Would you like some coffee with that wifi?
Since the “story” of Victrola’s wifi free weekends broke, we have been inundated with people offering “solutions” to our “problem”. Putting aside for a moment that the issue of wi-fi squatters might be overblown, most of the solutions presented (and we’ve heard them all) ignore some fundamental realities of Victrola’s business.
a little plastic box at Victrola getting a lot of attention.
Victrola is not an “internet cafe”.
I have no doubt that there are cafes for whom internet access brings people into an otherwise mediocre cafe environment. Victrola however has always enjoyed an enviable amount of support from the community. I think alot of people in the Capitol Hill neighborhood have an ethic towards supporting local, independent, small businesses (a rare ethic these days) and we have a rep for taking our coffee seriously.
Its not about the money.
We sell a superior product (our coffees and the pastries we choose to carry) at prices less than or equal to corporate joints which enjoy vastly superior per item margins and have significantly lower cost-of-sales than Victrola. We are in it for love and sustainability, not making a buck at every turn. Several comments and articles we’ve seen misapprehend this situation, presuming a rough equivalence between Victrola’s business model and that of a multinational corporation. A meandering, cynical piece in today’s Seattle PI goes so far as to call in some professional “retail strategists” to tell us we are throwing away an opportunity to sell candy and CDs like Starbucks is doing. We are in it for the Love dammit. The love for our neighborhood, the love for our neighbors and the obsessive love of coffee. Jen and Chris as owners and the staff as a whole bust ass to keep this ship sailing because it is rewarding beyond just a paycheck.
It is about the money.
So actually, since the wifi started going dark on weekends, business seems to have picked up and baristas report better than average tipping. Can the Victrola Coffee yacht or Streamline Espresso private jet be far behind?
Policing versus regulating versus unplugging.
Many suggestions have included charging people, building obstacles to network access, kicking people off the network or out of the shop, and installing those shock collars you use for training dogs with each DHCP request. A number of people have suggested depriving laptops of juice by rewiring the table lamps and removing power outlets. Other ideas involve the popular armchair sport of redesigning the cafe to have a different seating plan or a laptop ghetto. Many of these ideas create extra work or unwelcome “cop” roles for the staff for negligable benefit. Some of the ideas require an investment of time and money that isn’t commensurate with the actual scale of the “problem”. Pulling the plug during our most table-space-scarce hours is actually the most sensible option.
Loitering.
We do not have any big problem with people spending hours and hours hanging out at the cafe. That is what people do at nice cafes. Yes, there is an unspoken, common-sense etiquette that Victrola isn’t your apartment and the staff are not your butlers, maids, bathroom attendants, or network admins and that its polite to support our business by buying stuff. We expect and enjoy people hanging out at length in the cafe. The difference with some of the wifi users is that they have appeared at Victrola strictly for internet access and cocoon themselves behind headphones, oblivious to their surroundings and the need to share their table. Fundamentally, we are dealing with a table-sharing problem not a laptop problem.
Electronic cocaine.
Surfing the internet is even more engrossing and less social than watching television, but not necessarily much “worse” than being absorbed in a book or magazine. But the internet is more of a “hard” drug than print. Some wifi users are more akin to cocaine or speed users with their intensity of fiending for a fix often taking a similar toll on their social graces. The soothing, opiate-like tonic of television by contrast would probably have less of a negative impact on general politeness - a phenomenon we may experience someday if PVPs (personal video players) ever take off. I myself am an internet junkie (go figure) and prefer to confine my most intense binges to the privacy of my own home where only my girlfriend has to be subjected to the intense madness elicited by my intake of dozens of RSS feeds, bulletin board conversations, and numerous open browser tabs.
The deeper question.
The spread of ubiquitous internet, like the spread of cellphones before it, is changing the nature of public environments. You no longer need to be home to receive a phone call, an instant message, check your email, or read the latest breaking news from tonx.org. It is as though the boundaries of your living space have extended to the outside world and any suitable urban space can become your living room or office. Everywhere you go you can remain tethered to a constellation of networks that comprises some new, almost inescapable virtual identity. I think it was the floating head of Timothy Leary who once said that urban living is “spiritual suicide”, and in the age of time-and-space dissolving, always-on electronic connectivity, I fear he could be proven right. But perhaps I am suffering the distorted perspective of having recently been slashdotted and feeling overdue for some unplugging in the form of a vacation.
