My active hours are typically very early AM, 2-4AM, until 10AM, and there is definitely a space for this in the market for individuals that just want a place to relax and/or work outside of their home outside of normal working hours. Starbucks used to fill this niche where I lived (they would open at 3,4AM to accommodate students in the area trying to study for finals. Nowadays, most of these starbucks/coffee shops have closed or shifted to an in-store hostile setup of a drive through plus a lobby that is mostly intended for delivery drivers, walled off laptop plugs and won't tell you why, removed all charging stations, and just generally made it a shitty experience to sit inside and do anything at all other than get the hell out. This is almost universal now where i live, a college town with multiple colleges, and I wouldn't even begin to tell you where to find a coffee shop where I could gather with 3-4 other grad students and bang some crazy project out in a few hours anymore, and I have many, many big colleges near me. There's a demand the market isn't meeting, but, that demand didn't rake in the most dollars so here we are and this is some kind of novelty. These kinds of spaces existed basically everywhere in my area circa 2012-2018. They weren't tied to any particular ethnicity, just was a need people apparently had.
>Nowadays, most of these starbucks/coffee shops have closed or shifted to an in-store hostile setup of a drive through plus a lobby that is mostly intended for delivery drivers, walled off laptop plugs and won't tell you why,
They don't want to become homeless shelters.
Homelessness has rapidly increased in the last decade, to the point where CoWork spaces becomes a viable business.
If you want to do a project pay 300$ a month to WeWork. Before the explosion of homelessness, back when Starbucks, Coffee Bean, would let you sit around for hours, a 300$ WeWork membership would be silly.
Homelessness increases --> any place where you can just hang out without paying attracts more homeless people --> there are too many homeless people hanging out for hanging out to remain good for business --> cheap hangouts close --> expensive hangouts like co-working spaces become viable.
Add increased labor costs and your profit margin for late night coffee drops significantly. Add a safety factor, and it becomes a more cost effective option to reduce hours.
We've been seeing that here in my Northern California city for the past few years.
Where are poor people supposed to go ? Where is a person making minimum wage supposed to live.
>First of all, they found, for families and children, one of the largest increases in homelessness, families, a 39 percent spike in 2024 from 2023. And on that January night that they surveyed, they found 150,000 children experiencing in — homelessness.
It makes me uneasy whenever someone suggests forcing an undesirable class of people to become concentrated in institutions (or, perhaps, camps). Historically it hasn't worked out so well. But maybe this time it will be different?
You don’t? Homeless people need somewhere to go and a welcoming coffee shop is a viable option. Removing tables and making it less “sit down” friendly is a good way to drive all of your customers towards grabbing their drinks to-go.
I stopped drinking after I hit 40 and Starbucks was my third place (my favorite Starbucks was the one near DePaul University in Lincoln Park in Chicago).
I am now in the city of Starbucks (Seattle area) and am surprised that many of the Starbucks here (1) don't open late; (2) don't have comfortable seating; (3) aren't sufficiently lit (it's mostly dim, mood lighting -- I can't read paper books in most of them). I wonder if it's because Seattle people like their local spots (that also don't open late) that Starbucks had to optimize their revenue for to-go orders instead of sit-down ones.
This is really unfortunate. Howard Schultz was all bout the "third place".
Supposedly the new CEO is aware the decline of Starbucks as a third place is an issue, but we'll see if anything changes. The business perspective of just doing drive-through and pick-up sounds great, but it loses the "experience" that made Starbucks revolutionary. If Starbucks coffee just turns into a transaction, I'm not sure how they can survive when Dunkin, McDonalds, and even Keurig do transactions better, and all sorts of local coffee shops do coffee better.
I spend a lot of money at Starbucks, but very little time. I think Starbucks’ brand was built when it was the opposite; now it’s just a commodity. The value is still there — get a reliable coffee extremely fast, and my toddler loves their egg bites which is a huge value in and of itself — but it’s not so much more valuable than Dunkin’ anymore.
The best “third place” that Starbucks ever created was Roy Street Coffee & Tea in Seattle. It had a great selection of drinks, good food, plenty of seating, and a vibrant atmosphere. Unfortunately, Starbucks decided against expanding on the concept and closed down the café in 2019.
Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.
I’ve done a lot of both screen and paper based work in coffee shops, including Starbucks, and the thing that’s scarred me after all these years is the constant playing of music. Even with ear plugs and over the ear muffs it can only cancel out so much.
Am only able to spend maybe an hour or so doing anything in a coffee shop now - agree with all the rest of your points though
There used to be a great Starbucks in Kirkland that was 24hr. I am equally frustrated that there are no coffee shops open late even close to the universities in Seattle.
SO recently finished 7 years of grad school at UW and we’re both happy to not spend much time around U dist at night. She still gets the police alerts and it’s not inspiring - such crazy violent things happening there all the time.
In my opinion that could be a reason 24 hr businesses aren’t persisting in that area. But yes this would be a logical place for late night establishments
I’m really surprised about the Northgate location and it really doesn’t make sense to me. The McDonalds next to it is also 24 hour, so maybe it has to do something with being a rest stop for I5?
Salt Lake City oddly enough has (or had?) 24 hour coffee shops that you could hangout at.
>I wonder if it's because Seattle people like their local spots (that also don't open late) that Starbucks had to optimize their revenue for to-go orders instead of sit-down ones.
The labor costs and risks of hosting people within your business, especially at later times, is more and more difficult to offset with revenue. Especially if a sufficiently large portion of the population opts to pay for the lower priced goods at to go businesses.
Last time I was in Seattle the Starbucks on 1st Ave (& University?) didn't have any seating at all. 90% of their business seemed to be online to-go orders (the O.G. Starbucks at Pike Place had several hundred people in line!).
Is that a third place? I thought third places were defined as the third "social" area - places you meet and talk with other people. If it's a place to drink and read, like a home away from home, I'm not sure that's the same thing but I'm not sure what to call it.
24h Starbucks are where I studied for the CFA exam. All of the financial podcasts I listen to tell me Starbucks' new CEO seems to want them to go back to the third space glory days[0].
Today, I’m making a commitment: We’re getting back to Starbucks. We’re refocusing on what has always set Starbucks apart — a welcoming coffeehouse where people gather, and where we serve the finest coffee, handcrafted by our skilled baristas. This is our enduring identity. We will innovate from here.
... 3. Reestablishing Starbucks as the community coffeehouse: We’re committed to elevating the in-store experience — ensuring our spaces reflect the sights, smells and sounds that define Starbucks. Our stores will be inviting places to linger, with comfortable seating, thoughtful design and a clear distinction between “to-go” and “for-here” service.
>do you really get work done in a coffee shop or any kind of public place like that?
Yes, definitely.
For me it's that despite the noise, I have complete confidence that none of it is relevant to me, so I can ignore it completely. In offices, tons of things are relevant for me because I'm a popular random-problem-solver. At home, anything could be relevant, even though most of it is not.
The noise isn't the issue, it's the brainpower spent on triaging the noise.
In case the joke wasn't clear: Waffle House is infamous for often having fights started by inebriated late-night customers - the sort of thing that'll certainly leave you with some stories to tell.
> do you really get work done in a coffee shop or any kind of public place like that?
sir, there is an entire class of developers (including myself) that work remote exclusively out of coffee shops. Its where I can most easily get the creative mojo going.
Coffee shop is excellent background noise for many people. Back in the day I had some audio online and used it instead of white noise. It worked very well to help me concentrate until I started to notice the same sounds since it was a loop.
That’s how I am as well, but I’ve grown to appreciate that everyone has different ideal working environments. The main reason I prefer WFH over RTO is the open office floor plan makes it very difficult for me to focus and work. I find it quite distracting.
The office is dehumanizing. Not only bench seating and cube farms but offices too. Before Facebook gutted the long corridors of offices at the old Sun Micro, it was affectionately called Sun Quentin
I find that Starbucks locations in other countries are much nicer than in the US. Speaking of Mexico and Thailand specifically from my recent experiences. And this is having lived in Seattle most recently in the US.
I think the homeless/addict problem has ruined a lot of urban Starbucks locations in the US.
Most of those places want you to order coffee, preferably with friends (more people per one table) drink it in some reasonable amount of time (<30 minutes), and then leave the table to the next group of guests.
A few laptopers hogging a table for half a day in an otherwise crowded coffeeshop can costs them hundreds of euros/dollars in lost sales.
But i guess this creates a maket for shared workespaces, where you could lease a desk per hour.
Starbucks is getting increasingly hostile, for sure. It's hard to find a Starbucks anymore that has any comfortable seating at all. I went to one in the Chicago burbs recently that had no drive-thru, no indoor seating, and they were visibly annoyed when I ordered inside. Everyone was picking up mobile orders. There were a couple outdoor tables, and that was it. The outlets were disconnected too.
Where I live, I'm very fortunate to have three local chains that are very sit-down friendly. They all have 3-10 locations, so they cover the whole city without succumbing to corporate bullshit. One of them even has a storefront in their roasting/packaging facility. If you want to see how coffee is manufactured and/or you like loud white noise, that's a good place to go.
What I've found is that while local coffee shops are sit-down friendly, they all close at 1, 2, or 3pm, at least where I am. 5-6pm if they're a chain. If I want a small bite to eat, a hot drink, and a place to work after 5 I basically have the option of a bar or a sit-down restaurant. It sucks, and I have no idea where this 3pm closing time thing is coming from. Maybe being too short staffed to have more than just a morning shift?
My general takeaway from a bunch of comments is that there were two death waves for these late night places. But, I have a great fix.
First, Starbucks committed coffeeshopicide by targeting local hangouts that were successful, and then spraying their own burnt grounds, driving up real estate and making it impossible for a small, less efficient shop to survive. I saw this happen at several great places in Portland. Then, obviously a career climbing executive at Starbucks tried to get promoted and tightened up hours.
