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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCrammed Into Cheap Bunks, Dreaming of Future Digital Glory
SAN FRANCISCO From the outside its just a beige three-story building in a quiet residential neighborhood. But inside, in a third-floor apartment, there are enough Ikea bunk beds to sleep 10 people, crammed into two bedrooms. The living room is bare except for a futon, a tiny desk and laptop power cables strewed across the hardwood floor like a nest of snakes.
The tenants, mostly men in their 20s, sleep next to heaps of dirty laundry. There is no television set; the men watch online video, on laptops with headphones. On a recent afternoon, 23-year-old Steve El-Hage, who came here from Toronto in May, ate slices of ham straight out of the package: As you can see, I was going to make a sandwich, but I didnt get there.
This is not some kind of dorm, but a hacker hostel. Its one of several in the Bay Area that offer short- or long-term stays for aspiring tech entrepreneurs on the bottom rung of the Silicon Valley ladder, those who havent yet achieved Facebook-level riches. These establishments put a twist on the long tradition of communal housing for tech types by turning it into a commercial enterprise.
The San Francisco hostel is part of a minichain of three bunk-bed-stuffed residences under the same management, all places where young programmers, designers and scientists can work, eat and sleep.
These are not so different from crowded apartments that cater to immigrants. But many tenants are here not so much for the cheap rent $40 a night as for the camaraderie and idea-swapping. And potential tenants are screened to make sure they will contribute to the mix. Justin Carden, a 29-year-old software engineer who is staying in another hostel, in Menlo Park, while working on a biotech start-up, talks about the place as if it were Stanford.
The tenants, mostly men in their 20s, sleep next to heaps of dirty laundry. There is no television set; the men watch online video, on laptops with headphones. On a recent afternoon, 23-year-old Steve El-Hage, who came here from Toronto in May, ate slices of ham straight out of the package: As you can see, I was going to make a sandwich, but I didnt get there.
This is not some kind of dorm, but a hacker hostel. Its one of several in the Bay Area that offer short- or long-term stays for aspiring tech entrepreneurs on the bottom rung of the Silicon Valley ladder, those who havent yet achieved Facebook-level riches. These establishments put a twist on the long tradition of communal housing for tech types by turning it into a commercial enterprise.
The San Francisco hostel is part of a minichain of three bunk-bed-stuffed residences under the same management, all places where young programmers, designers and scientists can work, eat and sleep.
These are not so different from crowded apartments that cater to immigrants. But many tenants are here not so much for the cheap rent $40 a night as for the camaraderie and idea-swapping. And potential tenants are screened to make sure they will contribute to the mix. Justin Carden, a 29-year-old software engineer who is staying in another hostel, in Menlo Park, while working on a biotech start-up, talks about the place as if it were Stanford.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/06/technology/at-hacker-hostels-living-on-the-cheap-and-dreaming-of-digital-glory.html
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Crammed Into Cheap Bunks, Dreaming of Future Digital Glory (Original Post)
FarCenter
Jul 2012
OP
midnight
(26,624 posts)1. Is this NAFTA at work?
FarCenter
(19,429 posts)2. It's more like aspiring actors flocking to Hollywood or Broadway, trying to get a big break.
Or athletes struggling in a farm team.
phantom power
(25,966 posts)3. something about this reminds me of...
Neal Stephenson's old novel Snowcrash, with Hiro the hacker living in a repurposed storage bay.