ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, January 4, 1996 TAG: 9601050003
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Off the Clock
SOURCE: CHRIS HENSON
To: roatimesinfi.net
From: grandinroanoke.infi.net
Subject: OFF THE CLOCK column
Cc: ClockinOutaol.com
Hey, cyber-friends:
I'm on my first cup.
I tend to use coffee as a delivery system for sugar and half-and-half. That's an important detail, because I'm sitting in Awakenings Cafe at 1402 Grandin Road in Southwest Roanoke, sampling a cup of Guatemalan coffee that I have turned from a dark, rich ebony to a J Crew khaki color brew with the consistency of caramel.
And, I'm sitting in front of a computer, typing away, e-mailing this letter from the same premises.
You see, Awakenings Cafe is a cyber-cafe, where some of the chat is on-line, and the caffeine is anything but virtual. Cyber-cafes are popping up all over the country as technology's latest boomtown, the Internet, continues to grow.
Dave Parr, president of Compu-Tech, operates the Internet-access section of the coffee shop. He's sitting at a computer next to me. Parr's logged on to two separate chat lines at once. One is for people in Virginia who want to correspond with geographically similar people.
The other is a sports room. The messages that pop up on screen are about football ... and nothing else. I notice that David Parr is signed on as "Pete1."
"Nobody uses their real name on the Internet," he explains. Then he looks at his screen and says, "Wow, Texas is favored by 2."
You heard it here first.
Parr figures he spends an hour or two a day on the Internet. "Usually in the evenings, when I close up shop," he says. On the phone I overhear him telling someone, "I'll be leaving in about 10 minutes." Instead, he sits e-chatting for another half hour.
I'm on my second cup.
Meanwhile, Pete Johnson, co-owner of Awakenings, is helping with the coffee. "It's all organic," he says. "We did a lot of tasting at conventions to find the coffees we liked. We found the all-natural coffees were our favorites.'' Johnson says that his organic coffees are grown without pesticides, in their natural settings where they don't upset natural ecosystems. "We've found you don't get the harshness of other coffees this way," he says. "There's less of a definite aftertaste."
Sampling coffees is done by ``cupping,'' says Johnson. "You actually sort of hiss the coffee into you mouth," he says. "The idea is for the coffee to hit every taste bud at once. It's essentially the opposite of the proper way to eat soup."
The idea at Awakenings seems to essentially be ... well, ideas. "We wanted to make this a learning area," says Parr, "a kind of community center." On the second floor of the huge space is "The Life*Works," a self-described "community of individuals, who honor diversity, facilitate personal and collective growth, and celebrate new ways of experiencing life."
Still in the beginning stages, the cafe has a modest menu of vegetarian foods and diet-busting desserts. There's a juice bar and a massage chair. Plans are in the works for the Three Feathers Bookstore to open soon, sharing the downstairs space. Local artists and musicians will be featured, according to Johnson.
By opening Awakenings Cafe, Johnson and his partner, Leslie Jackson, are fulfilling a dream to create a "healthy place for people to enjoy eating, original art and music, surfing cyberspace and just hang out.''
And that's what I'm doing. Hanging out and doing the 'Net and drinking coffee. By my third cup I'm sitting here by myself, in relative quiet. There's a clank of dishes off in the kitchen, the murmurs of couples around the tables in the other room. There's a stillness and comfort, even in the midst of the technology.
It's a swell idea ... coffee and e-mail. Don't let the computer aspect intimidate you. David Parr will be glad to show you around the 'Net.
Besides, if you're not on the Internet yet, you probably will be. Here's how I know this:
I watched two-and-a-half TV stations growing up. ABC came in fuzzy because our antenna, made from old tent poles, couldn't quite grasp the signal. And all we had was a black-and-white TV with a seven-inch screen. Everyone we knew had cable, color and Pong, for Pete's sake. But, for my family, cable and color were just too ``new-fangled,'' too ``high-falutin.''
Well. Now even my dad is on the Internet. He has always enjoyed the art of letter writing. He's darned good at it. And now he can e-mail a joke, or a story, or whatever to all his sons at once, with nary a paper cut. He's a pro.
But, then again, Dad's other big thing is to listen to his short-wave radio. He likes to tune in to the atomic clock station out of New Mexico, and listen to the rhythmic beeps and some guy saying "four-twenty, Eastern Standard Time" in a dispassionate voice. He falls asleep to this. What would happen if he discovered the Weather Channel? Of course, that would require cable.
Did I mention I'm on my fourth cup of coffee?
Anyway, a trip to Awakenings Cafe is definitely a very singular experience, and worth the trip. The place is growing. You can see that through the steam of your coffee. And while there may not be a line to get on the computers just yet, just you hang on. It's coming.
Stand by for the technical stuff: Internet access at Awakenings Cafe runs about $6 an hour. The computers are IBM clones using mIRC, Eudora and Netscape communications packages and their on-line server is InfiNet. Compu-Tech Services offers on-site PC repair, network installations and the like. Their offices are located in the space above the cafe. You can e-mail the folks at Awakenings at pete1roanoke.infi.net.
Of course, you have to come in for the coffee. There are no e-mugs. Yet.
Yours most faithfully,
Chris, the Off The Clock guy.
P.S. You can e-mail the Roanoke Times at roatimesinfi.net
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