The image above was made with stable diffusion using the prompt 'Minneapolis counterculture city and computer code colorful.'
If you've been following me for long, you know that I've spent a fair amount of time at my local coffee shop over the years. The sign hanging outside 
For a long time, this was my co-working space. Along with a score of others in tech or the arts, I'd go there most days to draw or write or edit or code or trade. We were all friends and we'd help each other out without a second thought. I regularly repaired or gave away laptops to people in need who I met at the shop. And more than one good work contract came from a coffee shop referral.
A friend of mine was working on a Macbook there in 2020 and the device suddenly vanished, stolen by a bold thief who ran to a waiting car and drove away. Since then I haven't felt comfortable bringing my laptop to the coffee shop. So I stopped going as often. These days, I pop in for a coffee here and there, but I don't really linger.
For many years,
Beyond counterculture, spending my 30s at the coffee shop put me firmly in touch with street level urban America. Living in poverty myself, relying on the informal economy when the formal economy wasn't cutting it, I spent countless hours sipping coffee with panhandlers and addicts and various kinds of misfits, talking about everything. From this vantage point, our leaders are clowns, our economy is a meat grinder, and nothing at all is dependable. It's a perspective held by millions and the powers that be relentlessly exploit it.
Youthful rebelliousness is often tempered by age and maturity. Revolutionaries become reformers and reformers gradually turn into enforcers of the status quo. My own development hasn't followed this trajectory. In my youth I favored radically transforming many of society's systems. Today I favor abandoning these systems entirely in favor of better systems that we ourselves create.
In our distant past, it was possible to go to the town square, stand on a soapbox, espouse your views, and quickly make friends with people of like mind. More recently, it was possible to put up a website espousing any perspective and Google would send like-minded people to the site. We don't have anything like that anymore, though Meetup.com was a good try. Our physical and digital environments now mostly separate us instead of bringing us together.
At the end of the day, it's hilarious that Google mapped me at the coffee shop. There I am in 2013 and again in 2017.
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