The Coffee-Shop Culture Wars

I used to get up early in the morning and walk to a popular coffee shop near my harbor home two or three days a week. There, my mind clear and fresh, I would read academic articles and plan my day's writing. There were others like me who frequented the shop and I got used to seeing them sitting alone, typing into computers or scribbling in notebooks, sipping a coffee or munching on danish. Nobody talked much, or even took much notice of each others' presence. We were there to get some work done. Of course there were always some talkers in the place, but they were generally quiet and non-obtrusive. I liked it. It was a comfortable -- a nice "third place" where serious people could do serious things.

Then a couple of months ago, the mothers came.

Each day around nine o'clock several young women with toddlers would come in and form little gab groups while their kids, unsupervised, would run amok. The moms were loud and their kids were louder. Within a couple of weeks all of the other writers disappeared, and so did I. I've now moved to another coffee-shop a couple of blocks away in a slightly less affluent neighborhood -- a place that describes itself as "funky." Needless to say tt's not as cozy as the old place, sometimes they have a TV on and the owner seems to have a thing for urban blues (not what I would choose for early morning), but it's better than hanging with the pre-school crowd.

This seems to be a general phenomenon -- an ongoing conflict between serious adults and young moms who are crowding them out of public places. The NYT chronicles the phenomenon.

CHICAGO, Nov. 8 - Bridget Dehl shushed her 21-month-old son, Gavin, then clapped a hand over his mouth to squelch his tiny screams amid the Sunday brunch bustle. When Gavin kept yelping "yeah, yeah, yeah," Ms. Dehl whisked him from his highchair and out the door.

Right past the sign warning the cafe's customers that "children of all ages have to behave and use their indoor voices when coming to A Taste of Heaven," and right into a nasty spat roiling the stroller set in Chicago's changing Andersonville neighborhood.

The owner of A Taste of Heaven, Dan McCauley, said he posted the sign - at child level, with playful handprints - in the hope of quieting his tin-ceilinged cafe, where toddlers have been known to sprawl between tables and hurl themselves at display cases for sport.

But many neighborhood mothers took umbrage at the implied criticism of how they handle their children. Soon, whispers of a boycott passed among the playgroups in this North Side neighborhood, once an outpost of avant-garde artists and hip gay couples but now a hot real estate market for young professional families shunning the suburbs.

Read the whole article here.

Attracted to some extent by the real estate boom, young professional couples have been flocking to urban neighborhoods in recent years. There they have been having kids and most of the mothers opt to stay at home. But that doesn't mean that they have to cut back significantly on their social life. They are determined to take advantage of the amenities of the city and as they do, they drag the kids with them. When they congregate, as they tend to do at coffee shops and bakeries, the place begins to look and sound like a nursery school.

Maybe it's just a temporary thing. The real estate market is cooling and soon the kids will be in pre-school or something. With luck peace will return, and so will I.

I first blogged this subject here.