SAN FRANCISCO -- Housed in an old San Francisco warehouse, Four Barrel Coffee calls one of the world's most wired cities home. But don't expect to get an Internet connection there. Coffee connoisseurs hooked on this roaster's beans won't find a working signalor even a power outlet.
The uninitiated often try to plug into a fake one that owner Jeremy Tooker spray painted on the wall as a gag. "There are lots of marks on the drywall," Tooker told the Los Angeles Times with a laugh.
About 30 miles south in Palo Alto, Calif., the heart of Silicon Valley's technology [image-nocss] industry, the Coupa Cafe offers some of the fastest Internet service in town. But even this popular hangout for entrepreneurs and venture capitalists bans Wi-Fi on weekends to make room for customers sans laptops.
"We had big parties or family groups who wanted to eat but had no room," said Jean Paul Coupal, who runs the cafe with his mother, Nancy. "They were getting upset about it. They felt the whole place was being taken over by techies."
Coffee shops were the retail pioneers of Wi-Fi, flipping the switch to lure customers. But now some owners are pulling the plug, according to the newspaper report. They're finding that Wi-Fi freeloaders who camp out all day nursing a single cup of coffee are a drain on the bottom line. Others want to preserve a friendly vibe and keep their establishments from turning into "Matrix"-like zombie shacks where people type and don't talk.
That shift could gather steam now that free Wi-Fi is less of a perk after coffee giant Starbucks stopped charging for it last month.
"There is now a market niche for not having Wi-Fi," Bryant Simon, a Temple University history professor and author of "Everything but the Coffee: Learning About America From Starbucks," told the newspaper.
And not just for Luddites. Web designer Mike Kuniavsky, who has spent his career dissecting people's relationship to digital technology, hangs out at Four Barrel Coffee precisely because he can disconnect from the Internet and concentrate on his thoughts. That's where he wrote his upcoming book on consumer electronics design: "Smart Things."
"No Wi-Fi is the reason I was able to write the book," Kuniavsky said.
Coffeehouses have always attracted bookish deadbeats who stayed too long and bought too little. But with free Wi-Fi, suddenly these shops were teeming with electricity- and table-hogging laptops, leaving trails of tangled power cords and hard feelings. Too many customers spread out at big tables for long stretches over a lukewarm mug, forcing cafes to turn away business.
Even as the economy rebounds, some eateries are keeping the Wi-Fi off during peak hours. The Literati Cafe in Brentwood, Calif., unhooks during the lunchtime rush, manager Jon Eiswerth said.
"The Internet is a worm hole to the outside world, and we love that people use our space for that," Eiswerth said. "We are just trying to please as many people as possible and find the middle ground."
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