The second wave of late night coffee shop deaths occured with COVID and homelessness (really McKinsey and Purdue opioids, read "When McKinsey Comes to Town") because of safety. No one, big or small, can offer a space and decide which hipster can stay and which has to leave because he is now addicted to drugs and not just Instagram dopamine.
The solution: cities should offer a tax break to a coffee shop that stays open late. And, cities should offer a match where they create a space nearby for homeless people to congregate late night. I'm sure there is a correlation between the number of homeless and soon-to-be homeless creative types.
I'm saddened late night coffee shops have largely disappeared, these Yemeni shops look terrific. And, they bring the social back to meeting places, and I don't mean social media and laptops.
The first one is fine, but small, less efficient shops were never open very late. Also, Yemeni coffee shops are basically the same as Mom and pop coffee shops. Why are they able to be open late in the same environment?
Second one, how come Yemeni coffee shops don't have the issue of keeping out the homeless?
EDIT: Yemeni coffee shops are having the same success in the bay area where these problems are both exacerbated.
Probably because they're small "family" businesses, and the owner is there more often than not. And they have no problem saying "no" to anyone for any reason.
Are coffee shops just the answer to having social spaces that aren't alcohol fueled like bars and clubs? For quite a while I have had a rough idea that there could be something along the lines of a bar but with no alcohol and some kind of structured activities for breaking the ice.
>The first coffeehouses appeared in Damascus. These Ottoman coffeehouses also appeared in Mecca, in the Arabian Peninsula in the 15th century, then spread to the Ottoman Empire's capital of Istanbul in the 16th century and in Baghdad. Coffeehouses became popular meeting places where people gathered to drink coffee, have conversations, play board games such as chess and backgammon, listen to stories and music, and discuss news and politics. They became known as "schools of wisdom" for the type of clientele they attracted, and their free and frank discourse.
Yes, coffee bars were popular back in the 1990s. One of my CS professors opened one up. In "Friends," they often go to a coffee bar. They had couches and comfy chairs to chill in. You just went there and had coffee and hung out. These were mom and pop shops and probably all got eaten up by corporate behemoths like Starbucks.
Just goes to show, when a company goes public, you are no longer the customer, the shareholders are.
I think that depends on the means of going private. Original owners get together to take their baby back? Probably going to go well. Private equity firm swoops in to extract $$$? Probably going to crash and burn.
Yes I should have said, "has outside investors," or "institutional investors." It would have fit better. PE companies seem even worse. I often see them take a known brand, cut quality, jack up the prices and bleed the company dry.
Don't forget the evil university endowments flying under the radar of non-profits. They destroy local shops & economy by replacing them with either for profit corporate tenants who can pay exuberant rents, or worse, empty, abandoned, desolate buildings with exuberant mark-to-model real estate values.
Harvard and Kendall Squares in Cambridge, MA are the best examples of what ruthless endowments do. Kendall Square is entirely owned by MIT and is new shiny and totally unaffordable to non-VC/PE crowd and shuts down after dark.
Harvard Square is replete with empty buildings worth billions on HMC's books. The late night 2-story Starbucks with lots of seating and occasional live music is gone and replaced with a tiny one with no seating which closes at 9pm.
There used to be late night coffee shops, and more late night restaurants.
That mostly went away years ago, basically completely died in COVID, and the labor shortages in the service industry never eased up enough to maintain staffing at places that had late night hours. And I do mean not enough people; the housing shortage is so acute that service workers cannot find places to live.
Rhode Island didn't have a lot of late night coffee shops even before the pandemic. But after it they're neigh impossible to find. At least outside of Providence.
I mean, in Texas is decidedly not in Seattle so the real estate dynamics are significantly different.
Houston has addressed population growth by spreading ever more outwards, because it is flat with few natural barriers. Seattle hasn’t really had a choice other than to grow upwards, since it is hemmed in by lakes and mountains in every direction. But like most American metropolitan areas, most of the Seattle region has until fairly recently been opposed to density.
The resulting housing crunch has resulted in significant demands for wages to pay for housing. Houston follows the federal tipped minimum wage of $2.13/hr. Seattle does not have a different payscale for tipped workers so the minimum is $20.76/hr.
There’s cultural aspects to it. Europe, Middle East and Asia has a culture where there’s enough people up and about till late. People anre anre outside, often at third places like coffee shops that allow you to spend time without spending a ton. Even if you’re at home, you are not in bed at 9, like majority of Americans. I would assume the clientele at the Yemeni shops comes from a place that has the “stay out till late” culture.
Not all of Europe. I live in Ljubljana, Slovenia (the capital), and apart from 3 gas stations and 1 pharmacy, literally nothing works at night (2 or 3 nightclubs on the weekends). And people don't find it odd or have any significant dislike for it.
The rest of the country is even worse for night people like myself.
Yeah, I hate how COVID changed things so much for the worse.
If I was a crazy billionaire, I'd open a good pizza place in SLU or somewhere central with pies that cost $20 for a large, open til 3 am. Maybe aim to lose no more than $5,000 per month. It would not be profitable with the crazy high minimum wage, so I would just accept the loss for providing this benefit to the city.
The problem isn’t that the demand isn’t there or that the wage costs are too high. The main problems are high real estate costs and local regulations that prevent you from running a 24x7 cafe.
Then why are there almost no restaurants doing this? I see this in /r/seattle a lot: everyone asking for late night food, then restauranteurs saying there's not enough demand.
Similar to public bathrooms - if a business is open 24 hours and you can stick around in there in the heated / cooled interior that's good for the homeless person, but maybe bad for loitering or the business.
I can't imagine a business closing over it, but having a closing time is a good way to get people to leave maybe?
I feel you. Most Seattle people are homebodies by their own admission. Anything open after 9 pm is usually a bar.
Also, things have gotten worse after the pandemic. Low revenue after 9 pm (unless alcohol is involved), high labor costs, and safety issues means the juice is not worth the squeeze for most retail businesses here.
When I used to live in Chicago, the economics worked out differently, so there were many businesses that opened late.
It's both. Seattle is one of the most introverted cities in the US (socially, it's disproportionately shaped by the tech population). Seattle Freeze is a real thing. COVID also did a number on people worldwide.
Also, gloomy weather 7-8 months of the year makes you not want to socialize.
For anyone looking for late night activities here: Swing dancing is a great late night activity in Seattle - multiple live jazz bands a month (at least once a week), and very low alcohol consumption (people mainly go to dance/practice). It'll be sad to see the Century Ballroom closing its doors this spring.
I used to go to a late night coffee shop in Dublin sometimes when I lived there and read a book. Was a really nice space with comfortable couches and good ambient music.
Couldn't remember the name but managed to find a reference to it, it was called Accents. Seems like it's shutdown now.
The podcast Search Engine did an episode trying to get to the bottom of why there are so many illegal weed stores in NYC. Turns out a significant percentage are run by Yemeni Americans. I’ve always wondered how that came to be but never considered that the war could have something to do with it. I wonder if that’s the case?
What do you mean, "Civil War"? Yemen is occupied by UAE and likely Israel, has been at war with the US and Saudi Arabia for a decade or so, and before that on and off been managed by puppet regimes since they kicked out the british.
Yemen is not occupied by Israel. Yemen is in fact in the midst (the end stages, really) of a civil war, between a corrupt preexisting government that ostensibly represented the Sunni majority of the country, and rebels led by the supremacist group Ansar Allah, which represents minority a Zaydi Shia sect.
The UAE and Israel are planning a joint base in the Socotra archipelago. It's reasonable to assume Israel already has a military presence due to this project.
The Ansar Allah hasn't been particularly sectarian for many years, opting instead for establishing a non-sectarian government and maoist-like people's army, which they've mostly achieved. Due to the imposed starvation policies from the US, UK and allies they also aim to replace qat production with food. There's a lot to not like about them, don't need to make things up.
The entire purpose of Ansar Allah is the restoration of the Zaydi Imamate. They have spent the last several years destroying Sunni mosques and laying siege to Sunni-majority cities (as they continue to do in Taizz and Marib). They are an explicitly and exclusively sectarian movement. This is not a thing you need to take my word on; you can get it from UNHCR (if you must), HRW, or literally any history of the movement.
If you do take the time to read up on this, I strongly recommend you learn how the Imamate worked. It is not an abstract thing, like "the caliphate" so many other Islamist movements seek to restore; it was the governing structure of Yemen until the 1960s.
If I wanted simply to trash Ansar Allah, it would be easy enough to do; they are currently the world's largest employer of child soldiers.
Maybe that's their secret goal. They've formed a government with representatives from other groups and explicitly draw politics and rhetoric from historic socialist anticolonial movements, including the socialist South Yemen. al-Bukhaiti is the most outspoken of their leaders in this regard.
Old Saleh loyalists have during the last year warmed up to the Ansar Allah-led regime as well.
If my homeland was under attack by the US and Janjaweed I'd expect many local kids to join the effort.
I don't understand how you can read anything about Ansar Allah and conclude that Zaydi revivalism is their "secret" goal. The kids get sent to kill Sunnis, for what it's worth; there aren't US and Israelis there for them to kill. Not that it would matter! They're children!
How does this idea of an imamate vision inform your view on the Ansar Allah treatment of the Hadi government? Why has the movement assembled a sort of unity government now? How come they've made deals with and stopped fighting some sunni salafi militant groups? Why have they recruited fighters much more broadly than along sectarian lines?
What the saudis, americans and british have done in Yemen is much worse than what the Ansar Allah has done. They're repressive for sure and they'll likely never agree with me on issues like queer people, but that's not unexpected after large amounts of colonial and later genocidal violence, it tends to see to it that only the hardest, least compromising people can survive and rise to leadership positions.
The yemeni army under the Sana'a government has managed to drive away US ships, so they very much try to kill americans that are there to protect US occupation and genocide. Eventually they'll likely get good at it, like they got good at building mobile radar systems and taking down MQ-9 drones.
