There are fewer coffee shops per capita in Manhattan compared to places like Portland and SF. I'm assuming because rents are so expensive. However, you were looking in the wrong neighborhoods. The coffee shops are in places like East/West Village and the Lower East Side.
What you are experiencing in Pittsburgh is a function of cheap rent. I lived in Minneapolis many years ago and the coffee shop scene was similar to what you described. The attitudes toward people hanging out and not buying anything are much different when the rent on a space is $900/m instead of $9000/m.
I wouldn't say that electricity costs nothing. Ritual Roasters in SF said that laptop users were costing them upwards of $2000/m in electricity charges.
Ritual used to have a bazillion power outlets you could plug your laptop into, and they'd have them covered up only on the weekends. During the second week of March 2007 (a date that shall live in infamy) they covered up nearly all of their power outlets permanently in an effort to encourage higher turnover and cut their $2,000/month electric bill down.
They didn't say that laptop users were costing them $2000 / month, but that they were trying to cut their $2000 / month bill down. Big difference.
If the coffee shop is open 18 hours per day, 30 days a month, and the average laptop pulls 50w, which costs $.20 per kWh, they'd need to have like 350-400 laptops plugged in every single hour that they're open to rack up $2k / month in costs.
If you bring your laptop in and sit for six hours, you've just cost them seven cents in electricity.
The average laptop today pulls in far more than 50w. If everyone was using a net book with a fully charged battery is's one thing, but while charging I have measured up to 200w from a "gaming" laptop. Plus you need to double the energy costs as they guy sitting there and his laptop both increase cooling costs.
Rerun the numbers and you can easily get 500+$ / month in energy costs from people just sitting there using a laptop.
I was a regular at Ritual back when they covered the plugs. I recall:
1) Most people there were either blogging, checking email, surfing myspace and craigslist, or doing the newfangled Rails thing. The machines were 90% Macs.
2) The place was cooled by opening the back door and turning on a big floor fan. On hot days, this lowered the temperature from unbearable to merely very hot.
In your hypothetical air conditioned coffee shop where everyone is playing WoW on behemoth laptops, $500/month incurred by laptops is possible. But for Ritual Roasters circa 2004, definitely not.
(btw, I thought it was a fantastic idea when they covered up the plugs)
What you are experiencing in Pittsburgh is a function of cheap rent. I lived in Minneapolis many years ago and the coffee shop scene was similar to what you described. The attitudes toward people hanging out and not buying anything are much different when the rent on a space is $900/m instead of $9000/m.
I wouldn't say that electricity costs nothing. Ritual Roasters in SF said that laptop users were costing them upwards of $2000/m in electricity charges.
Ritual used to have a bazillion power outlets you could plug your laptop into, and they'd have them covered up only on the weekends. During the second week of March 2007 (a date that shall live in infamy) they covered up nearly all of their power outlets permanently in an effort to encourage higher turnover and cut their $2,000/month electric bill down.
http://sf.wikispot.org/Ritual_Coffee_Roasters
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/03/...