San Francisco’s Cafe Reveille is the type of place that’s quietly pleading for you to share a photo of it on Instagram.
With its millennial pink branding, decadent brunch menu, and breezy outdoor patio, you’d think it would be the perfect spot to relax with a cup of coffee, or maybe even a $13 falafel bowl topped with a delicately poached egg. That’s what it seems like, at least, based on the small chain’s neatly curated online presence.
In-person, however, it’s anything but.
Like a scene straight out of HBO’s “Silicon Valley,” Cafe Reveille’s Steiner Street location in the Lower Haight has morphed into a de facto WeWork for Bay Area techies, wannabe founders, and industry disruptors. It’s impossible to sit in peace without being interrupted by the grating din of people taking back-to-back Zoom conferences and virtual job interviews, according to perturbed San Francisco residents.
Customers sit outside along Waller Street at Cafe Reveille in the Lower Haight, on Thursday, March 30, 2023.
Charles Russo/SFGATEWhen I visited the cafe on a brisk Wednesday afternoon, I was immediately confronted by a sea of laptops attached to their users’ bodies. The air was so warm and muggy, it reminded me of a sold-out concert venue or a university library on the eve of midterms. I skipped lunch and settled for an iced coffee instead.
Right as I sat down, a man in a tight little sweater sighed and took a conference call right next to me.
He said something inane to his colleagues about job tracking statuses. I tried to tune him out, but then a kid in a radioactive green beanie and Air Force 1's started broadcasting his conversation on speakerphone. With cruelly perfect timing, a forlorn saxophone began wailing over the sound system. How anyone can actually socialize, let alone concentrate, here is beyond me.
Annoyed and terminally online San Francisco residents also have a lot to say about it. “I used to enjoy it but it’s a zoo now,” wrote one person on Nextdoor, who said she was born and raised in the city.
“So obnoxious,” she continued. “It’s not WeWork folks!”
After finding her posts, which appear to have been deleted, I called this resident to ask her about the cafe’s transformation. (She was granted anonymity in accordance with Hearst’s ethics policy because she works in tech herself.) She said the cafe is so overrun with remote workers that it feels like “Zombieland.”
Laptops are often in abundance at Cafe Reveille, in the Lower Haight.
Images via Yelp“You lose that sense of connection,” she told me, calling the incessant Zoom meetings “royally rude” and socially unconscious. She’s concerned, she said, that people staring into their screens all day “destroys those opportunities for serendipity.” (She also alleged that some workers have actually chained their laptops to the table after a spate of thefts at the Lower Haight Reveille in mid-2021, though that was nowhere to be seen during my visit.)
Cafes have always been spaces where people co-work — but the Bay Area bears a particular burden that other locales do not. Among metro areas with a million or more residents, the Bay Area had the leading number of remote workers in 2021, the United States Census Bureau reported last fall. As in-office perks are taken away and San Francisco’s office spaces decline, whatever allure remains of working in steampunk jail cells and “engineers’ caves” has all but vanished.
“What's great about Cafe Reveille is like, even if you don't strike up a conversation — even if you just have like a point-in-the-moment interaction with someone — that someone is super likely to be someone who's like, quintessentially San Franciscan,” she said.
Customers sit outside along Waller Street at Cafe Reveille in the Lower Haight, on Thursday, March 30, 2023.
Charles Russo/SFGATEStill, Tang does acknowledge that some of the painful stereotypes are true. One day, she said she saw someone bring their entire work-from-home setup to the cafe, laptop risers and all. Another time, she overheard two founders conduct a rigorous panel interview out in the open.
For reasons I can’t totally explain, during my visit, I found myself trying to look busy even though no one was watching. Maybe it was because tech shamelessly turned a historically romantic gathering place into a glorified, open-air office — just another place to grill another candidate for another vague people operations job. Sitting there was a small, powerful reminder of the work-edification of our everyday lives, and the reality that most of us are probably “flunkies” at worst and “taskmasters” at best, all trying to survive capitalism’s enduring grip.
I finally took a sip of my iced coffee, but by that point, it was mostly just water.
As I sat in a room where seemingly everyone was talking but not to each other, I tried to recall how many times I’ve had conversations over black coffee at Moulin’s, the Dutch-themed diner on Geary and Larkin, or how many friends I’ve made while lingering in the smoking room at Edinburgh Castle Pub. I thought about the local coffee shop that sold records near my old street in the Tenderloin, too, and then I remembered that most of these places are gone — forgotten relics of an ever-changing city.
I worry I’m one of a dwindling few who got to discover themselves through San Francisco’s disappearing cultural hubs — now-defunct neighborhood cafes that once celebrated artists, outsiders, and the working class.
Cafe Reveille is located on Steiner Street, in the Lower Haight, as seen on Thursday, March 30, 2023.
Charles Russo/SFGATEMy neighbor ended his important business call and tried to commiserate with the woman next to him. But she said nothing and continued working at her laptop with robotic intensity. When they each packed up their stations and left, an engineer jumped at the opportunity to take over their spot and pulled out another computer. I wanted to know what he was working on, but I figured he didn’t want to talk because he was wearing massive headphones and curled up in the fetal position.
When I left the cafe and waited for Muni near Duboce Park, a cool wave of air hit me. Just ahead, owners were playing with their dogs and people were basking in the sun. Groups of friends were sitting in the grass, talking, with the city’s familiar skyline in the background. It really was a beautiful day in San Francisco, after all.