I wrote a long comment here but I don't think detail is helping. So:
* There is no unified government of Yemen, no central organization controls all Yemeni territory, Ansar Allah continues to fight for territorial control, particularly in Marib and around Taizz.
* There are no Americans in Yemen for Ansar Allah to fight, there are no Israelis there to fight, and the British haven't been in Aden for over 50 years.
* Ansar Allah adopted the Khomeinist "Death To America" chant to galvanize supporters for their Zaydi Rivalist movement, but their actual military targets are all Yemenis inside of Yemen. Far from unifying the different factions in the areas they control, they make government employees sign pledges to support the revival of the Imamate and its Sada caste system.
There have been lots of reports that Israel is ‘advising’ the UAE in building their airbase in Socotra. Though I’ve not seen any admission of it outside of conservative Israeli or anti-Israeli media.
The White House told Congress of boots on the ground in Yemen about a year ago (but the DoD walked that back).
I’d probably not try to argue there are no Israeli or American intelligence or military officers in Yemen.
Whether they are in range of Ansar Allah or qualify as an occupation force is probably a semantic argument where each side can reasonably claim honesty.
I don't think Socotra is salient to anything happening inside Yemen. I'm pretty confident Ansar Allah isn't fighting Americans and Israelis! Or, for the last several years, for that matter, Saudis or Emiratis.
They've been shooting at ships in the Red Sea for the last year, too. I'm sure whatever missiles Iran gives them, they'll be happy to shoot off, the same way they're happy to launch QF SA-67s at American drones. But their foot soldiers are busy inside Yemen, killing Yemenis.
Agreed on both counts. I'm just saying there's a bit of a difference between shooting at a crew of 15 sailors once in a while, and sending a million+ civilians sleeping in their beds to bomb shelters (and destroying an elementary school).
You're right. I'm fixated on the idea of Ansar Allah recruiting foot soldiers to fight America (or whatever); just: that's not why they recruit foot soldiers. Thanks to both of you for the clarity.
Please, I am very interested to know how the side that reasonably claims honesty explains how parts of Yemen are occupied by Israel.
The presence of Mossad spies who I have no knowledge of but I will just assume exist and are trying to find out where the Houthi leadership is or where the ballistic missiles are, so Israel can eliminate them, are an occupying force?
I think they're just saying it'd be hard to disprove the presence of Special Forces on the ground in Yemen, given that both NATO and Israel have cause to be there (Yemen being a declared belligerent to both). That discussion gets mired in speculation very quickly, so: I'm happy to stipulate that someone could be lurking outside the launcher site on the side of the Sana'a-Sa'da Highway waiting to plant explosives or whatever.
My point is just: Ansar Allah fields an army of roughly 200,000 (including the children). That army does not exist to fight Israel or the US (look at a map). What it's there to do is to take Marib, Taizz, and Aden, and to prevent the secession of South Yemen, which has become the stronghold of the ROYG-in-exile and hosts most of Yemen's extractive industry as well as its largest ports.
The basic idea of Khomeinism, which Ansar Allah proudly patterns itself on, is to institute a centralized authoritarian government managed by religious leaders while positioning the country against western imperialism (as a distraction from what's happening within the country). In Iran, this took the form of picking a gigantic fight with the US before losing a half million of its own people in a pointlessly prolonged fight with Iraq. In Yemen, it's a proclamation that Ansar Allah will liberate Palestine while murdering several hundred thousand Yemenis over the course of 12 years.
The current situation is pretty great for Iran. There's an open debate about how reliant Ansar Allah is on the IRGC QF, which creates some deniability. NATO is flying all sorts of stuff over and boating all sorts of stuff around Yemen, so Iran gets to use it as a playground for their new loitering munitions and anti-ship weapons, but with Yemenis pushing the buttons. If Ansar Allah actually managed to strike any kind of real blow against NATO or against Israel, my guess is that it would take less than a couple weeks for the aggrieved power to hit the Houthis so hard you'd need a HEPA filter to collect what would be left of Abdul-Malik al-Houthi.
Aside: for anybody not familiar with Socotra: it's an island out in the middle of the Arabian Sea, physically closer to Somalia than Yemen, notable mostly for being a sort of Galapagos of East Africa and a major tourist destination (even during the middle of the civil war, because it's not meaningfully integrated with Yemeni politics). Socotra does not matter.
I have a simpler question about the meaning of "country A occupies country B". Does it simply mean "presence of people who work for country A on the territory of country B"? Maybe excluding the official staff of embassies?
Is the UK occupied by Russia due to the botched assassination of Sergei Skripal using Novichok nerve agent in Salisbury in 2018?
Is Pakistan occupied by the USA because of the US Navy Seals who killed Osama Bin-Laden in 2011?
I assume US special forces are present in many places from time to time if not continuously, although they are also continuously based in many countries.
I assume all serious countries have spies in every single other serious country. If you exclude small and poor countries, everyone occupies everyone? How is this definition useful in any way?
There is no portion of the territory of Yemen† that is currently controlled by a hostile foreign power. So far as I know, all of Yemen is currently controlled by the Houthis, the ROYG-in-exile, and AQAP (bearing in mind that the highlands of Yemen are sort of like the Appalachia of Arabia, and are comprised largely of semi-autonomous hollers [wadi] managed by clans [qabila], and so may not be effectively controlled by anything).
I personally would not describe any portion of Yemen as occupied by the US or Israel.
But Socotra being de facto occupied by the UAE is pretty easy to surmise given the airbase they are building there and the lack of air power capability by the STC.
Given that Israeli or US troops at that base, even as advisors, could be considered occupying. It’s not like it’s a rigorously defined term.
Lots of people might have described Berlin as occupied during the Cold War (on either side) and it wouldn’t be out of bounds.
But it’s mostly not salient to the point you were making, which is the point I was trying to make. Whether there is some cadre US or Israeli soldiers in Yemen or if the UAE has built a base there doesn’t change the fact that it’s a civil war.
Sure, there's the secessionist Southern Movement supported by UAE, there's the Hadi government backed by the saudis, sometimes AQAP or its offshoots holds territory.
You don't explain why Ansar Allah officials consistently claim they aren't a movement aiming for an imamate, why? The Saleh government used to say the Ansar Allah aimed for an imamate, but now Saleh and Islah are mostly allied with them. Did Saleh change his mind and now wants the imamate revival? Has the Islah party converted to zaydism?
There are quite a few americans in the Red Sea and probably the Gulf of Aden too. They see a lot of drones and other projectiles coming their way. The Ansar Allah has also fought, rather efficiently, Janjaweed soldiers employed by their neighbours. They also attack Israel, mainly what's currently known as Eilat and Tel Aviv. Yes, it's a repressive movement but it's pretty clear they at times militarily engage distinctly foreign troops.
Since they have sunni allies they clearly aren't fanatically sectarian either. It's likely they learned a lot from Hezbollah, which typically has allied with the christian fringe in Lebanon. I find it very hard to explain the decisions and policies of the Ansar Allah without seeing them through an anticolonial and antiimperialist lens.
"Death to America" isn't a specifically khomeinist slogan, though Khomeini did a lot to popularise it. The Ansar Allah expands on it, and for a mainly sunni hating movement it's surprising it doesn't mention sunnis, wouldn't you say?
Could you share a facsimile of such a pledge or similar source?
You'll find 4o can translate this just fine, though several articles have also been written about it based on human translations.
I'm not so much interested in arguing with you about whether Ansar Allah seeks the revival of the Zaydi Imamate; this is pretty basic stuff. Your own source discusses it, but also: I'm not sure you can read any history of Ansar Allah, the Houthi family, Believing Youth, the Sa'da vs. Sanaa conflict, etc. without learning about this. When you read Blumi's account, keep in mind: the Zaydis are a minority in Yemen (I think they're even a minority in North Yemen.)
The body count inside of Yemen is into the hundreds of thousands. One super useful source on this is ACLED, which tracks raw conflict events around the world; they have an "Explorer" on their site that breaks battles and fatalities down by region and time (for lots of countries, not just Yemen). Dig into that, come back, and tell me the Houthis are fighting America and Israel.
I'd be shocked if you can't find qat at these places. It's worth a try; I'd describe it as amphetamine salad. It's at about the midpoint between a strong cup of coffee and adderall.
An odd thing about qat is that despite being a stimulant it fills the role of alcohol in Yemeni culture—it's what men blow their salaries on, go on benders with, sometimes even destroy their families over. It's fascinating to see a drug with completely different physical effects exhibit so many of the same social pathologies as alcohol.
Don't chew it too often or it will stain your teeth.
Not just the social fabric, but Qat / Khat (which is mildly narcotic) is wreaking havoc on Yemen's water resources. Don't support its production by purchasing it. My Yemeni relatives hate it.
According to wikipedia it is not legal to sell or consume in the US.
>In the United States (US) and Turkey, the botanical specimen (plant) Catha edulis is not prohibited, but the consumption and distribution of harvested leaves or possession for recreational use is illegal.
Hmm, I think that's not too likely, unless someone is growing it in TX. Qat needs to be very fresh - flying it halfway around the world is less practical than unroasted coffee beans.
Reminds me of the betel nut such as in paan, but it's not nearly as strong it seems like, more akin to caffeine or nicotine in strength. It's cancerous though (and will stain your teeth too) so don't eat too much either.
I also think any absorbed-through-the-mouth stimulant probably causes dental problems… probably by constricting blood vessels? Maybe could be combined with some topical-acting only dilator?
I'm not going to say it doesn't, because I've heard that too. But it also depends on how much you drink in a night and how frequently you do so.
Personally I don't think I've experienced kratom withdrawal despite daily use for a couple years back when I lived in Florida. I personally prefer it to alcohol. Buuut everyone's different, and no substance is without risks.
In Japan, most specialty coffee shops limit customers to a maximum of one hour to accommodate as many people as possible. This is partly because people can enjoy a cup and a cake very slowly. Some shops even ban laptops.
