Patrons of a Cyber Cafe Include
On-Line Novices And Travelers

By ROBIN FROST 
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

THE CONCEPT SEEMS almost absurd: a cafe where a patron can sit in front of a computer terminal near other patrons sitting in front of computer terminals.
 

But cyber cafes, which have been sprouting around the globe, have proved increasingly popular. They are a lifeline for people without computers at home, or travelers. They can be an easy introduction for the computer-illiterate. And they can be a comfort to some people who simply like to be around computers, even if they aren't using them at the moment.

An early entry, the Internet Cafe in New York, recently celebrated its second anniversary. The cafe, owned by Arthur Perley and managed by Elizabeth Groeneman, is open seven days a week, from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m., and offers Internet access, as well as food, music and poetry readings.

After two years, Mr. Perley says, ''We're breaking even. We're not doing too bad. We're not raking it in, either.''

So what happens in a cyber cafe? Who uses it and why? What follows are selected snapshots from a recent day in its life.

10:40 A.M. Troy Martin, the 33-year-old day person, turns on the computers. Four computers are available for rental time, all Pentium-chip PCs with Windows 95 installed. Each computer has a number of Internet applications, including two Web browsers, Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator; access to America Online; an Internet phone program that allows users to speak to each other over the Net; a couple of e-mail programs; and a ''telnet'' program that allows people to connect to large computers and read files that are stored there.

One machine also has video-conferencing software and a camera attached to it, so people can conference through the Web. The cafe also uses it to do Web broadcasts of bands that play in the evenings.

The computers also have non-Internet software on them for people who want to do word processing, spreadsheets and graphics work. And tables without computers have outlets for people who bring their own laptops.

Prices are $10 an hour for general Net access, billed on the quarter-hour; $8 an hour for Web access only; and $5 a month for an e-mail account, which provides you with your own electronic ''mailbox'' at the cafe that you can retrieve mail from anywhere.

10:50 A.M. Ernie Capeci, a 40-year-old artist and woodworker who helped build the cafe interior, arrives. He browses the Web for British newspaper crossword puzzles and European soccer results. He comes in early so he can use a machine; he doesn't pay for on-line access time, but he will abandon the machine if a customer wants it.

12:50 P.M. Peter Oxenburgh, a local artist and a regular, comes in for coffee and a bagel. He and his wife were the Internet Cafe's first customers.

Mr. Oxenburgh says he comes in sometimes to exchange e-mail with friends in Britain and Australia. ''You get this real image of a planet,'' he says.

Most people are surprised that they can eat and drink and smoke around the computers. ''The keyboard isn't the important part of the computer, anyway,'' says Ms. Groeneman. ''Anybody who's going to take the box out and pour a cup of coffee over it -- well, you've probably got your eye on that person anyway.''

1:35 P.M. Evelyn, a college student from Boston, comes in with two friends. She says she is playing hooky from school, and is at the cafe because she doesn't have her computer with her and needs to pick up her e-mail from America Online.

That's typical, says Mr. Perley. Most people who come in to use the Internet either don't have computers of their own at home, or they are away from home and need access to the Net.

Evelyn also comes to New York to hook up with men she has met on-line. Her AOL ''profile''-- a minibiography that includes some of her interests --says she is partial to New York police officers. Today, she's chatting on-line with some that she met, and checking out others she hasn't met yet. She stays on-line for an hour.

Evelyn says she doesn't really think the Net is a safe way to meet people. But, she adds, ''for me it's safer, because I've stuck with cops.''

1:40 P.M. Andrea Johnson, a 28-year-old videotape editor from Washington, D.C., is in New York visiting friends. She's at the Internet Cafe to see if her boyfriend in San Francisco has sent her any e-mail about a job interview he is about to go on.

Her boyfriend has sent a message -- telling her the name of the company -- and so Ms. Johnson checks out the company's Web site. Then she sends him e-mail telling him what she thinks of the company from looking at its site.

Ms. Johnson isn't sure if there are any Internet cafes in Washington. ''For me, it defeats the purpose,'' she says, ''because I'm hooked [up] at home.'' But when she is out of town, she uses them. ''Any city I don't live in, I can find a cyber cafe,'' she says. ''It's kind of a vacation thing.''

3 P.M. A handful of people have come in over the past hour. Most stay on-line for short periods of time; others just drop in to check out services and prices.

Today is a Tuesday, usually the busiest day of the week, because it's when the Village Voice, a downtown New York weekly newspaper, puts its classified ads on-line the day before the paper hits the stands.

But today, most of the people coming in continue to be out-of-towners. Rick Roberts, who works for a software company in the San Francisco area but travels to New York often on business, comes in for a cup of coffee -- not computer access. ''It just looked like a comfortable place,'' he says. ''I knew I'd feel at home with all the computers.''

3:30 P.M. Johan Moerbeek is visiting New York from the Netherlands for 10 days. Before he came to New York, he looked up Internet cafes on the Web. He stopped in today to check his e-mail and to look at the Web site of the Dutch daily newspaper, Volkskrant, to catch up on the news back home.

