Bye, Bye, Miss American Empire
Bill Kauffman on secession and empire, from Orion. (And a hat tip to LRC.)
I’m blogging on the fly from a Starbucks in New Haven, Connecticut. I’m sure hipsters do this all the time, but it feels pretty strange to me — especially since my connection isn’t very reliable and I expect to get kicked out for not drinking enough coffee.
I don’t think you have to worry about getting kicked out. I think the whole motivation for offering the free WiFi is that although you may not want to buy anything when you come in, eventually you’ll break down and order a double frappa-whatever.
I used to do that all the time in Emeryville, CA (near Berkeley). The Wi-Fi wasn’t free, but luckily the area was so saturated with networks that I could often get on anyway without charge. One cup of coffee would last about 3 hours. I guess I really knew how to “milk” it.
You needn’t worry… if people didn’t hang around coffee shops during the day, the would be deserted outside peak hours.
Yeah, there was no problem with loitering. On the other hand, as Dain’s comment suggests, Starbucks wireless internet isn’t free after all — but I was picking up an open Linksys network of some kind. At least, I was for a while. On subsequent visits to the place the signal wasn’t strong enough, and I wasn’t about to pay for internet access, cheapskate that I am. So, no blogging.
Fun fact: Indiana Jones 4 was being filmed in New Haven while I was there. I’ll post a photo or two of some of the props in a bit…