Due to the small size of apartments, finding places to work, study, or read outside the cramped family home is a significant challenge. This is also why love hotels exist.
Starbucks, however, has no such policies, making it extremely popular for these activities. I always wonder how they manage with such low spending per occupied seat.
Additionally, Starbucks service quality in Japan is exceptional. The staff is friendly, and regular customers receive incredible attention to brighten their day with a smile.
Curious how this works. I generally don’t drink coffee late..do people come in for coffee and stay a while? I never really thought through the business model.
Depends on if they have a menu that is a superset of the standard coffee shop fare or not. This one in SoMa unsurprisingly has decaf, in the form of espresso, because they want to be ready for their foot traffic. https://delahcoffee.com/
This is not true. The American's didn't come up with it, the Americans don't drink the most of it per-capita[*], and the Americans don't drink that much of it.
It would be fair to say "decaf is a rich country thing", though.
[*] although in absolute terms, they import more of it than any other single country, but there's a lot of them
It seems very common for people to think that if there’s something they’ve heard about from American pop culture (or the internet), but isn’t popular in the few countries they’re familiar with, it must be uniquely American.
Yes! I wasn't sure how to express that without sounding like a dick, but I remember a comment a few weeks ago where someone was suggesting Amex was unheard of in Europe, where what they really meant was it isn't in Ireland, where they were.
I meant American in the sense that is is consumed so much by Americans. And yes it is also related to economy and many places you will find barely any shop that will offer that. That is not the case in the US.
edit: I feel like I was ignorant about this and my assumption was wrong and not based on facts. sorry about that.
Its pretty common where I live in Asia. Most people here dont particularly like the idea of caffeine at night, although late night coffee is rare where I live.
May be I am an aberration, but I actually seek out coffee shops for good coffee. A nice espresso, cappuccino and on occasion black drip or pour over. I will never be as comfortable at a coffee place as I am at home, so why bother. But yes, I definitely like a comfortable place to sit while I am drinking my brew. Don't really care for another conversation at the time -- My coffee an I are having one. Also, for anyone in Houston try out Catalina coffee on Washington. The coffee shop I judge all other shops by. Best espresso drinks ever. Also, in Seattle, the starbucks reserve (I think that was what they were called. Its been a few years.) had some really good beans and well made drinks, way way better than the usual starbucks swill.
I work morning to night and don't have an office. It's really nice to be able to get out of the house and the yemeni coffee shops provide a way for me to get out and stay out for a while.
Fun facts, the word coffee come from Kahve, the bastardization of the word Kahwa meaning coffee in Arabic since Turkish lacks "w" and normally replaces it with "v".
Another related fun facts, the now universal European word cafe also come from the same word originally meaning coffee drinking place or shop [1].
[1] Coffee and qahwa: How a drink for Arab mystics went global:
What most appeals to me is the lack of music. Most music in stores, restaurants, and other public places is very irritating to me. (Misophonia.) I would be thrilled if more places made the decision not to play music.
The best coffee I’ve was a Turkish Green from, if I recall correctly, Jerusalem Sheshkebab House - 131B Hidley Street, Adelaide. Now permanently closed as a result of the corvid lockdowns. Basement level, red booths, open late, no dickheads, nicest proprietor.
A younger me would get it. The older me wonders why people can't be content alone. Do I really need to go socialize at 2am? Probably not, and even less so without alcohol. But I get that others are different.
On the question asked, the article has a photo that appears to show 4 male customers and ~ 10 (11?) female customers (two all female tables and a confusing backdrop).
I wrote the entire 2nd version of my SaaS between midnight and 6am at a coffee shop in Austin. It was so peaceful to crack open an IDE, and sip on a hot cup of coffee at midnight, and code until I could barely keep my eyes open.
Unfortunately Covid completely destroyed all of these spots. I’m really excited these are making a come back.
On a tangent....I remember the only place you could get a coffee in Texas was Waffle House or Denny's. In the early 90's the DFW area didn't even know what an espresso was. Starbucks finally came around 1995 and it was such a joy. Now there are some amazing cafes serving amazing coffee, especially in college towns like Denton.
My active hours are typically very early AM, 2-4AM, until 10AM, and there is definitely a space for this in the market for individuals that just want a place to relax and/or work outside of their home outside of normal working hours. Starbucks used to fill this niche where I lived (they would open at 3,4AM to accommodate students in the area trying to study for finals. Nowadays, most of these starbucks/coffee shops have closed or shifted to an in-store hostile setup of a drive through plus a lobby that is mostly intended for delivery drivers, walled off laptop plugs and won't tell you why, removed all charging stations, and just generally made it a shitty experience to sit inside and do anything at all other than get the hell out. This is almost universal now where i live, a college town with multiple colleges, and I wouldn't even begin to tell you where to find a coffee shop where I could gather with 3-4 other grad students and bang some crazy project out in a few hours anymore, and I have many, many big colleges near me. There's a demand the market isn't meeting, but, that demand didn't rake in the most dollars so here we are and this is some kind of novelty. These kinds of spaces existed basically everywhere in my area circa 2012-2018. They weren't tied to any particular ethnicity, just was a need people apparently had.
>Nowadays, most of these starbucks/coffee shops have closed or shifted to an in-store hostile setup of a drive through plus a lobby that is mostly intended for delivery drivers, walled off laptop plugs and won't tell you why,
They don't want to become homeless shelters.
Homelessness has rapidly increased in the last decade, to the point where CoWork spaces becomes a viable business.
If you want to do a project pay 300$ a month to WeWork. Before the explosion of homelessness, back when Starbucks, Coffee Bean, would let you sit around for hours, a 300$ WeWork membership would be silly.
> Homelessness has rapidly increased in the last decade, to the point where CoWork spaces becomes a viable business.
Not sure I see the connection here...?
I think the chain goes:
Homelessness increases --> any place where you can just hang out without paying attracts more homeless people --> there are too many homeless people hanging out for hanging out to remain good for business --> cheap hangouts close --> expensive hangouts like co-working spaces become viable.
Add increased labor costs and your profit margin for late night coffee drops significantly. Add a safety factor, and it becomes a more cost effective option to reduce hours.
We've been seeing that here in my Northern California city for the past few years.
To be clear, I'm not mad at the homeless.
If anything local governments should provide more for these populations, showers at libraries and pop up clinics would do wonders.
Of course the bigger issue would be housing costs going straight to the moon. Rent should be 70% of what it is.
I can’t help but think that adding facilities like shower or laundry at libraries would just make them de facto shelters
Homeless people are going to hang out. Would you rather give them the opportunity to clean up and get some medical assistance or not ?
Ideally you'd plug them into housing assistance programs so the overall numbers of homeless go down overtime.
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So the divorced guy who loses the house and can't get an apartment due to his ex wrecking his credit goes straight to the camps.
Come out the closet and your parents kick you out, camps.
2 weeks late on your rent, camps.
Maybe the moment you get fired your boss should just tell the State to pick you up.
Housing prices have gone up 50% in the last decade. https://better.com/content/how-much-home-prices-have-risen-s...
This is much worse in some places. Low income housing options, like SROs have largely been made illegal/un profitable.
https://www.housingfinance.com/news/minimum-wage-workers-str...
Where are poor people supposed to go ? Where is a person making minimum wage supposed to live.
>First of all, they found, for families and children, one of the largest increases in homelessness, families, a 39 percent spike in 2024 from 2023. And on that January night that they surveyed, they found 150,000 children experiencing in — homelessness.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/u-s-sees-dramatic-rise-in-...
Looks like a bigger systematic issue to me. I'm not arrogant enough to think I'm above a bad year putting me in a bad situation.
I'd rather have a society that helps people get back on their feet.
Given the 2 trillion spent on the F-35 alone, its not like it's an impossible task. https://responsiblestatecraft.org/f35-cost/#:~:text=The%20F%....
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It makes me uneasy whenever someone suggests forcing an undesirable class of people to become concentrated in institutions (or, perhaps, camps). Historically it hasn't worked out so well. But maybe this time it will be different?
I'd rather just assume anyone who suggests sending large numbers of people to camps is ultimately a fascist.
Not to mention the numbers of homeless grow every year due to economic factors and such policies would disproportionately target LGBT people.
https://www.hudexchange.info/homelessness-assistance/resourc...
You don’t? Homeless people need somewhere to go and a welcoming coffee shop is a viable option. Removing tables and making it less “sit down” friendly is a good way to drive all of your customers towards grabbing their drinks to-go.
I stopped drinking after I hit 40 and Starbucks was my third place (my favorite Starbucks was the one near DePaul University in Lincoln Park in Chicago).
I am now in the city of Starbucks (Seattle area) and am surprised that many of the Starbucks here (1) don't open late; (2) don't have comfortable seating; (3) aren't sufficiently lit (it's mostly dim, mood lighting -- I can't read paper books in most of them). I wonder if it's because Seattle people like their local spots (that also don't open late) that Starbucks had to optimize their revenue for to-go orders instead of sit-down ones.
This is really unfortunate. Howard Schultz was all bout the "third place".
Supposedly the new CEO is aware the decline of Starbucks as a third place is an issue, but we'll see if anything changes. The business perspective of just doing drive-through and pick-up sounds great, but it loses the "experience" that made Starbucks revolutionary. If Starbucks coffee just turns into a transaction, I'm not sure how they can survive when Dunkin, McDonalds, and even Keurig do transactions better, and all sorts of local coffee shops do coffee better.
I spend a lot of money at Starbucks, but very little time. I think Starbucks’ brand was built when it was the opposite; now it’s just a commodity. The value is still there — get a reliable coffee extremely fast, and my toddler loves their egg bites which is a huge value in and of itself — but it’s not so much more valuable than Dunkin’ anymore.
