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Coffeehouse Culture I: New York v. Elsewhere

by Sandy Ikeda
Sat, 26 Jan 2008 at 12:46 AM

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The life of a city consists of what goes on in its public spaces. In New York, and increasingly in other American cities, coffeehouses are a vital part of this public life.

According to Café Life in New York, "cafés" or "coffeehouses" as I prefer to call them, are places that "function mainly as gathering places with coffee and/or tea as the central offering. … These cafés beckon the patron who has come to stay awhile, often a long while — order a single cup of coffee, and you are welcome to stay as long as you wish … the primary purpose is to provide a 'third place' — beyond home and work." (I'm not really recommending this cute little book, subtitled "An insider's guide to the City's neighborhood cafés," because it doesn't mention any, not one, of my favorite coffeehouses!)

While it may not be as old or quite the same as it is in Paris, coffeehouse culture in its various versions thrives in New York. But if I may generalize there do seem to me to be important differences.

First, and I realize this isn't an original observation, but people over there don't seem to have coffee to go. I could find few places where you could even do this although there are, somewhat surprisingly, a couple of Starbucks in central Paris. As a rule, if you want coffee, you sit down (or stand at the counter). Consequently, you spend more time there on average, whether you're alone or in a group.

I don't think this is entirely due to the French on average having lower time costs than New Yorkers — although this is probably true, I don't have corroborating data. Culture-based preferences for lounging in cafés may on average simply be stronger there. For instance, domestically, the average New York patron probably spends more time in coffeehouses than patrons in Los Angeles even though their per capita incomes, as a very rough proxy for time cost, are a bit higher: NYC: $27,420 v. LA: $24,340. (Source: Bureau of Census.) So at the margin, if preferences are strong enough they can overcome higher time costs.

My next observation is not about Paris or even about Parisians, but about Europeans in New York. I've noticed that if Americans are alone, they usually won't bother to sit down, and if they do sit, it's for a relatively short time. Even when they sit together in groups, they usually have their cup of coffee or whatever and then leave within 10-15 minutes. (Part II will be about Americans who do spend a lot of time in coffeehouses.)

The Europeans I've noticed in my local hangout, French and Italians as well as some who to my ear have Slavic-sounding accents, sit down and talk (loudly) over a single cup of coffee for at least 30 minutes. For them, coffeehouses seem to be places, not just to socialize, but to converse. Americans tend to have conversations over coffee (or various coffee concoctions), while Europeans have coffee with their conversations.

Finally, in New York when it's warm enough to sit outside, if the side of the table toward the street or pathway is at 6 o'clock, the chairs are generally placed at 3 and 9 o'clock, facing each other. In Paris (and elsewhere in France), the chairs tend to be placed at 10 and 2 o'clock facing, not each other, but the sidewalk. This is well-illustrated in van Gogh's famous "The Café Terrace on the Place du Forum, Arles, At Night." The French it seems are more forthright in their recognition that one sits outside to watch people.

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