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People's Cafe
Location: 2015 Shattuck (near University)
Hours: daily 7am - midnight
Java: $1.25 (small house blend) - $4.00 (large caramel mocha)
Breakfast: $1.25 (bagel with butter) - $4.95 (lox bagel)
Lunch/Dinner: sandwiches and wraps run from $4.75 - $6.50 (with a Cesar salad)
Credit cards: you got it.
WiFi: no questions asked.
Power outlets: all over the place.
Bathroom: yep. Give the door a good solid push--it pretends it's locked when it isn't.
Seating: Long bench/booths and chairs. Not very comfortable--I wouldn't want to sit here for longer than an hour or two.
Music: Currently there's some kind of - well, sounds like Carnatic techno to me - coming from the front half of the cafe, while the back (where I'm sitting) is streaming instrumental smooth jazz. The overlap is a bit grating, but the music on this side is so ambient-y that I didn't even notice it until I started to type this up. Luckily both tracks are quiet, so I can resolve the clash with some noise-canceling action.
Ambient noise: Quiet today--everybody's working.
Temperature: Just right, though I imagine the front half might get drafty on colder days.
Parking: Pretty much all metered around here, but there are ramps nearby, too.
Bicycle parking: Bike racks to be found at least every couple of blocks, but make sure to lock all components around here.
Biggest pro: The variety of people in here is so Berkeley you won't even know what to do. Today everyone appears to be about 18-25. The guy next to me is rockin' some dreadlocks, doing badass 3D models on his computer (an architect?), with a giant stack of well-used legal pads sitting next to him. Across from me is a young woman mumbling aloud as she intently writes something. Next to her, two bearded, bespectacled hipster boys, one of them wearing ridiculously large headphones and feverishly drawing with a charcoal pencil with a fervor that has caused his legs to contort in a spectacular way. Or maybe it's something in the air on that side of the room, because the next patron down the line also has his legs tucked under him. He's so buried in his laptop screen that I wonder how many hours it's been since he came up for air. Does he even remember where he is?
Biggest con: Benches are pretty uncomfortable.
Recommended for: A quick sit-down, coffee, meetup with a friend
Not recommended for: A long day of serious cafe-sitting, a tasty meal
Allow me to elaborate on that last point. The sandwiches and wraps here are acceptable, and they are also served warm, which is a nice touch. They just aren't anything to get excited about, and your tastebuds will agree. Today I ordered a tuna melt on whole-grain, which looked promising. Nice nutty bread, lettuce, sprouts, and pickles, plenty of tuna. Unfortunately, the most flavorful ingredient was the iceberg lettuce. Granted this is quite a feat, and it was the healthiest-looking iceberg I've seen in a long time, but who loves a lettuce sandwich? I should have spent the extra fifty cents to add cheese.
I was here to meet up with a woman who I'm pairing up with to lead a seminar on Wednesday. We've been reading about copyright law and what it means for creative folks who work in genres that are considered "traditional". Tradition depends on the notion of collective creativity, that is, people collaborate to produce something, and nobody cares whose "original" idea it was. But the people who write legislation operate under the assumption that one person comes up with an idea or creates an object, and this is then adopted by an entire community. Therefore, copyright law need only protect individual artists.
So what happens when a first world artist hops around the third world making field recordings, uses them to produce a record that is then commercialized, and gives no royalties or credit to the (often impoverished) community who developed and performed the music on the recording? Or some affluent white visual artist sees a cool "Native" design somewhere, stylizes it, puts it on a t-shirt/keychain/magnet and sells the hell out of it? Who owns that design?
Now take it a step further. Pharmaceutical companies are constantly trolling folk knowledge of marginalized cultures, to see what plants are being used medicinally. They take these ideas, test them in a lab, then patent them. How often do you think the holders of this folk knowledge can actually afford the medicines that the pharmaceutical companies use to make bank?
On the other hand, what would a different sort of legislation look like? Can a community own an idea, a design, a song? That's a dangerous thought too. How would knowledge and aesthetics circulate? Who would the royalties go to? Who would decide if an outsider gets permission to perform this song, take this medicine?
I don't have any answers. Maybe we'll collaboratively come up with something in this seminar tomorrow. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the issue, even if you're just going to offer an anecdote that complicates the matter even further. If this sort of puzzle turns you on, check out this article too: http://www.slate.com/id/2267004/
Back to the cafe. It was a good central location to meet, and it was kind of funny to talk about this heady stuff with a backdrop of comic book covers and a giant mural of a volcano. Nobody seemed to be bothered that we were talking; in fact, more people started chatting once we'd broken that ice.
Too much thinking today. Sorry for the lack of snark in this post--my brain is uncharacteristically stuck in serious mode. S'Bitch will soon be back and S'mug as ever. Promise.
Allow me to elaborate on that last point. The sandwiches and wraps here are acceptable, and they are also served warm, which is a nice touch. They just aren't anything to get excited about, and your tastebuds will agree. Today I ordered a tuna melt on whole-grain, which looked promising. Nice nutty bread, lettuce, sprouts, and pickles, plenty of tuna. Unfortunately, the most flavorful ingredient was the iceberg lettuce. Granted this is quite a feat, and it was the healthiest-looking iceberg I've seen in a long time, but who loves a lettuce sandwich? I should have spent the extra fifty cents to add cheese.
I was here to meet up with a woman who I'm pairing up with to lead a seminar on Wednesday. We've been reading about copyright law and what it means for creative folks who work in genres that are considered "traditional". Tradition depends on the notion of collective creativity, that is, people collaborate to produce something, and nobody cares whose "original" idea it was. But the people who write legislation operate under the assumption that one person comes up with an idea or creates an object, and this is then adopted by an entire community. Therefore, copyright law need only protect individual artists.
So what happens when a first world artist hops around the third world making field recordings, uses them to produce a record that is then commercialized, and gives no royalties or credit to the (often impoverished) community who developed and performed the music on the recording? Or some affluent white visual artist sees a cool "Native" design somewhere, stylizes it, puts it on a t-shirt/keychain/magnet and sells the hell out of it? Who owns that design?
Now take it a step further. Pharmaceutical companies are constantly trolling folk knowledge of marginalized cultures, to see what plants are being used medicinally. They take these ideas, test them in a lab, then patent them. How often do you think the holders of this folk knowledge can actually afford the medicines that the pharmaceutical companies use to make bank?
On the other hand, what would a different sort of legislation look like? Can a community own an idea, a design, a song? That's a dangerous thought too. How would knowledge and aesthetics circulate? Who would the royalties go to? Who would decide if an outsider gets permission to perform this song, take this medicine?
I don't have any answers. Maybe we'll collaboratively come up with something in this seminar tomorrow. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the issue, even if you're just going to offer an anecdote that complicates the matter even further. If this sort of puzzle turns you on, check out this article too: http://www.slate.com/id/2267004/
Back to the cafe. It was a good central location to meet, and it was kind of funny to talk about this heady stuff with a backdrop of comic book covers and a giant mural of a volcano. Nobody seemed to be bothered that we were talking; in fact, more people started chatting once we'd broken that ice.
Too much thinking today. Sorry for the lack of snark in this post--my brain is uncharacteristically stuck in serious mode. S'Bitch will soon be back and S'mug as ever. Promise.
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