Ex Bibliotheca

The life and times of Zack Weinberg.

Thursday, 18 September 2003

# 11 PM

So now I live in San Francisco. The south end of Noe Valley, to be precise, near the intersection of Church and 30th. I'm writing this from a cybercafe on Mission, unfortunately they charge you for wireless access. This is silly. The right way to handle wireless is to offer it as a free convenience; the cost to the cafe is trivial (call it $100/month for a reasonably chunky DSL hookup that can handle multiple simultaneous users) and if the demographics are right they'll draw enough additional business that it'll be worth it. It's like the peanuts at a bar. (See generally this article by Mitch Wagner and Cory Doctorow.)

Further to my earlier rant about ATM blipverts, the nearest BoA location to me is now on Mission Avenue. It has different blipverts — much less obnoxious ones, just still frames with no sound — and it has them in both English and Spanish. I suspected the lack of Spanish ads at the ATM in Berkeley had something to do with demographics, and this confirms it. The Mission district has lots of Hispanic families, both working and middle class. Of course, so does Berkeley, but the bank's ad people may not have realized this yet.