Fielding your questions about dining out in 21st-century Bay Area restaurants. Have one? Email me.
How often in an internet cafe should you buy a new coffee/pastry while you use their internet for hours and hours?
L.T., as a restless writer who spends an awful lot of time working in cafes, I feel you. I find writing more productive when I can make faces into my screen and swear to myself in front of an audience that is not my refrigerator.
A few years ago, there was a movement to "reclaim cafe culture" and disconnect the laptop in favor of promoting "conversation" and "community." This high-minded stance is why Ritual (wi-fi: yes) gets so much more of my money than Four Barrel (wi-fi: sneer). Smart cafes acknowledge that their afternoon traffic is heavily bulked up by people like you and me.
I do feel for cafes who claim they lose valuable table space and
income when new-economy drones colonize a table in order to
do something they should be doing at their home office, which the
baristas presume looks like this.
At
Matching Half, the cafe where I spend most of my work time, the owners
have taken a tack now common in wireless-enabled cafes: blocking the
outlets so people can only stay for as long as they have battery power.
This seems to be a reasonable compromise, even though it meant buying a new laptop earlier than I'd planned.
The rule I've settled on to keep the baristas from poisoning my cone of creativity with toxic glares: One purchase per hour.
If
you're settling in for a two- or three-hour work session, start with a
coffee and a good -- and obvious -- tip. (Never sneak it into the jar when
their backs are turned.) Then, on the hour, buy a refill, a pastry, or
simply a bottle of sparkling water, tipping each time.
Paying $3 to $4 an hour is fair
for renting table space and internet access to work, don't you think? I hear you now: The
whole reason I'm in a cafe is because I can't afford one of those shared office
spaces, and if I spend another hour in my studio I'm going to take a
hammer to the only piece of electronics that loves me back.
To
you, I say: The library is a serene place to work. Or, if you want to
stretch out the time between purchases, you're going to have to pour on the charm.
I'm talking learning the name of your barista's partner's cat.
Giving him mix CDs not copied off of Pandora, or a jar of lemon curd
made with fruit gleaned off your neighbor's tree. Whatever -- and I mean whatever -- it takes to
keep your barista on your side.
