board game cafe in the village, pay by the hour / person - they have a *really* big collection of games, as well as drinks. also the chess forum, which is $5/hour and has a lot of really cool + beautiful chess sets to look at (and is a palestinian-owned business)
also, coffee shops; caffe reggio in the village is ~100 years old and has great vibes (but not great coffee), think coffee has good vibes and great coffee
Related Recs
The coziest jawn in Harvard Sq. They used to let you play the barista in blitz chess for a free cup of coffee, but I think too many baristas got beaten by the Smith Center chess gods so they don't do that anymore. But the vibe is still there. Former beatniks, current cool kids, and the rare Harvard student without their laptop. They turn into a wine bar on weekends, too.
Oct 8, 2024
🥐
Ones that are also cool and a whole vibe. Personally I like qahwah house in WV and outro and %arabica. But I’m open to more recs thank uuuu
Jan 24, 2024
☕
My magical, not-so-secret hideout at school. Come for the $3.00 frothy chai, stay to eavesdrop on chainsmoking hairdressers recounting their lives to the resident artist, sketching away. It's for locals and graduate students, tucked under failing real estate offices on Calder Ave. Limited hours and nothing flashy, except for the old-style bean roaster jammed right next to the door.
Reminiscent of Prestogeorge in the Pittsburgh Strip. Pleasant and intimate. Charming baristas. When the weather's warm, perch outside and people-watch from your safe, buried trench. Also merchants of olive oil, tinned fish, and all your italio-american quick fixes.
Jan 23, 2024
Top Recs from @alaiyo
Mar 23, 2024
a treatise on the attention economy - checked it out on libby and got through it over the course of a work day, a lot of really interesting social and cultural explorations about how time itself is the final frontier of hypercapitalism and what decommodification of our attention and time should look like
the book starts with a story about the oldest redwood tree in oakland and how the only reason it’s still standing is bc it’s unmillable, and how being uncommercializable is essential to our survival. it ends with an exploration of alt social media platforms (mostly p2p ones) and what keeping the good parts of the social internet and rejecting the bad ones should look like
all in all a super valuable read; my only nitpick with the book is that odell isn’t just charting the attention economy but also attempting to “solve” it and relate it back to broader concepts about labor and social organizing, but her background is in the arts which leads to some really wonderful references to drive the points home while also missing some critical racial + socioeconomic analyses that one would expect (or at least really appreciate) from the book she promises to deliver in the introduction. but this does also make the book easier to read which is good because everyone should definitely engage with what she has to say
will definitely be revisiting
Mar 25, 2024