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.
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The caffeine curse: why coffee shops have always signalled urban change
81–90 of 178 posts
Re: The caffeine curse: why coffee shops have always signalled urban change
#82Commenting 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…
What do you think of Tel Aviv as a place to hang out working on a startup compared to SF? I'm a brit thinking of a change of scene.
Re: The caffeine curse: why coffee shops have always signalled urban change
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your link is subscriber only - does it address selection bias, eg perhaps those who relocated had an existing advantage?
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 cri…
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.
Re: The caffeine curse: why coffee shops have always signalled urban change
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
Might be geographical? Many of Vienna's most popular cafés were established in the 1800s.
>Might be geographical?
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.
Re: The caffeine curse: why coffee shops have always signalled urban change
#85Why 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.
Why Is Gentrification Such a Bad Word? http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/06/gentrifi...
I started reading the article and it told about tricks that landlords used to evict renters.
I don't understand. Why can't landlords just refuse to prolong the rent contract? It's their property — how come renters become a problem for them?
Re: The caffeine curse: why coffee shops have always signalled urban change
#86> 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 s…
Obligatory image:
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*U36hBj8i-C7JJJxS4M...
Re: The caffeine curse: why coffee shops have always signalled urban change
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 t…
> "You don't go to war with your trading partners." http://blogs.reuters.com/anatole-kaletsky/2014/06/27/world-w...
Well, you're less likely to go to war with your trading partners.
Re: The caffeine curse: why coffee shops have always signalled urban change
#88Because 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).
Some pics of the kind of thing refered to https://www.google.com/search?q=bodega&num=20&source=lnms&tb...
Re: The caffeine curse: why coffee shops have always signalled urban change
#89Why 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.
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.
Comparing the guardian to the Washington Times...
That's a new one.
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.
The other is owned by the Moonies.
Re: The caffeine curse: why coffee shops have always signalled urban change
#90I find it interesting that Coffee shops have such a long standing history in London given that tea is basically the national drink.
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.