The hippest internet cafe of 1995

Opened in 1995 on St. Marks in the East Village, the @ Cafe was one of the first (and coolest) internet cafes in the US.¹ They had a bunch of computers, a T1 line (at $9000/mo!), a hip menu including alcoholic beverages, and no idea what they were doing. They didn’t plan for ventilation for all the hardware, so they cooled the server room with a garbage can full of ice!

And I was glad to hear the CU-SeeMe shout out at the very end of the video. I think about that app every time I hear about something “new” like Facebook Live, Periscope, or Snapchat. Talk about being ahead of its time…CU-SeeMe was video chat that predated the popularity of the web.

1. At the time, very few people even knew what the “@” symbol was. One article featured in the video described it like so: “that @ is pronounced ‘at’ in case you were curious, and it’s often used in e-mails, the way most hackers and computer freaks communicate with one another”. LOL.↩

• Internet
• NYC
• video