From the coffee bars in Lake View and Hyde Park to the House of Blues on the Near North Side, the night life is the byte life, as computers take the virtual leap from supporting roles to star attractions.
Just a few months ago, a cafe or corner tavern could stick a laptop on a back table and claim to be an Information Age novelty. Now at one hot java hut, it’s possible to peek through the door and mistake the place for a Bill Gates think tank.
Room for everybody
Screenz Digital Universe at 2717 N. Clark St. in Lincoln Park boasts a whopping 45 computers with high-speed, idiot-proof access to the Internet. That’s four times the number of its closest Chicago rival (Screenz also serves coffee in three sizes, “kilo,” “mega” and “giga”).
“There’s not a place in the city … that has as many as 45 terminals,” claimed Daniel Kite, Screenz’s founder and chief executive officer. “They haven’t gone to this kind of level to create the environment we have.”
Spotless, sleek and bright, the atmosphere at Screenz seems perfect for computer classes, which are offered. But members of the hard-core coffeehouse crowd might not find it their cup of Joe.
“It’s kind of like a Kinko’s with coffee,” offered Jason Trock of the Interactive Bean at 1137 W. Belmont in Lake View, a few blocks away. “You walk into Screenz and it’s anesthetized. We have more of an Old World cafe feel.”
The Interactive Bean sports only 10 terminals, but has a fluffy couch and bragging rights as the region’s first haunt for the mocha-and-modem set. “First in the Midwest, first in Chicago (a year on Dec. 15, 1996),” Trock said. “But there’s room for everybody. The market is far from saturated.”
Neither is it limited to places that serve their brew with or without caffeine. When House of Blues opened at 329 N. Dearborn St. on the Near North Side, all that Hollywood glitz overshadowed a hidden network of Silicon Valley smarts.
Designed as a model for future clubs in the chain, the Chicago venue is a computer user’s dream, with more than 100 power outlets and enough modem jacks to host a computer convention. “They’re in every bar, every table, every booth and they will allow you to connect (to the Internet) at the highest speed possible,” said Marc Schiller, vice president of the House of Blues new media division. “But we’re not
creating a cybercafe. There isn’t a facility like this, and I can say this with confidence, anywhere in the world.”
Bringing music to the world
The Chicago area has become a hub for the cellular phone industry, and wireless-modem computers mark the latest rage in computer technology.
“A lot of the new top-of-the-line laptops are going wireless,” McCandlish said. “Cellular modems are expensive, but they’re already getting cheaper. Look at the price difference between alphanumeric pagers a year or two ago and now — and most of those things are good enough to send small e-mail messages.”
Of course, a wireless revolution could make all those modem jacks obsolete. But House of Blues would still remain a pioneer in combining audio, video, phone lines and the Internet — a blend known in electronic parlance as “interactive media.”
“You’ve got bands like the Neville Brothers in New Orleans and Buddy Guy in Chicago who’ve got audiences all over the world, but they can’t get arrested on TV,” Schiller said. “Through the Internet, we can broadcast live concerts of these artists and bypass radio and television.”
While TV-quality video on the Internet is still being perfected, the music from Chicago’s House of Blues concerts goes straight from the sound board to computers everywhere, in real-time stereo via Real
Audio at http://www.liveconcerts.com.
Here’s the plan: Musicians at the Chicago club are able to collaborate in real time with players on House of Blues stages throughout the world, even as patrons don headsets (or log into chat rooms) and converse with guests at those same clubs. For business users, the club has video conferencing capability –and for home users who want to take a peek inside, House of Blues has robotic cameras that can be controlled through a Web browser.
“We’ve created an intelligent network that’s built into the structure of the building,” Schiller said. “It’s all to say, `Let’s celebrate this American music and culture, and bring it to the world.’ “
Fast track to the future
At Screenz, Kite has similar visions of expanding nationwide. “We look at this as the computer-friendly version of Blockbuster,” said Kite (who even hired the video chain’s architect to design the interior of his cafe). “People want to be able to access what’s out in cyberspace, but they don’t necessarily want to know how to operate a computer.”
Screenz customers receive a card they swipe cash machine-style at the terminals. For between 13 and 19 cents a minute, they can play games, use programs like Microsoft Office Publisher, or surf the Internet. If they get stuck, they’re already patched into the store’s help desk.
“It’s all at the click of a button,” Kite said. “People have said that the World Wide Web is unwieldy, they don’t know how to find things. What we’ve done is collect a catalog of the best sites available.”
Like House of Blues, Screenz uses special T1 lines for its Internet connections, which work up to 100 times faster than typical modems. “If you’re using a T1 line, it’s like turning the pages of a book,” Kite said. “At home, you can click on something, go to the convenience store, come back and it’s still loading.”
Kite estimates that 60 percent of his customers come to Screenz for Internet access, 30 percent to play games, and the remaining 10 percent for services such as America Online, Prodigy and CompuServe.
Kite makes it look easy. In a few minutes, he moved between Web sites designed to find an apartment, book a flight and check the invoice price of a new car. “These are all the practical things people will come to do,” he said.
Not everything at Screenz works flawlessly. A bad connection between a microphone and headset spoiled a demonstration of the in-store classroom.
A demystifying experience
“I can imagine what it’s like for a startup,” said the Interactive Bean’s Trock. He added that it took 12 months for his place “to get up and running smoothly.”
Aside from the computers — which sport nicknames like “Latte,” “Cappuccino” and “Espresso” –the Interactive Bean resembles any number of laid-back Chicago coffee houses, with its cherry-stained hardwood floor, dim lighting and Irish-flavored folk on the CD player. One of the bartenders lives upstairs.
“We like to keep it on a personal level, ad hoc and from the hip,” said Trock, the picture of casual attitude in his flannel shirt and Doc Martens. “Our idea is to bring a social atmosphere to what is typically an anti-social behavior, using computers.”
At the Interactive Bean, the terminals sit on unusual, mushroom-shaped tables. A half-dozen people can sit together, facing each other and the computer.
Or they can fly solo. On a recent Friday afternoon, Kevin O’Malley of Lake View sat alone at his tube, scrolling through e-mail. “This is right near where I live, and I don’t have a computer at home,” said O’Malley, a researcher for the Chicago Transportation Authority. “But I do have an e-mail address and this is my only access.”
He paused. “And the coffee’s pretty good, I guess.”
Grandmothers welcome
To log on, O’Malley grabs a Trivial Pursuit card from the coffee bar; a word highlighted in one of the answers is the computer’s password. His time is tracked on a colored chalkboard (rates run 16 cents a minute or $9.50 an hour).
“Over 50 percent of our revenues come from computer usage on a daily basis,” Trock said. “They do pay for themselves.”
In typical coffeehouse style, art shows and live music are part of the plan at Interactive Bean. The club even hosted an Internet “test drive” of the 1997 Buick Regal; patrons had a chance to examine the car via computer and take it on a simulated test run.
“This stuff is so easy to use, I had my grandmother down here using it,” Trock said.
“We’re just trying to dispel the whole geekiness of this stuff.”
