On: New York will always be a tech backwater, I don’t ...

[nir]

NYC cafes where I've personally witnessed coders at work include: Housing Works & McNally's at SoHo, Amrita in Harlem, Gorilla Cafe in Park Slope, Esperanto on McDougal..

I definitely agree the NYC startup scene is overhyped - this is the city of hype and startups are now cool by New York Magazine standards. But man, your view of NYC in general seems much shaped by a very specific social circle and long hours at GS ;)

[antongm → nir]

Hm. New York has a population of 8,000,000 people, and you cite five cafes.

(Btw, Esperanto is cited in the footnotes of the post. It's since closed, at least according to Yelp.)

Berkeley (pop. 169,000) has you beat for sheer number of cafes (Berkeley Espresso, Brewed Awakenings, Yali's, Au Coquelet, Caffe Roma, etc.).

A complete list for SF would go on for quite a while....

I stand by my point (excusing a bit of blog-y hyperbole, of course).

[char → antongm]

Go here, center anywhere on Manhattan and type in "cafe": http://maps.google.com

Surprise!! Cafes!! Everywhere!!

Surely more than 5 of those have coders at work.

[aplusbi → antongm]

He cited five that he had personal experience with. You can't use that as a metric.