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June 4th, 2005 at 6:05 pm
EXCELLENT response. I hope people read it before posting their comments. Victrola is not just another coffee shop and I would go there even without wifi or my trusty laptop.
The P-I piece was badly done.
June 4th, 2005 at 7:51 pm
Nice response Tony. The PI couldn’t have misrepresented what I said to them any worse. Thanks for putting this up.
June 5th, 2005 at 7:01 am
OK first, I live down the I-5 corridor in Portland, but I read the Seattle PI mainly ’cause the site is easier to navigate than the OregonLive website, and probably I should say something on the PI site, but I’m not in the mood this morning to get flamed.
Anyhoo, read the article. It seemed that PI was trying to present the problem as well as possible solutions and attempt to be as balanced as possible rather than write with a “slant” as is the usual wont of most news organs. It did all right, and was a good read, but…I think it tried to hard to be neutral.
I’m not surprised that there are table hogs. Give’em an inch and they’ll take your leg. People need to realize that the free wi-fi that’s offered is a *courtesy* to customers, not an invitation to camp out. I think your boss did the right thing in pulling Wi-fi’s plug enough that you’re back to the ambience of a coffee shop, not a technonerd’s home away from home.
Well responded!
P.S. I think makers of laptops should create an ‘alarm’ system similar to what’s used for autos. Anyone other than the owner picks up the laptop or enters the wrong keycode and makes a loud obnoxious noise.
June 5th, 2005 at 8:38 am
Once again, bravo. I completely agree with everything you say.
That P-I piece drove me insane. It was so blindingly obvious that the writer had no concept whatsoever of the specialty cafe business and that those “marketing analysts” or whatever were complete and utter fools. I mean good god people, not every cafe on the planet is a Starbucks and they most certainly don’t all have the same business model.
I especially liked the comment about those “high margin pastries” and how important it was for business that you sell a lot of those….
June 5th, 2005 at 10:44 pm
I wonder if a supremely low-tech solution is called for…
What about if you hang an old-fashioned, chiming clock on the wall… one that would cheerily ring out the hour, on the hour. And, for the head-phone wearers, offer a short electromagnetic pulse to get their attention, too.
I know, I know… you’re *not* looking for a solution. Got that. Some of us, however, ’specially those of us with long careers in the advice business, can’t seem to help ourselves. ;)
Best,
-deCadmus
June 7th, 2005 at 6:05 pm
Excellent commentary. I love to see people like you and the owners been passionate and determine to run your business with great integrity and commitment to the community that has supported you since day one.
June 9th, 2005 at 8:09 am
Lovely response to the P.I. article, and thank you for reminding everyone exactly why Victrola is such a spectacular place–it’s about passion for coffee and the people. Had no idea you had a blog, you are an exceptionally gifted writer-
Nancy E.
June 13th, 2005 at 1:36 pm
I nearly spilled my coffee yesterday when I heard the “Victrola Story” on NPR’s All Things Considered. You *would* think that there might be more pressing news out there, but I did think that they asked smart questions in their interview and gave a very pro-Victrola spin on the topic.
June 25th, 2005 at 10:05 am
Great post Tony. An annoying pattern I see in mainstream cafe coverage in general is to conflate the role and goals of Starbucks with those of the successful independent neighborhood cafe. (By “successful” I mean a cafe that has a strong sense of place and feeling of community among its customers). But when I spoke with owners and staff of such indy cafes, to the last one, they’re not obsessed with profit maximization, and they don’t want growth for growth’s sake.
I suppose you have to express that point emphatically to reporters and hope that will shake them out of the frame these quick-hit pieces are too often written within. I failed to do that w/ the P-I reporter. But then again, this surreal glut of “wi-fi free weekend” coverage has been about memes and about whatever media outlets are engrossed in right this minute, not about any real trend in cafes.
