Conventional and unconventional cafés

Yesterday I went to a café here in JQ and I found it surprising that all the cafés (more like the two I've actually visited) had board games like scrabble, yahtzee and an assortment of other lame social games open for the public to use. Upon seeing these board games yellowing with antiquity, I quickly asked why other cafés in Toronto don't do the same... or at least the larger coffee shops that everyone goes to like Starbucks, second cup or Timothy's. More or less, all of these cafés attempt to give off this cozy vibe with cozy couches (alliteration!) and cozy corridors (X 2) and charming baristas, all perfected in the name of providing customers a relaxed environment in which to cultivate cultured conversation (epic alliteration!). The last part doesn't really make sense, but that's the beauty of alliteration; it doesn't have to.
Things I've noticed:
1) BEWITCHING BARISTAS
- baristas must be either gay, extremely attractive or outgoing enough to make a conversation with strangers. A homosexual baristas are the best because they tend to incorporate words like "honey" or "sweetie" in their everyday conversation. This, inturn, leads to happy customers! e.g. "here's your frapp sweetie" vs. "here's your frapp". BIG DIFFERENCE.

2) SOME SORT OF CHALK MURAL
- Just put chalk boards everywhere writing the menu, random quotes, anything. I find that a lot of coffee shops have utter randomness on the chalkboards that I can never understand and to me, always seems like the product of maijuana in the brain. As my friend Shane would say "people dig that shit". And yes indeed, they do. I don't really understand how, or why, but all the cafés seem to have at least one chalkboard in there somewhere... who knew, a little bit of sodium bicarbonate can go a long way. Ew, get out of here SCIENCE!

3) NON MAINSTREAM MUSIC
- the more unknown, the better. It makes the environment appear "cool" and less mainstream. I don't know how they do this (sneaky starbucks people) but even though I completely ACKNOWLEDGE the fact that Starbucks is a multinational corporation, I still feel like I'm in a tiny, unique café even when there are about a million others exactly the same. OH and the Beatles. They always play the Beatles.



Geez, what a long post.