Forget Coffee — My Story of Working From a Bar.

After work and even on the weekends do you ever feel like, “I could really use some coffee and get some work done at the same time?” That work could be a side project you are building, maybe a blog post to write, or a slide deck to finish. Well, I am here to tell you that working in a bar is awesome and the coffee shop hype is not all it’s cracked up to be.

My Predicament

This is the issue that I am faced with 7 days a week. I live in Detroit. Detroit is a busy city, not as busy as Chicago or New York, but busy enough. I live right outside of downtown in a neighborhood called midtown. Midtown has a bunch of bars and coffee shops and are great places to hang out, BUT, a majority of the coffee shops I know of are always on jam. Even the coffee shops downtown are on jam. In order to get there, I have to catch a Lyft or use a MoGo and I am not about to pay. I could walk, but damn, that walk is 1.5 miles. It might do me some good though.

My Solution

One day last week I was looking forward to hit a coffee shop to get a conference talk done for SyntaxCon in South Carolina. The talk is about building accessible components using razor. If you are not familiar with accessibility or razor and can make it to SyntaxCon, please come to my talk. #ShamelessPlug

I decided to pull in to a bar called Third Street. I have been there plenty of times, but never to work; mostly drink and party. There was literally a small handful of people inside, oh, and they have wifi which of course I needed.

I sat down at a table, started a tab, and proceeded to work on my slides. But you might be asking, “Was there music playing?” Yes, yes there was. You might also be asking, “Weren’t the people too loud for you to focus?” And the answer is no. I sat at the table, drank 3-4 beers and finished my talk. That was my goal, finish the talk and send it to my buddy Scott Addie, he works on the .NET docs at Microsoft so his input was insanely valuable.

I felt immenssely productive sitting there in the bar with my beer and my machine and just started knocking out slides and researching. It felt great to have the goal in mind of finishing the talk THAT night, and I did. I believe I ended up with ~66 slides. Achievement Unlocked 🥇

Drinking and working at Third Street Bar

Do it!

If you have the opportunity to choose a crowded coffee shop or a chill bar, give it a thought and think which might be best for you. Personally for me, working in a bar is great. If you don’t drink beer, no problem, you can order coffee at bars too, or if the bar isn’t your scene, venture to your favorite coffee shop. The end goal is finish something, or at least make progress with whatever it is you are working on.

Thanks in part to Gant Laborde for inspiring me to write this. The original title was “Fuck Coffee - My Story of Working From a Bar.”