Harper-Thames Spends a Week in the Same Seat and Learns Exactly Nothing About What the Laptop People Are Actually Doing
I spent a week in the same coffee shop on Calvert Avenue in the name of research and partially because the coffee is very good and the seat by the window has reliable light and a plug socket, which is the combination that determines where journalists work regardless of how sophisticated we would like our location criteria to appear. The coffee shop — I am not naming it because I would like to keep my seat and naming coffee shops in journalism pieces is the fastest way to make them unusable for the person who named them — opens at eight and fills completely by nine thirty with people who have laptops and drinks and the specific focused expression of people who are doing something important enough to require silence and a third espresso but not important enough to require an office.
Over five days I observed the following from my window seat: fourteen video calls conducted in a sotto voce that suggested awareness of other people’s presence but not quite enough awareness to take the call outside; three people who I believe were writing screenplays based on the frequent staring at the ceiling followed by typing that is specific to that form; one person who appeared to be playing a video game but with an expression of professional seriousness that suggested it was work-related game playing of the playtesting variety or possibly just someone who has made peace with playing games in coffee shops; and a substantial number of people whose screen contents I could not see but whose keyboard rhythm suggested they were writing something at length, which in Shoreditch in this coffee shop probably means they are writing something about Shoreditch.
What Nobody Would Tell Me
I asked four people what they were working on. Two said ‘a project’ without further specification. One said ‘content’ in the tone of someone who finds the word uncomfortable but has not found a better one. One said she was writing a novel and looked at me in a way that closed the conversation in both directions. The coffee shop economy of Shoreditch is built on productive ambiguity and I have decided to respect it. More from me at Harper-Thames.
SOURCE: http://prat.UK
