The SoupASonic

I walked by a neighborhood coffee shop on the Upper East Side the other day, and saw a "No Laptops Allowed" sign. For a moment, I felt chills, and just then, I realized that I was staring future in the face.

What does it tell you when a neighborhood coffee shop doesn't allow laptops? -- that their users tend to buy one drink (anywhere between $2-6) and stay for hours. That was certainly the case at alt.coffee in the East Village, until they decided to plug all of their electrical outlets shut, citing "insurance" concerns. Working on a laptop at a cafe combines at least three important life activities into one: caffeine consumption, people-watching, and work. With free wifi, the cost of that $6 latte is practically tax deductible, and getting work done actually feels like a vacation, not to mention that, while hooked into the internet, you can read more magazines, and hear more amazing music, than you could ever try to in your lifetime, almost without cost..

And yet, that model is increasingly becoming unsustainable for the coffee-shop owners. Some start charging for internet services (like Starbucks); others get rid of the internet entirely, others turn up the music so loud that you can't think... Other coffee shops simply close, or re-open "with a new concept". My neighborhood coffee shop on the Upper West Side (the old Columbus Bakery) re-opened with such a new concept, as a marriage of "Pinch" and "S'mac" - a pizzeria and a mac-n-cheese joint...

I tried at length to write a post about how musicians are similar to coffee-shop owners, how we all seek an intimate connection with their listeners and customers. But on closer examination, that comparison fails - the upfront hard costs of starting and running a coffee shop cannot compare with the fairly negligible costs of making music. Where the coffee-shops are trying to monetize their tables by shooing away laptop-laden cyborg freeloaders or asking for a fee, we try to woo them with free downloads, videos, and podcasts -- we *hope* they will monetize one day, and celebrate each of their purchases as we would the first steps of a child.

It's great to live in hope, in faith, in innocence -- just wish that they still lived in a coffee shop.

There are several common ways to get between New York and Boston: plane, train, car, and once a year, bike. Then there are also bus options - Greyhound/Peter Pan, and the various Chinatown Bus companies.

If you're up for a really great alternative, try LimoLiner, a luxurious bus that goes between the New York and Boston BackBay Hilton hotels. For the same price as the Amtrak train, you get a business-class seat, with wifi internet access, a meal (in my case, breakfast), a concierge/attendant, XM Radio, a movie, more legroom than you can imagine.. I even video-Skyped my mom in Moscow! (Thankfully, there's a cellphone-free zone in the back of the bus for those of you who don't understand Russian.) After taking the Greyhound one way, this surely felt like heaven, or as close as they'll let me get to it.

...but there are just a few downsides:
-- poor schedule. the last bus leaves Boston at 4:30pm, just before the end of the business day; the last bus from New York is at 6:15pm. (Compare that with Greyhound's legendary bus leaving either NYC or Boston at 12:30am!)

-- the pickup/drop-off locations -- unless the Hilton is near your destination, it's a bit of a schlep from other transit options.

-- the internet signal drops off intermittently. Most notably, it dropped when we entered my old neighborhood, on 86th + Columbus in NYC.


Otherwise, I heartily recommend it, and, providing that the LimoLiner schedule and drop-off locations expand, I'm delighted to take it all the time. (Now if only they could do something about the NYC traffic...)

My LimoLiner breakfast:

The clock strucketh (?) 3am, and it appears that innabar and I are actually blogging at the same hour.

We've been sitting in the same room, facing each other and typing away at our respective laptops for three hours straight. Blame it on our Max Brenner sugar high.

Mind you, we don't perform the laptop-vigil too often - maybe once a week. But between all the scheduling, the promotion, the MySpace/Facebook friends and all of the videos everyone sends us from YouTube, it's inescapable. But let's face it - the amount of hours we spend catching up with "web-life" is going to skyrocket. How bittersweet -- what could be sweeter than sitting in the same room with your beloved, firing through our life in the sounds of clicks, accompanied by some anonymous MySpace bands.

For better or worse (or at least for now), the internet is a medium for loners - one person per screen.
With exception of collaborative document editing (writely) and some basic collaborative doodling, most of what's available does not encourage viral communication between people, neighbors, co-workers. Sure, they can "share", but nothing encourages them to experience anything at the same moment. Nothing, except - perhaps - Jon Stewart.

When I was a child, my parents tried to restrict my TV viewing. Now, as relative adults, we guffaw at little children with cellphones, and criticize parents for letting kids play computer games.
But it's not the same. TV is passive, Games are competitive.

Nobody I know sends 100 of their friends an email saying "I just subscribed to HBO, it's the greatest thing ever", but many of those friends could be seen sending me must-see links to YouTube.

In the future - I sincerely hope! - that instead of giving holiday presents, we'll all be sending must-see links, experiences, and things we feel passionate about. It'll be creative, competitive, and it could be expensive if you're a sucker for production value... but if it gets innabar and I to stop blogging and get to bed, we'd be ever grateful.

:)