3:45 P.M. Marsha McCreadie, 47, a free-lance writer, and Joan Harris, an actress and free-lance writer, come in for lunch. Ms. McCreadie says she might want to look something up on-line. Can someone help her?

No problem, says Ms. Groeneman.

An hour later, she's ready to look up information on a stock -- its performance, some regulatory filings, etc. She says she came in the first time some months back when she needed to send an article she had written by e-mail.

Ms. McCreadie says she had no idea what to do, so she came in and asked Ms. Groeneman for help. ''If I feel like I have to do something Internet-wise,'' she says, ''I would come in here.''

6:45 P.M. Maggie comes in to link into a mainframe computer at the City University of New York. She doesn't have a computer at home, and she is taking a World Civilization course that requires student participation in an on-line discussion. Her professor posts questions, and the students respond by electronically sending in answers and related ideas. More questions and answers are generated every day. ''It's an ongoing discussion,'' Maggie says.

7:55 P.M. Myles Reed and Megan O'Laughlin, new neighborhood residents, come in for some on-line time. They moved to New York from Santa Fe, N.M., a few months ago. In Santa Fe, they both had computers; now they don't even have one. Mr. Reed, a free-lance writer, uses one computer, Ms. O'Laughlin uses another. Mr. Reed is collaborating on a story with a friend of his back in Santa Fe; they started it when he still lived there, but now they are continuing it -- electronically. Mr. Reed adds a paragraph and e-mails the whole thing back to his friend. His friend will then do the same thing.

Mr. Reed drops in about twice a week, but this is Ms. O'Laughlin's first time. She may go back to school, so she is researching universities. She used a library earlier, but found the research process slow and frustrating.

''It's better to come here,'' she says. ''Everything's at your fingertips, you can have a coffee, have a sandwich, you don't have to dress up. It's comfortable.''

8:35 P.M. Jonathan Santos, 35, a club promoter, comes in about three times a week to check his e-mail, participate in chat groups and browse the Web.

''It's a nice hangout place,'' says Mr. Santos, who doesn't have a computer at home. Still, he says, he has concerns about the cyber-cafe concept. A cafe, he says, is really a social space, ''but with the Internet, people are by themselves. They don't interact....That element of getting to know people, it will be lost in the future. Everyone will be at their own Internet computer.''

9:15 P.M. Jackson, the night person, positions the camera on the machine that has videoconferencing software and hardware on it. Once he has the band that's playing tonight centered in the shot, he adjusts the video and audio settings so the broadcast is easy to see and hear. The Internet Cafe home page lists the Web address where people can go to see the broadcast. When Jackson is satisfied, he starts the broadcast.

The place fills up slowly with about two dozen people who come to hear the band. Still, a couple of Net surfers sit at machines near the door, oblivious to the music.

At one point, Mr. Perley says, he shut the computers down during the music, but there were enough people who wanted to use them that he decided to make them available again.

11:50 P.M. Everything is quiet again, with just a few people surfing and drinking tea or coffee.

One surfer is Alex, a 29-year-old neighborhood resident, who has stopped in to use the Net for the first time. He is doing research, trying to find a sidecar for his Vespa motor scooter; he wants the sidecar for his dog. He uses search engines and directory services to locate Vespa dealers.

There's also Jeff, an occasional visitor to the cafe who says he has come in tonight to ''browse the Web and talk to a few buddies in AOL chat rooms.'' Jeff met his wife in an AOL chat room in August 1996; they married in March of this year. He stays on-line chatting for two hours. ''This is the only [Internet Cafe] I know about,'' he says. ''It's nice, small and feels like home except you can't take off your shoes.''

12:20 A.M. Danny Watson, 25, lives around the corner and comes in ''probably once a month'' because he doesn't have a computer. He comes to look at the apartment listings, and chat with people on-line about holistic healing. Sometimes, he brings a holistic-medicine magazine with him, and just picks a Web address listed in it at random to check out the site.

Tonight, he comes in to read and send e-mail. ''Instead of writing letters,'' he says, ''I think it's nice to sit here and have tea and send e-mail.''

1 A.M. Marc Ameruso, a 31-year-old New Yorker, opened his first e-mail account about a month ago because, he says, ''every time I gave out my phone number, people asked for an e-mail address. So it seemed like I should have an e-mail address.''

Tonight is the first time he is checking his e-mail. He has one message; it is from a friend, Audrey Peterson, who happens to be sitting right next to him.

1:42 A.M. Tanja lives across the street and has been coming in since the place opened. She says the cafe offered a ''sweet deal'' for the first six months -- unlimited everything for a flat fee -- so she browsed the Web a lot back then. ''Now, it's $10 an hour,'' she says. ''I don't have the money for that anymore.''

She does keep an e-mail account at the cafe, though; tonight she has been corresponding with friends back home in Finland.

2:45 A.M. Closing time. Jackson finishes cleaning all the tables and puts the chairs up. He collects all the stray glasses and ashtrays and sweeps and mops the floors. He shuts down the computers, turns off the lights, locks the front door and pulls down the outside gates.