The best “third place” that Starbucks ever created was Roy Street Coffee & Tea in Seattle. It had a great selection of drinks, good food, plenty of seating, and a vibrant atmosphere. Unfortunately, Starbucks decided against expanding on the concept and closed down the café in 2019.
Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.
Woah, I lived 3 blocks from there. I thought it was alright. We called it "fake starbucks."
It's a portmanteau but we call all the little sort of Starbucks "fauxbucks". You know the ones in gas stations, Target stores, etc.
I’ve done a lot of both screen and paper based work in coffee shops, including Starbucks, and the thing that’s scarred me after all these years is the constant playing of music. Even with ear plugs and over the ear muffs it can only cancel out so much. Am only able to spend maybe an hour or so doing anything in a coffee shop now - agree with all the rest of your points though
There used to be a great Starbucks in Kirkland that was 24hr. I am equally frustrated that there are no coffee shops open late even close to the universities in Seattle.
Oh the 24 hr Kirkland Starbucks is still there.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/UUsVjfy9MPeF3RwT9
There's another 24 hr one in Northgate.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/RxT4vwEDsZECTu2k7
So there's 2 in the entire greater Seattle area.
But you're right, there are very few places open late even in the U-district.
SO recently finished 7 years of grad school at UW and we’re both happy to not spend much time around U dist at night. She still gets the police alerts and it’s not inspiring - such crazy violent things happening there all the time. In my opinion that could be a reason 24 hr businesses aren’t persisting in that area. But yes this would be a logical place for late night establishments
I’m really surprised about the Northgate location and it really doesn’t make sense to me. The McDonalds next to it is also 24 hour, so maybe it has to do something with being a rest stop for I5?
Salt Lake City oddly enough has (or had?) 24 hour coffee shops that you could hangout at.
I believe the one in Kirkland is not exactly 24 hrs, though close to it. Left the US in 2017, and as of that time, they'd close from 12am to 3am.
Interesting that the Northgate Starbucks closes for just 4 hours every week from Mon 10pm to Tue 2am.
Nothing quite as disappointing as traveling to a new city for 6 am shift and finding out that there is not a single coffee shop open at that time
>I wonder if it's because Seattle people like their local spots (that also don't open late) that Starbucks had to optimize their revenue for to-go orders instead of sit-down ones.
The labor costs and risks of hosting people within your business, especially at later times, is more and more difficult to offset with revenue. Especially if a sufficiently large portion of the population opts to pay for the lower priced goods at to go businesses.
Last time I was in Seattle the Starbucks on 1st Ave (& University?) didn't have any seating at all. 90% of their business seemed to be online to-go orders (the O.G. Starbucks at Pike Place had several hundred people in line!).
Is that a third place? I thought third places were defined as the third "social" area - places you meet and talk with other people. If it's a place to drink and read, like a home away from home, I'm not sure that's the same thing but I'm not sure what to call it.
As far as I can remember, they all ditched seating during the pandemic and never added it back. But opening late has never been a Seattle strength.
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24h Starbucks are where I studied for the CFA exam. All of the financial podcasts I listen to tell me Starbucks' new CEO seems to want them to go back to the third space glory days[0].
[0]: https://about.starbucks.com/press/2024/back-to-starbucks/Waffle House is 24 hours and potentially comes with great stories.
Great stories? Sure, I suppose. Not the kind that tend to be conducive to a productive work environment, though.
In general, do you really get work done in a coffee shop or any kind of public place like that?
I find myself needing a very quiet and orderly environment if I really want to deeply focus and get work done.
>do you really get work done in a coffee shop or any kind of public place like that?
Yes, definitely.
For me it's that despite the noise, I have complete confidence that none of it is relevant to me, so I can ignore it completely. In offices, tons of things are relevant for me because I'm a popular random-problem-solver. At home, anything could be relevant, even though most of it is not.
The noise isn't the issue, it's the brainpower spent on triaging the noise.
I take it this is more of a meta-realization than one acutely related to open working environments
In case the joke wasn't clear: Waffle House is infamous for often having fights started by inebriated late-night customers - the sort of thing that'll certainly leave you with some stories to tell.
> do you really get work done in a coffee shop or any kind of public place like that?
sir, there is an entire class of developers (including myself) that work remote exclusively out of coffee shops. Its where I can most easily get the creative mojo going.
Coffee shop is excellent background noise for many people. Back in the day I had some audio online and used it instead of white noise. It worked very well to help me concentrate until I started to notice the same sounds since it was a loop.
That’s how I am as well, but I’ve grown to appreciate that everyone has different ideal working environments. The main reason I prefer WFH over RTO is the open office floor plan makes it very difficult for me to focus and work. I find it quite distracting.
The office is dehumanizing. Not only bench seating and cube farms but offices too. Before Facebook gutted the long corridors of offices at the old Sun Micro, it was affectionately called Sun Quentin
For a second I read WFH as Waffle House and not Work From Home.
Not for everyday work but sometimes I need that change of pacing.
Why WFH [Work From Home] when you can WFH [WaFfle House]?
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Yeah but these are usually not in urban centers but more like highway exits. For city dwellers a waffle house is usually not an option
I find that Starbucks locations in other countries are much nicer than in the US. Speaking of Mexico and Thailand specifically from my recent experiences. And this is having lived in Seattle most recently in the US. I think the homeless/addict problem has ruined a lot of urban Starbucks locations in the US.
Most of those places want you to order coffee, preferably with friends (more people per one table) drink it in some reasonable amount of time (<30 minutes), and then leave the table to the next group of guests.
A few laptopers hogging a table for half a day in an otherwise crowded coffeeshop can costs them hundreds of euros/dollars in lost sales.
But i guess this creates a maket for shared workespaces, where you could lease a desk per hour.
Starbucks also plays very loud, irritating music nonstop now.
Starbucks is getting increasingly hostile, for sure. It's hard to find a Starbucks anymore that has any comfortable seating at all. I went to one in the Chicago burbs recently that had no drive-thru, no indoor seating, and they were visibly annoyed when I ordered inside. Everyone was picking up mobile orders. There were a couple outdoor tables, and that was it. The outlets were disconnected too.
Where I live, I'm very fortunate to have three local chains that are very sit-down friendly. They all have 3-10 locations, so they cover the whole city without succumbing to corporate bullshit. One of them even has a storefront in their roasting/packaging facility. If you want to see how coffee is manufactured and/or you like loud white noise, that's a good place to go.
What I've found is that while local coffee shops are sit-down friendly, they all close at 1, 2, or 3pm, at least where I am. 5-6pm if they're a chain. If I want a small bite to eat, a hot drink, and a place to work after 5 I basically have the option of a bar or a sit-down restaurant. It sucks, and I have no idea where this 3pm closing time thing is coming from. Maybe being too short staffed to have more than just a morning shift?
The demand is higher in the morning and opening a place costs a large amount of wages.
My general takeaway from a bunch of comments is that there were two death waves for these late night places. But, I have a great fix.
First, Starbucks committed coffeeshopicide by targeting local hangouts that were successful, and then spraying their own burnt grounds, driving up real estate and making it impossible for a small, less efficient shop to survive. I saw this happen at several great places in Portland. Then, obviously a career climbing executive at Starbucks tried to get promoted and tightened up hours.
The second wave of late night coffee shop deaths occured with COVID and homelessness (really McKinsey and Purdue opioids, read "When McKinsey Comes to Town") because of safety. No one, big or small, can offer a space and decide which hipster can stay and which has to leave because he is now addicted to drugs and not just Instagram dopamine.
The solution: cities should offer a tax break to a coffee shop that stays open late. And, cities should offer a match where they create a space nearby for homeless people to congregate late night. I'm sure there is a correlation between the number of homeless and soon-to-be homeless creative types.
I'm saddened late night coffee shops have largely disappeared, these Yemeni shops look terrific. And, they bring the social back to meeting places, and I don't mean social media and laptops.
The first one is fine, but small, less efficient shops were never open very late. Also, Yemeni coffee shops are basically the same as Mom and pop coffee shops. Why are they able to be open late in the same environment?
Second one, how come Yemeni coffee shops don't have the issue of keeping out the homeless?
EDIT: Yemeni coffee shops are having the same success in the bay area where these problems are both exacerbated.
Probably because they're small "family" businesses, and the owner is there more often than not. And they have no problem saying "no" to anyone for any reason.
I think this makes sense logically, but why could other family businesses not do this beforehand? Thanks for the insight
> Yemeni Coffee Shops in Texas
Here in Houston, law enforcement is pretty strict on homeless people causing problems. Maybe that's the reason?
> several great places in Portland
R.I.P CoffeePeople
Are coffee shops just the answer to having social spaces that aren't alcohol fueled like bars and clubs? For quite a while I have had a rough idea that there could be something along the lines of a bar but with no alcohol and some kind of structured activities for breaking the ice.
That is pretty much their history
>The first coffeehouses appeared in Damascus. These Ottoman coffeehouses also appeared in Mecca, in the Arabian Peninsula in the 15th century, then spread to the Ottoman Empire's capital of Istanbul in the 16th century and in Baghdad. Coffeehouses became popular meeting places where people gathered to drink coffee, have conversations, play board games such as chess and backgammon, listen to stories and music, and discuss news and politics. They became known as "schools of wisdom" for the type of clientele they attracted, and their free and frank discourse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffeehouse#History
Much of Islamic civilization and the intellectual tour de force of the Islamic golden age came out of these early coffee shops.
These sprung up well after the Islamic Golden Age [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age
Yes, coffee bars were popular back in the 1990s. One of my CS professors opened one up. In "Friends," they often go to a coffee bar. They had couches and comfy chairs to chill in. You just went there and had coffee and hung out. These were mom and pop shops and probably all got eaten up by corporate behemoths like Starbucks.
Just goes to show, when a company goes public, you are no longer the customer, the shareholders are.
>Just goes to show, when a company goes public, you are no longer the customer, the shareholders are.
I read the same sentiment about when publicly listed companies go private.
