21–30 of 251 posts
A recent experience from a hackerspace showed me how incredibly thankless people can be. After working really insanely hard to build an inclusive space with loads of features, every little hobby revolutionary in the community just shits all over the work and proclaims the people actually getting stuff done should just stop and leave it to them. Even if I had the time, money and expertise I would never do something li…
The economics of hobby businesses, like bookstores and coffee shops and art galleries, are almost always such that you can either feed it the equivalent of a full time salary, or work there every hour it's open yourself, because the kind of business is one that other people want to do for free as a hobby. This means that, unless you want to be a slave to your own business, you'd better have $50k a year minimum passiv…
So how do coffee shops like Starbucks mange to support 20 working part time plus a corporate headquarters and make a profit, from the same small store you would operate as a hobby?
A poet / artist space will be lucky to have a few dozen people come in every day.
[1]: https://www.quora.com/How-many-customers-does-an-average-Sta...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So how do coffee shops like Starbucks mange to support 20 working part time plus a corporate headquarters and make a profit, from the same small store you would operate as a hobby?
I have a friend who runs a brewery. They distribute a ridiculous amount of their product into stores around the world and have won many awards, yet they make very little margin from all that. He told me they make an overwhelming amount of money off of the tasting room attached to their physical brewery because the beer itself is effectively water in terms of cost so they make profit by not having to pay any middle me…
Interesting writeup, but the Ghost Ship is an extreme example of what goes wrong - you couldn't make a place more of a fire hazard if you tried.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Oakland_warehouse_fire
As you say you could hardly make a more hazardous environment if you tried. Wooden pallets for stairs?!
I’ve always thought that a remote tech job/lifestyle business is perfect for opening an art gallery / niche bookstore. You don’t need to worry about paying the bills, you have a private office / desk, and realistically you won’t get more than a few visitors per hour, so you can focus on work.
At halfway through the article it becomes clear that the writer has kids to take care of and his own job. That’s what should have been in the title to clarify the scope, and I would have saved the time reading this article. It’s obviously a much different challenge with those factors present. Without kinds and him/her taking care of the cafe instead it would have worked out likely. I mean think of it, people who have…
- they are run by volunteers (no paid staff)
- they have some sort of arrangement where they don't have to pay rent at market rate
If you rent a space and hire someone to keep it open, you need a lot of money coming in...
A recent experience from a hackerspace showed me how incredibly thankless people can be. After working really insanely hard to build an inclusive space with loads of features, every little hobby revolutionary in the community just shits all over the work and proclaims the people actually getting stuff done should just stop and leave it to them. Even if I had the time, money and expertise I would never do something li…
That being said there is a lot of toxicity I've seen coming from other spaces. Noisebridge on Mission St. is the first to come to mind. That being said it's still around and kicking!
[1] https://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/attachments/100...
Interesting writeup, but the Ghost Ship is an extreme example of what goes wrong - you couldn't make a place more of a fire hazard if you tried.
The Wikipedia page is informative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Oakland_warehouse_fire As you say you could hardly make a more hazardous environment if you tried. Wooden pallets for stairs ?!
How shitty of a landlord can you be that you wouldn't prioritize people's safety.