Java's Brewin'

On the northeast corner of 140th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, in Harlem, there is a cafe called Java's Brewin'. It is a very pleasant place with high quality food and coffee. The muffins and croissants are always fresh and delicious.

Java's Brewin' is in the space that was Sims Bicycle Shop for several decades. The bike shop is gone and I can no longer buy an inner tube for my bicycle in my neighborhood. But, indeed, the cafe is a better match for the needs of the people. Why has coffee increased in popularity while bicycles have decreased in popularity? I don't think that it is because of laziness. Laziness has probably existed in approximately constant proportions throughout history. And the subway hasn't gotten much better in the past 50 years. So why would some one suffer in the hot subway to go thirty blocks when they could be there faster on a bicycle? My guess is that people are scared of getting hit by a car. Manhattan is not a relaxing place to ride a bike. Hardcore cycling enthusiasts will not be deterred, but a lot a regular people will not choose to risk life and limb. And mothers probably don't really encourage their kids to ride bikes.

And why the increase in cafe patronage? My guess is that through the decades, prosperity has been increasing while, paradoxically, the average amount of living space per person has been decreasing. People find it more practical to enjoy their prosperity through comfort spending instead of by trying to attain a gracious lifestyle in their shoebox apartment. A lot of young people don't expect that their home will contain a dining room. Previous generations considered it absolutely necessary to buy a dining set and china as soon as they had enough money to afford it. The current generation defines quality of life differently. We must have a cell phone or else we can't function. A place without a computer cannot possibly be a home because we will go crazy if we don't check our email frequently. We like things that facilitate our mobility. This goes beyond merely being convenient. We like to do at least two things at the same time. We can read the paper, ride the train, and drink our morning coffee all at the same time, without any of these things interfering with the others. Or we can drink a coffee in a cafe while chatting with a friend and looking at girls/men. To people of the present generation, doing only one thing at a time seems like a tragedy, lost time, lost potential, lost living. So we go coffee shops, either to sit down or to take things to go, because we feel it helps us reach our potential.