I think that depends on the means of going private. Original owners get together to take their baby back? Probably going to go well. Private equity firm swoops in to extract $$$? Probably going to crash and burn.
Yes I should have said, "has outside investors," or "institutional investors." It would have fit better. PE companies seem even worse. I often see them take a known brand, cut quality, jack up the prices and bleed the company dry.
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/private-equity-rol...
Don't forget the evil university endowments flying under the radar of non-profits. They destroy local shops & economy by replacing them with either for profit corporate tenants who can pay exuberant rents, or worse, empty, abandoned, desolate buildings with exuberant mark-to-model real estate values.
Harvard and Kendall Squares in Cambridge, MA are the best examples of what ruthless endowments do. Kendall Square is entirely owned by MIT and is new shiny and totally unaffordable to non-VC/PE crowd and shuts down after dark.
Harvard Square is replete with empty buildings worth billions on HMC's books. The late night 2-story Starbucks with lots of seating and occasional live music is gone and replaced with a tiny one with no seating which closes at 9pm.
In the San Francisco Bay Area that niche has been partly filled with dessert cafes and boba places.
The dessert cafes are fantastic. I always tell visitors to the city they they should try one while they're here.
Pretty pricy through: any dessert cafes that you think provide good value?
San Francisco is a pretty bad city to look for a bargain when it comes to food places!
I can't remember how much they charge but I really like this one in Hayes Valley: https://maps.app.goo.gl/P2RC8jN5VDjUctrM9
NA bars exist, there are a few in NYC one been to.
Are you thinking of board-game cafes?
I'm definitely the target audience for alcohol-free spaces that open late - hopefully this makes its way to the PNW!
Seattle is an 8 pm city. I'd love for anything to be open late here.
There used to be late night coffee shops, and more late night restaurants.
That mostly went away years ago, basically completely died in COVID, and the labor shortages in the service industry never eased up enough to maintain staffing at places that had late night hours. And I do mean not enough people; the housing shortage is so acute that service workers cannot find places to live.
> the housing shortage is so acute that service workers cannot find places to live.
You can trace all kinds of seemingly unrelated problems back to the "housing theory of everything".
Rhode Island didn't have a lot of late night coffee shops even before the pandemic. But after it they're neigh impossible to find. At least outside of Providence.
But why are Yemeni coffee shops immune to these issues?
I think the answer is they are a tighter knit community (potentially a family) than the average coffee shop, so easier to keep the shop staffed late.
I mean, in Texas is decidedly not in Seattle so the real estate dynamics are significantly different.
Houston has addressed population growth by spreading ever more outwards, because it is flat with few natural barriers. Seattle hasn’t really had a choice other than to grow upwards, since it is hemmed in by lakes and mountains in every direction. But like most American metropolitan areas, most of the Seattle region has until fairly recently been opposed to density.
The resulting housing crunch has resulted in significant demands for wages to pay for housing. Houston follows the federal tipped minimum wage of $2.13/hr. Seattle does not have a different payscale for tipped workers so the minimum is $20.76/hr.
There’s cultural aspects to it. Europe, Middle East and Asia has a culture where there’s enough people up and about till late. People anre anre outside, often at third places like coffee shops that allow you to spend time without spending a ton. Even if you’re at home, you are not in bed at 9, like majority of Americans. I would assume the clientele at the Yemeni shops comes from a place that has the “stay out till late” culture.
Not all of Europe. I live in Ljubljana, Slovenia (the capital), and apart from 3 gas stations and 1 pharmacy, literally nothing works at night (2 or 3 nightclubs on the weekends). And people don't find it odd or have any significant dislike for it.
The rest of the country is even worse for night people like myself.
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Yeah, I hate how COVID changed things so much for the worse.
If I was a crazy billionaire, I'd open a good pizza place in SLU or somewhere central with pies that cost $20 for a large, open til 3 am. Maybe aim to lose no more than $5,000 per month. It would not be profitable with the crazy high minimum wage, so I would just accept the loss for providing this benefit to the city.
The problem isn’t that the demand isn’t there or that the wage costs are too high. The main problems are high real estate costs and local regulations that prevent you from running a 24x7 cafe.
Or just charge what it costs to not lose money, the demand is there.
In cities like this people will travel a significant distance for hot food. And there’s always the delivery apps, too.
Then why are there almost no restaurants doing this? I see this in /r/seattle a lot: everyone asking for late night food, then restauranteurs saying there's not enough demand.
It's a billionaire, the point is to undermine the possibility of a market.
A Pizza Mart is open until 2am, at least in Belltown but you can only get a medium for around $20.
Ithaca used to have 24 hour businesses but since the pandemic and the 10x-ing of the homeless colony they are long gone.
How I miss when 13 Coins was 24/7 - the pandemic killed that.
It was a lifesaver for me when I worked grave, I could go for a sumptuous dinner at 3 or 4 am.
How does homelessness relate at all?
Similar to public bathrooms - if a business is open 24 hours and you can stick around in there in the heated / cooled interior that's good for the homeless person, but maybe bad for loitering or the business.
I can't imagine a business closing over it, but having a closing time is a good way to get people to leave maybe?
People with schizophrenia spazzing out, police calls, etc. There has been a huge increase in disturbed behavior in public.
I feel you. Most Seattle people are homebodies by their own admission. Anything open after 9 pm is usually a bar.
Also, things have gotten worse after the pandemic. Low revenue after 9 pm (unless alcohol is involved), high labor costs, and safety issues means the juice is not worth the squeeze for most retail businesses here.
When I used to live in Chicago, the economics worked out differently, so there were many businesses that opened late.
Is that cause or effect? If there is nothing to do, you stop going out to do it, and then you forget how to be social. Seems like a vicious cycle.
It's both. Seattle is one of the most introverted cities in the US (socially, it's disproportionately shaped by the tech population). Seattle Freeze is a real thing. COVID also did a number on people worldwide.
Also, gloomy weather 7-8 months of the year makes you not want to socialize.
I don't know if tech has anything to do with it. The Yemeni coffee shops in the article have been thriving for years in San Francisco
Supposedly it's Seattle's scandinavian origins. Obviously Seattle is a big coffee town but the cafe vibes are definitely different from SF's, or LA's.
For anyone looking for late night activities here: Swing dancing is a great late night activity in Seattle - multiple live jazz bands a month (at least once a week), and very low alcohol consumption (people mainly go to dance/practice). It'll be sad to see the Century Ballroom closing its doors this spring.
Portland is the same. There used to be Coffee Time on NW 21st, but that now closes at 6pm, too.
There was one on SE Powell close to the bridge
Dick’s is open till 2 am :)
Also a lot of kebab places which aren't bad. But like, something like a late night kbbq place that's all smoky inside would be amazing.
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Mox, a balacear to play board games that also serves coffee and food is open till midnight, at least on the weekends. They close at 10 on weekdays
Covid wiped out a lot of 24 hour spots in all the big metro markets.
Revenue halted overnight, and often turned negative with breakins and general insecurity
Employees also realized that being home at night is nice and they refuse to go back to working 24x7.
Pittsburgh is the same way. I miss the 24/7 eat and park.
Not strictly alcohol-free, but for spaces that open late and don't focus on alcohol sales: more people should support their local hackerspace.
I used to go to a late night coffee shop in Dublin sometimes when I lived there and read a book. Was a really nice space with comfortable couches and good ambient music.
Couldn't remember the name but managed to find a reference to it, it was called Accents. Seems like it's shutdown now.
It's the only silver lining about the Yemeni Civil War. There is a fairly large Yemeni American population now due to displacement from the war.
There's a fairly large community in SF in Tendernob near the Yemeni consulate and the Yemeni mosque.
Highly recommend trying the Masoob and Mandi at Yemen Kitchen in Tenderloin.
The podcast Search Engine did an episode trying to get to the bottom of why there are so many illegal weed stores in NYC. Turns out a significant percentage are run by Yemeni Americans. I’ve always wondered how that came to be but never considered that the war could have something to do with it. I wonder if that’s the case?
I like to try out a lot of different dishes from different countries and recently tried Yemeni Mandi... WOW, it might just be my new favorite dish!
Huh, I hadn’t drawn that connection - I’d noticed a bunch of new Yemeni shops opening, but I hadn’t tied it to the civil war. That makes sense.
What do you mean, "Civil War"? Yemen is occupied by UAE and likely Israel, has been at war with the US and Saudi Arabia for a decade or so, and before that on and off been managed by puppet regimes since they kicked out the british.
Yemen is not occupied by Israel. Yemen is in fact in the midst (the end stages, really) of a civil war, between a corrupt preexisting government that ostensibly represented the Sunni majority of the country, and rebels led by the supremacist group Ansar Allah, which represents minority a Zaydi Shia sect.
The UAE and Israel are planning a joint base in the Socotra archipelago. It's reasonable to assume Israel already has a military presence due to this project.
The Ansar Allah hasn't been particularly sectarian for many years, opting instead for establishing a non-sectarian government and maoist-like people's army, which they've mostly achieved. Due to the imposed starvation policies from the US, UK and allies they also aim to replace qat production with food. There's a lot to not like about them, don't need to make things up.
The entire purpose of Ansar Allah is the restoration of the Zaydi Imamate. They have spent the last several years destroying Sunni mosques and laying siege to Sunni-majority cities (as they continue to do in Taizz and Marib). They are an explicitly and exclusively sectarian movement. This is not a thing you need to take my word on; you can get it from UNHCR (if you must), HRW, or literally any history of the movement.
If you do take the time to read up on this, I strongly recommend you learn how the Imamate worked. It is not an abstract thing, like "the caliphate" so many other Islamist movements seek to restore; it was the governing structure of Yemen until the 1960s.
If I wanted simply to trash Ansar Allah, it would be easy enough to do; they are currently the world's largest employer of child soldiers.
