It's the way of blogging that you sort of wish some ill-considered and poorly-worded posts would be forgotten rather than linked a lot, but since my late night musings on Portland, Seattle, and DC seem to be taking the latter route, best to clarify. My point was not that "black people don't like coffee shops," but that compared to a lot of other cities that are considered attractive destinations for techie white folks, DC's residential districts have a distinct lack of coffee shops (and other fun stuff). Matt's argument about Mocha Hut actually hurts his case, because Mocha Hut, along with Busboys and Poets and 14U, are new businesses that have only entered the U Street corridor as it became...whiter. Indeed, as people like Matt, who now hangs out at those coffee shops, moved there. In this case, white is actually standing in for affluent, because the sort of people who spend $4 on a latte and demand wireless internet for their laptops tend to have money in the bank, whatever their race.
