Jerry Seinfeld has a bit about people who work in cafés on his Netflix show, Comedian in Cars Getting Coffee. I am that person he is making fun of. I like to work in a café even though I have an office/studio at home. There’s something about stuffing all my work into a backpack, loading the heavy backpack into my car, driving to a café, looking for a parking spot downtown, and unloading all my work onto a very small table in a sunlight space that plays jazz music. It’s just the spot to unfold the creative ideas that felt stuck back in my apartment that doesn’t have jazz music playing.

There is indeed something about working in a café. It’s good marketing. As a former Starbucks barista, I can confirm that Starbucks sets up there stores to be oh-so cozy so that you’ll stick around and maybe buy a grande latte or two. Yup, it’s a ploy to get one customer to make multiple purchases. But do I fall for it? Well, not the multiple purchases, but I do fall for the environment that Starbucks created that makes me want to leave my curated-to-me studio for corporate America’s café. Despite the manipulating of an interior spaces to increase sales, there is something to be said for changing your environment for optimal creative flow. Which is why I try go to a local coffee shop and I was able to do so today. But my local coffee shop is tiny and if they run out of tables, I get back in my car with my heavy backpack, drive about fifteen minutes to the closest Starbucks, and set up shop there. I’m just kidding. I’m very patience and I hover by an occupied table of newspaper readers until they leave. The work life.

Now for my look, it’s meant to impress on you that I’m very serious creative who doesn’t take themselves too seriously. Actually, this outfit is brought to you by the thirty-four degree weather that made me not want to get out of my pajamas, so instead I layered them with this People of Leisure jogger set. I’m just trying to survive this cold by layering all the clothes, drinking as much Golden Milk latte so my eczema doesn’t flare up from the harsh Lake Michigan winds (today the wind chill is a brutal thirteen degrees), and taking every opportunity to draw freezing people live.

Are you a café workspace worker? What is it about the café ambiance that brings you there time and time again?