Maybe that's their secret goal. They've formed a government with representatives from other groups and explicitly draw politics and rhetoric from historic socialist anticolonial movements, including the socialist South Yemen. al-Bukhaiti is the most outspoken of their leaders in this regard.
Old Saleh loyalists have during the last year warmed up to the Ansar Allah-led regime as well.
If my homeland was under attack by the US and Janjaweed I'd expect many local kids to join the effort.
I don't understand how you can read anything about Ansar Allah and conclude that Zaydi revivalism is their "secret" goal. The kids get sent to kill Sunnis, for what it's worth; there aren't US and Israelis there for them to kill. Not that it would matter! They're children!
How does this idea of an imamate vision inform your view on the Ansar Allah treatment of the Hadi government? Why has the movement assembled a sort of unity government now? How come they've made deals with and stopped fighting some sunni salafi militant groups? Why have they recruited fighters much more broadly than along sectarian lines?
What the saudis, americans and british have done in Yemen is much worse than what the Ansar Allah has done. They're repressive for sure and they'll likely never agree with me on issues like queer people, but that's not unexpected after large amounts of colonial and later genocidal violence, it tends to see to it that only the hardest, least compromising people can survive and rise to leadership positions.
The yemeni army under the Sana'a government has managed to drive away US ships, so they very much try to kill americans that are there to protect US occupation and genocide. Eventually they'll likely get good at it, like they got good at building mobile radar systems and taking down MQ-9 drones.
I wrote a long comment here but I don't think detail is helping. So:
* There is no unified government of Yemen, no central organization controls all Yemeni territory, Ansar Allah continues to fight for territorial control, particularly in Marib and around Taizz.
* There are no Americans in Yemen for Ansar Allah to fight, there are no Israelis there to fight, and the British haven't been in Aden for over 50 years.
* Ansar Allah adopted the Khomeinist "Death To America" chant to galvanize supporters for their Zaydi Rivalist movement, but their actual military targets are all Yemenis inside of Yemen. Far from unifying the different factions in the areas they control, they make government employees sign pledges to support the revival of the Imamate and its Sada caste system.
(also: an MQ-9 is a slow-moving turboprop)
There have been lots of reports that Israel is ‘advising’ the UAE in building their airbase in Socotra. Though I’ve not seen any admission of it outside of conservative Israeli or anti-Israeli media.
The White House told Congress of boots on the ground in Yemen about a year ago (but the DoD walked that back).
I’d probably not try to argue there are no Israeli or American intelligence or military officers in Yemen.
Whether they are in range of Ansar Allah or qualify as an occupation force is probably a semantic argument where each side can reasonably claim honesty.
I don't think Socotra is salient to anything happening inside Yemen. I'm pretty confident Ansar Allah isn't fighting Americans and Israelis! Or, for the last several years, for that matter, Saudis or Emiratis.
Well, they've been firing ballistic missiles multiple times a week at Tel Aviv for a few weeks now.
They've been shooting at ships in the Red Sea for the last year, too. I'm sure whatever missiles Iran gives them, they'll be happy to shoot off, the same way they're happy to launch QF SA-67s at American drones. But their foot soldiers are busy inside Yemen, killing Yemenis.
Agreed on both counts. I'm just saying there's a bit of a difference between shooting at a crew of 15 sailors once in a while, and sending a million+ civilians sleeping in their beds to bomb shelters (and destroying an elementary school).
https://www.timesofisrael.com/lucky-there-were-no-children-s...
You're right. I'm fixated on the idea of Ansar Allah recruiting foot soldiers to fight America (or whatever); just: that's not why they recruit foot soldiers. Thanks to both of you for the clarity.
Please, I am very interested to know how the side that reasonably claims honesty explains how parts of Yemen are occupied by Israel.
The presence of Mossad spies who I have no knowledge of but I will just assume exist and are trying to find out where the Houthi leadership is or where the ballistic missiles are, so Israel can eliminate them, are an occupying force?
I think they're just saying it'd be hard to disprove the presence of Special Forces on the ground in Yemen, given that both NATO and Israel have cause to be there (Yemen being a declared belligerent to both). That discussion gets mired in speculation very quickly, so: I'm happy to stipulate that someone could be lurking outside the launcher site on the side of the Sana'a-Sa'da Highway waiting to plant explosives or whatever.
My point is just: Ansar Allah fields an army of roughly 200,000 (including the children). That army does not exist to fight Israel or the US (look at a map). What it's there to do is to take Marib, Taizz, and Aden, and to prevent the secession of South Yemen, which has become the stronghold of the ROYG-in-exile and hosts most of Yemen's extractive industry as well as its largest ports.
The basic idea of Khomeinism, which Ansar Allah proudly patterns itself on, is to institute a centralized authoritarian government managed by religious leaders while positioning the country against western imperialism (as a distraction from what's happening within the country). In Iran, this took the form of picking a gigantic fight with the US before losing a half million of its own people in a pointlessly prolonged fight with Iraq. In Yemen, it's a proclamation that Ansar Allah will liberate Palestine while murdering several hundred thousand Yemenis over the course of 12 years.
The current situation is pretty great for Iran. There's an open debate about how reliant Ansar Allah is on the IRGC QF, which creates some deniability. NATO is flying all sorts of stuff over and boating all sorts of stuff around Yemen, so Iran gets to use it as a playground for their new loitering munitions and anti-ship weapons, but with Yemenis pushing the buttons. If Ansar Allah actually managed to strike any kind of real blow against NATO or against Israel, my guess is that it would take less than a couple weeks for the aggrieved power to hit the Houthis so hard you'd need a HEPA filter to collect what would be left of Abdul-Malik al-Houthi.
Aside: for anybody not familiar with Socotra: it's an island out in the middle of the Arabian Sea, physically closer to Somalia than Yemen, notable mostly for being a sort of Galapagos of East Africa and a major tourist destination (even during the middle of the civil war, because it's not meaningfully integrated with Yemeni politics). Socotra does not matter.
I have a simpler question about the meaning of "country A occupies country B". Does it simply mean "presence of people who work for country A on the territory of country B"? Maybe excluding the official staff of embassies?
Is the UK occupied by Russia due to the botched assassination of Sergei Skripal using Novichok nerve agent in Salisbury in 2018?
Is Pakistan occupied by the USA because of the US Navy Seals who killed Osama Bin-Laden in 2011?
I assume US special forces are present in many places from time to time if not continuously, although they are also continuously based in many countries.
I assume all serious countries have spies in every single other serious country. If you exclude small and poor countries, everyone occupies everyone? How is this definition useful in any way?
There is no portion of the territory of Yemen† that is currently controlled by a hostile foreign power. So far as I know, all of Yemen is currently controlled by the Houthis, the ROYG-in-exile, and AQAP (bearing in mind that the highlands of Yemen are sort of like the Appalachia of Arabia, and are comprised largely of semi-autonomous hollers [wadi] managed by clans [qabila], and so may not be effectively controlled by anything).
† Except maybe Socotra? See above.
I personally would not describe any portion of Yemen as occupied by the US or Israel.
But Socotra being de facto occupied by the UAE is pretty easy to surmise given the airbase they are building there and the lack of air power capability by the STC.
Given that Israeli or US troops at that base, even as advisors, could be considered occupying. It’s not like it’s a rigorously defined term.
Lots of people might have described Berlin as occupied during the Cold War (on either side) and it wouldn’t be out of bounds.
But it’s mostly not salient to the point you were making, which is the point I was trying to make. Whether there is some cadre US or Israeli soldiers in Yemen or if the UAE has built a base there doesn’t change the fact that it’s a civil war.
I clearly failed at redirecting the conversation…
I think pretty much all of us are on the same page; I was overexplaining that to 'wolf550e.
Sure, there's the secessionist Southern Movement supported by UAE, there's the Hadi government backed by the saudis, sometimes AQAP or its offshoots holds territory.
You don't explain why Ansar Allah officials consistently claim they aren't a movement aiming for an imamate, why? The Saleh government used to say the Ansar Allah aimed for an imamate, but now Saleh and Islah are mostly allied with them. Did Saleh change his mind and now wants the imamate revival? Has the Islah party converted to zaydism?
There are quite a few americans in the Red Sea and probably the Gulf of Aden too. They see a lot of drones and other projectiles coming their way. The Ansar Allah has also fought, rather efficiently, Janjaweed soldiers employed by their neighbours. They also attack Israel, mainly what's currently known as Eilat and Tel Aviv. Yes, it's a repressive movement but it's pretty clear they at times militarily engage distinctly foreign troops.
Since they have sunni allies they clearly aren't fanatically sectarian either. It's likely they learned a lot from Hezbollah, which typically has allied with the christian fringe in Lebanon. I find it very hard to explain the decisions and policies of the Ansar Allah without seeing them through an anticolonial and antiimperialist lens.
"Death to America" isn't a specifically khomeinist slogan, though Khomeini did a lot to popularise it. The Ansar Allah expands on it, and for a mainly sunni hating movement it's surprising it doesn't mention sunnis, wouldn't you say?
Could you share a facsimile of such a pledge or similar source?
I find Isa Blumi's account quite well written: https://www.ucpress.edu/books/destroying-yemen/paper
Sure:
https://www.saba.ye/storage/files/blog/1667842489_pTyQTA.pdf
You'll find 4o can translate this just fine, though several articles have also been written about it based on human translations.
I'm not so much interested in arguing with you about whether Ansar Allah seeks the revival of the Zaydi Imamate; this is pretty basic stuff. Your own source discusses it, but also: I'm not sure you can read any history of Ansar Allah, the Houthi family, Believing Youth, the Sa'da vs. Sanaa conflict, etc. without learning about this. When you read Blumi's account, keep in mind: the Zaydis are a minority in Yemen (I think they're even a minority in North Yemen.)
The body count inside of Yemen is into the hundreds of thousands. One super useful source on this is ACLED, which tracks raw conflict events around the world; they have an "Explorer" on their site that breaks battles and fatalities down by region and time (for lots of countries, not just Yemen). Dig into that, come back, and tell me the Houthis are fighting America and Israel.