But: “Surfing the internet is even more engrossing and less social than watching television” Do you -really- think that’s true? Internet use is usually somewhat participatory, TV viewing is always completely passive, no?
Sean
June 25th, 2005 at 1:41 pm
Thanks Sean,
You can watch a favorite TV show, ball game or political debate on the tube with a group of friends, but surfing the web is usually a solo activity - one person to one screen. I think there is a more participatory aspect to internet use but at the expense of some disembodiment. My girlfriend and I can be computering and occasionally multitask some conversation, but I can’t really be aware if at any particular moment she is in the middle of charting some complex statistics or just reading boingboing.
Anytime I have my computer open I’m typically juggling several things (my inbox, some IM, RSS feeds, a photoshop project, and maybe some link hunting for a bulletin board discussion). The addition of the real world to that juggling often causes me to drop several balls.
Computers are excellent at bifurcating attention. And people with bifurcated attention will often make poor social companions. Teevee is a singular attention grabber and it takes little effort to pause or return our focus to it. We’ve also had a lot more time to become sophisticated to our use of television whereas the net terminal is still relatively new to the social environment.
I’ll be watching where things go with projects like your PlaceSite. I think the relationship between public space and these new technologies is really interesting.
June 27th, 2005 at 6:26 pm
Right on..
Along those lines.. One of the most interesting things I learned during the PlaceSite research, was about something called “SFnet” that existed in San Francisco cafes for a few yrs. in the early 90s. This was a proprietary network that consisted of coin-operated kiosks that an entrepreneur set up in SF cafes. Put a quarter in and you get basically multi-user text chat w/ other people in other SF cafes.
A very devoted community emerged around (or, alongside?) SFnet, a community that is still active on the “SFnet nostalgia tribe” on tribe.net, where more than 100 memebers still keep in touch each week.
Some of those folks tell me an important thing about SFnet was, the way the kiosks are set up, it’s not really a private thing and other people in the cafe can fairly easily see what you’re typing. Friends/acquaintances would use a kiosk together.
So these were used much differently from teh way laptops are used, and these folks don’t think you can replicate this w/ laptops — people would often watch others typing, not snooping but just as the accepted way this would work. The lesser privacy, they tell me, actually lead to more trust and a stronger community because at any time you’d have less reason to think someone on the other end is lying about their identity etc. And SFnet very often took place at the same time as face-to-face dialogue, it just added another dimension, another conversation piece to face-to-face talk…
Of course, these kiosks were expensive and the firm went out of business pretty quickly… But nonetheless there may be lessons there.
July 24th, 2005 at 10:12 am
I was just at the Victrola on a Monday a week ago — I was in town from SF on work and admittedly needed a wireless connection AND great coffee to get a little work done. What I saw appalled me — there were people at 6 tables around me that had NO drink on their table, no empty plate, nothing — nothing that loooked like they may have helped this small merchant out for the free service they were using (and taking up their tables — 1 person apiece for a table of 2-4). 3 tables had glasses of free water. The wireless thing is great — I am one of the few people I know that has an enlighetend enough boss to let me work from ‘home’ and around the country a great deal of the time — but I am acutely aware that I am poaching from a small business person if I sit down and order NOTHING at all. If you want to shut if off on weekends, that’s great (my enlighetened boss is also a big fan of your weekend being yours — lest you get burnt out), and if you keep it going during the week, patrons, do your duty and buy something..or give your $5 to TMobile and jam up a spot at your local Starbucks. (For the record, I had 1 latte, 1 cap’ and a scone (coffee A+, scone, eh…sorry guys!)
August 16th, 2005 at 5:33 am
Here in Portland, OR, we have the personaltelcoproject.net, which has installed free wifi in many locations — public spaces, coffee shops and bars. I think that the proliferation of this service has spread users out a little bit, so I suspect that helps with some of the issues you face. The project got a grant not too long ago to wifi an entire neighborhood. It was pretty cool.