What's wrong with cafes?

When you are accustomed to living life at an online pace, you live in a world where every action results in an immediate response. Click on the link and, after just a few seconds, up comes the page. Hence when you order a coffee and 10 minutes later it hasn’t arrived, your first response is no longer. “Gosh, they must be quite busy!” No, your auton

The AirSpace cafés “are oppressive, in the sense that they are…

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Sometimes people expressed annoyance at the very presence of subway tiles in coffee shops. But I think it was the sameness of AirSpace that was off-putting, not exactly the style…

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They showcased trends in both beverages and food. They included a particular selection of music with soft ambient soundtracks, like lo-fi beats. Each café comprised a temple to all forms of contemporary taste—they were total works of art, to use Wagner’s term for a fully immersive aesthetic creation that engages every sense. Cafés turned out to be

The chaos of urban centers “stimulates the nerves to their utmost reactivity,” wrote sociologist Georg Simmel in an influential essay from 1903, “until they can finally produce no reaction at all.” As anyone who’s lived in a city will know, it’s easy to feel overstimulated, and too much of that feeling can render you numb and disconnected from the