Is there evidence of that, or is it always safe to assume that if a government has plains then they've already come to fruition successfully?
I'd be shocked if you can't find qat at these places. It's worth a try; I'd describe it as amphetamine salad. It's at about the midpoint between a strong cup of coffee and adderall.
An odd thing about qat is that despite being a stimulant it fills the role of alcohol in Yemeni culture—it's what men blow their salaries on, go on benders with, sometimes even destroy their families over. It's fascinating to see a drug with completely different physical effects exhibit so many of the same social pathologies as alcohol.
Don't chew it too often or it will stain your teeth.
Not just the social fabric, but Qat / Khat (which is mildly narcotic) is wreaking havoc on Yemen's water resources. Don't support its production by purchasing it. My Yemeni relatives hate it.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/14/from-khat-to-c... / https://www.goethe.de/prj/ruy/en/dos/eco/25379240.html
According to wikipedia it is not legal to sell or consume in the US.
>In the United States (US) and Turkey, the botanical specimen (plant) Catha edulis is not prohibited, but the consumption and distribution of harvested leaves or possession for recreational use is illegal.
Hmm, I think that's not too likely, unless someone is growing it in TX. Qat needs to be very fresh - flying it halfway around the world is less practical than unroasted coffee beans.
Reminds me of the betel nut such as in paan, but it's not nearly as strong it seems like, more akin to caffeine or nicotine in strength. It's cancerous though (and will stain your teeth too) so don't eat too much either.
I also think any absorbed-through-the-mouth stimulant probably causes dental problems… probably by constricting blood vessels? Maybe could be combined with some topical-acting only dilator?
Don't say dental problems–say dental opportunities.
Gotta love those oral tumors!
It’s also what they blow about 80% of their irrigation water supplies on while the overall population battles malnurition…
https://archive.is/mW3GN
In Florida there's this growing trend of kava bars filling a similar niche. Alcohol-free spaces open late serving up kava, kratom, and other teas!
Denver as well. A handful of the florida locations have their second home here. It’s an interesting crowd compared to a bar. Social and very chill.
Kratom has really bad withdrawals
I'm not going to say it doesn't, because I've heard that too. But it also depends on how much you drink in a night and how frequently you do so.
Personally I don't think I've experienced kratom withdrawal despite daily use for a couple years back when I lived in Florida. I personally prefer it to alcohol. Buuut everyone's different, and no substance is without risks.
In Japan, most specialty coffee shops limit customers to a maximum of one hour to accommodate as many people as possible. This is partly because people can enjoy a cup and a cake very slowly. Some shops even ban laptops.
Due to the small size of apartments, finding places to work, study, or read outside the cramped family home is a significant challenge. This is also why love hotels exist.
Starbucks, however, has no such policies, making it extremely popular for these activities. I always wonder how they manage with such low spending per occupied seat.
Additionally, Starbucks service quality in Japan is exceptional. The staff is friendly, and regular customers receive incredible attention to brighten their day with a smile.
Curious how this works. I generally don’t drink coffee late..do people come in for coffee and stay a while? I never really thought through the business model.
I def love this trend. There are a few in Bay area too, check out Qamaria in fremont.
I've noticed this becoming popular, but funny enough they don't do decaf.
Depends on if they have a menu that is a superset of the standard coffee shop fare or not. This one in SoMa unsurprisingly has decaf, in the form of espresso, because they want to be ready for their foot traffic. https://delahcoffee.com/
Yemeni Coffee [1] is very special and unique coffee. and decaf is very American thing.
[1] https://cornercoffeestore.com/yemen-coffee/
> decaf is very American thing
This is not true. The American's didn't come up with it, the Americans don't drink the most of it per-capita[*], and the Americans don't drink that much of it.
It would be fair to say "decaf is a rich country thing", though.
[*] although in absolute terms, they import more of it than any other single country, but there's a lot of them
It seems very common for people to think that if there’s something they’ve heard about from American pop culture (or the internet), but isn’t popular in the few countries they’re familiar with, it must be uniquely American.
Yes! I wasn't sure how to express that without sounding like a dick, but I remember a comment a few weeks ago where someone was suggesting Amex was unheard of in Europe, where what they really meant was it isn't in Ireland, where they were.
do they call it irex there?
What do they call a quarter-pounder? :) (pulp fiction)
I meant American in the sense that is is consumed so much by Americans. And yes it is also related to economy and many places you will find barely any shop that will offer that. That is not the case in the US.
edit: I feel like I was ignorant about this and my assumption was wrong and not based on facts. sorry about that.
idk in Romania you have decaf almost everywhere but I've heard we have a lot of (specialty) coffee shops so maybe we're the outlier
I miss “5 to go”s everywhere.
Probably too chain-y but was pretty sweet.
Yeah if you drink lattes it is pretty good value for money. If you want to make at home try coffee from https://www.mabo.coffee/
> That is not the case in the US
Indeed, American abundance is legendary
https://s.hdnux.com/photos/27/30/53/6130392/6/960x0.webp
Wait, which country is the most decaf-drinking per capita?
I think decaf is a very "American" specific thing? Haven't really seen it in Asia or Middle East.
Majority of cafes in Australia offer it. I don't think that many people order it, but enough for them to keep it available.
Uncertain, but it might be useful for a coffee place open at night :)
Lots of places have decaf in Korea.
Its pretty common where I live in Asia. Most people here dont particularly like the idea of caffeine at night, although late night coffee is rare where I live.
Never seen it in Africa, other than transit hubs with westerners.
Yeah wouldn’t want it on your menu in….America?
May be I am an aberration, but I actually seek out coffee shops for good coffee. A nice espresso, cappuccino and on occasion black drip or pour over. I will never be as comfortable at a coffee place as I am at home, so why bother. But yes, I definitely like a comfortable place to sit while I am drinking my brew. Don't really care for another conversation at the time -- My coffee an I are having one. Also, for anyone in Houston try out Catalina coffee on Washington. The coffee shop I judge all other shops by. Best espresso drinks ever. Also, in Seattle, the starbucks reserve (I think that was what they were called. Its been a few years.) had some really good beans and well made drinks, way way better than the usual starbucks swill.
I work morning to night and don't have an office. It's really nice to be able to get out of the house and the yemeni coffee shops provide a way for me to get out and stay out for a while.
Do people drink the coffee late? I would never get to sleep after doing that!
Fun facts, the word coffee come from Kahve, the bastardization of the word Kahwa meaning coffee in Arabic since Turkish lacks "w" and normally replaces it with "v".
Another related fun facts, the now universal European word cafe also come from the same word originally meaning coffee drinking place or shop [1].
[1] Coffee and qahwa: How a drink for Arab mystics went global:
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22190802
>Another related fun facts, the now universal European word cafe also come from the same word originally meaning coffee drinking place or shop.
Isn't that pretty obvious? It's literally the French word for coffee.
My city (Oakland) has like 3 Yemeni coffeeshops within 10 min of me, and every time I go at night they're usually packed.
There's just nowhere else open late at night that isn't a bar, period.
First part is true here in Michigan too. Wish they stayed open late.
What most appeals to me is the lack of music. Most music in stores, restaurants, and other public places is very irritating to me. (Misophonia.) I would be thrilled if more places made the decision not to play music.
I wonder how significant of a source of revenue the coffee shops are for Yemen, both from bean exports and remittances from immigrants.
If anyone's looking for one of these in SF, my favorite place is Delah Coffee[0] near Yerba Buena. They're open until 11pm. Try the Kunafa Cheesecake!
[0]: https://delahcoffee.com/
Claimed two abandoned storefronts after covid killed our downtown. Also more yuppie primped clientele, compared to most other coffeeshops in my area.
I use to live next to a trucker restaurant that opened at 4am. It was a great place to go after a party or a night out.
Hey this is brilliant thanks for the tip
https://archive.ph/mW3GN
Austin has bennu coffee places which open 24 hrs, and taco shops that open 24 hrs too.
TIL, one near me too. Are they pretty open to late night working/studying or more of a social hangout at nights?
The best coffee I’ve was a Turkish Green from, if I recall correctly, Jerusalem Sheshkebab House - 131B Hidley Street, Adelaide. Now permanently closed as a result of the corvid lockdowns. Basement level, red booths, open late, no dickheads, nicest proprietor.
Also the best hummus, falafels etc.
We had a few Kahve Dünyası's over here, but they're sadly closing down.
The irony is that a lot of the english breakfast tea places are all Turkish
A younger me would get it. The older me wonders why people can't be content alone. Do I really need to go socialize at 2am? Probably not, and even less so without alcohol. But I get that others are different.
Neither of the coffee shops profiled in the article are open at 2am, so I would hazard to guess their proprietors agree with you.
What is it like for women?
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Or a wanna be pickup artist looking for new prey.
On the question asked, the article has a photo that appears to show 4 male customers and ~ 10 (11?) female customers (two all female tables and a confusing backdrop).
https://img.texasmonthly.com/2024/12/yemeni-coffee-shops-5a....
I wrote the entire 2nd version of my SaaS between midnight and 6am at a coffee shop in Austin. It was so peaceful to crack open an IDE, and sip on a hot cup of coffee at midnight, and code until I could barely keep my eyes open.
Unfortunately Covid completely destroyed all of these spots. I’m really excited these are making a come back.
Epoch is still around, pretty sure it's still 24/7 too (the original location, that is).
Flightpath is even older (it was in the flight path of the old airport), though not 24 hour.
On a tangent....I remember the only place you could get a coffee in Texas was Waffle House or Denny's. In the early 90's the DFW area didn't even know what an espresso was. Starbucks finally came around 1995 and it was such a joy. Now there are some amazing cafes serving amazing coffee, especially in college towns like Denton.
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You sound terminally online
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... what on Earth?
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