The caffeine curse: why coffee shops have always signalled urban change • Hacker News Board

Re: The caffeine curse: why coffee shops have always signalled urban change

#111

Post by ido » Fri, Apr 15, 2016, 1:33 PM UTC

dkopi wrote: post #102

lmm wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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?

Re: The caffeine curse: why coffee shops have always signalled urban change

#112

Post by samtp » Fri, Apr 15, 2016, 1:37 PM UTC

dkopi wrote: post #108

samtp wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 caf…

I love Saigon. Nomadlist has a nice guide too: https://nomadlist.com/digital-nomad-guide-to-ho-chi-minh-cit...

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:

https://medium.com/digital-nomad-stories/bootstrapping-in-sa...

And because I'm getting nostalgic, here's a great post on the incredible food there:

http://www.legalnomads.com/2014/06/saigon-street-food.html

Re: The caffeine curse: why coffee shops have always signalled urban change

#113

Post by ido » Fri, Apr 15, 2016, 1:38 PM UTC

tim333 wrote: post #82

dkopi wrote: post #59

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…

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.

How much do you need to be around other startup people? Mediterranean EU cities will generally be easier and mostly cheaper to stay at.

Re: The caffeine curse: why coffee shops have always signalled urban change

#114

Post by Raphmedia » Fri, Apr 15, 2016, 1:50 PM UTC

cylinder wrote: post #98

dkopi wrote: post #59

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…

Laptops are the opposite of what I want to see in cafes, actually I prefer that they have an outright ban

Not everyone has internet at home.

Re: The caffeine curse: why coffee shops have always signalled urban change

#115

Post by dkopi » Fri, Apr 15, 2016, 1:51 PM UTC

ido wrote: post #111

dkopi wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 Lo…

As far as transit goes - if you live and work in Tel Aviv, you can pretty much walk wherever you need.

True, Berlin is cheaper than Tel Aviv, but it's also cheaper than most other German cities. Wages are also lower in Berlin.

Drink an Augustiner Dunkel for me :)

Re: The caffeine curse: why coffee shops have always signalled urban change

#116

Post by ASlave2Gravity » Fri, Apr 15, 2016, 1:51 PM UTC

cylinder wrote: post #98

dkopi wrote: post #59

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…

Laptops are the opposite of what I want to see in cafes, actually I prefer that they have an outright ban

Why's that?

Re: The caffeine curse: why coffee shops have always signalled urban change

#117

Post by alanwatts » Fri, Apr 15, 2016, 1:53 PM UTC

kdamken wrote: post #106

nefitty wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

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.

Re: The caffeine curse: why coffee shops have always signalled urban change

#118

Post by dvanduzer » Fri, Apr 15, 2016, 2:01 PM UTC

cylinder wrote: post #98

dkopi wrote: post #59

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…

Laptops are the opposite of what I want to see in cafes, actually I prefer that they have an outright ban

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 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?

Re: The caffeine curse: why coffee shops have always signalled urban change

#119

Post by nefitty » Fri, Apr 15, 2016, 2:02 PM UTC

davorb wrote: post #41

nefitty wrote: post #26

Earlier 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...

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.

Re: The caffeine curse: why coffee shops have always signalled urban change

#120

Post by matwood » Fri, Apr 15, 2016, 2:03 PM UTC

dkopi wrote: post #59

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…

> 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.