photographer who can't afford an office, so he meets the engaged couple to discuss terms at a coffee shop, or the Tel Aviv University student with her low-wage blue collar immigrant parents who came to visit her in the city over the weekend.
I can understand and relate to the fear of tech becoming "a social club". But that's much more of an American thing. Being a warm Mediterranean country in the middle of the Levant, Israelis don't like "closed social clubs". They have much more of a "Melting pot" mentality.
I tend to agree with you. I haven't been to Tel Aviv in a while... could you recommend 2-3 places that are worth checking out? I will be back there for a week in September.
Because they are not essential (like a bodega or gas station would be), and most are tied to a more laid-back, more bohemian lifestyle -- which means enough non-poor people are coming in the neighborhood to make them viable.
Of course talking about "coffee shops" proper -- the poor just make do with Dunkin Doughnuts and the like...
What's a "bodega"? I'm surprised to see this word in English, also considered as a basic service (not a wine cellar then?). In Spanish it's one of the two evolutions of Greek "apotheke", the other one being "botica" (farmacy).
> the poor just make do with Dunkin Doughnuts and the like
Oh brother, HN's insulation from the real world is showing... If you can afford $2 for a cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee on a regular basis, you probably are't poor. Most of them "make do" with a cup of Folgers/Maxwell House/etc brewed at home in a Mr. Coffee.
>Oh brother, HN's insulation from the real world is showing... If you can afford $2 for a cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee on a regular basis, you probably are't poor. Most of them "make do" with a cup of Folgers/Maxwell House/etc brewed at home in a Mr. Coffee.
True, I was not talking about starting or "trailer park" poor here.
Poor as in working class/lower middle class folks -- generally the kind of people that the people at Starbucks would snub.
I love myself some fine light roasted filter coffee as much as the next person. My biggest concern with these places, however is IT security. Anyone who hasn't played around with their laptops once receiving the wifi password, running their chosen network analysis tools/penetration suite and messing with people whose screen you might even see from two tables away, hands up in the air.
I will not be first in line, mind you. Thus, I advise people to use their own connection or ssh to their home network when using even protected wifi in coffee shops. The burglar already has the keys to the house, and you are a willing guest to the table. Who will take responsibility for your safety if not you?
>Anyone who hasn't played around with their laptops once receiving the wifi password, running their chosen network analysis tools/penetration suite and messing with people
I don't "mess with people" going about their business for fun.
Any Macbook has a default ignore all inbound traffic setting on their firewall - provided reasonable use of SSL services (Gmail, Google Apps, Dropbox, etc) and good web hygiene you would be totally safe surfing random insecure public wifi all day long.
>Anyone who hasn't played around with their laptops once receiving the wifi password, running their chosen network analysis tools/penetration suite and messing with people whose screen you might even see from two tables away, hands up in the air.
That's not ethical, and depending on exactly what you're doing, possibly not legal either. There's very clearly an implicit assumption that coffee shop wifi is for your own personal (and relatively light use). If you want to do anything else, you should get the permission of the owners.
Well the insurance industry was somewhat born on the back of coffee with the formation of reinsurance for ships by a group of people who used to meet in a coffee shop that went on to form Llyods of London, and the World of reinsurance and insurance grew from there.
One indeed wonders, how much business is done in a coffee shop's today in relation to the past compared to todays times.
This is funny, because it perfectly describes the difference in attitude between me and my father. He gets annoyed when he walks into a coffee shop and sees everyone on their phones and laptops. On the other hand, I think the atmosphere is quite cozy, and love taking my own stuff to work on to that kind of cheerful environment. I almost never start a conversation, but I do enjoy being around other people.
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