An SL Coffee Shop is a chance to visit with old friends and meet new ones. The crowded SL Dance Clubs can be fun sometimes, and meat markets other times. Why the SL Coffee Shops aren’t crowded, IDK. But they are lovely spaces where you can have a lovely time.

I feel like, in the physical world (PW), coffee shops of the past were more social places. Especially the unique, funky, one-off coffee shops. The wild success of Starbucks has strangely turned the once slow experience of coffee into a speedy assembly line. When Starbucks used to have a line of people a block long waiting to get coffee at least you might speak to the person next to you. Today the line is a line of cars. It’s not so social a place. It’s more a caffeine delivery mechanism.

The many Second Life coffee shops are all unique, rich, individualistic spaces. Almost always with lots of cozy, over-stuffed furniture you can sink into while you enjoy an intoxicating cup of liquid spirituality. They have all the ingredients of great social spaces. Every decade or so someone like my daughter Odia might go to an SL coffee shop and run in to a great friend of the past like Hero that she hasn’t seen for 10 years. But that’s rare! Mostly SL coffee shops are empty.

Even if we only occasionally meet old and new friends at SL coffee shops, they are still great places to drag friends to for a nice visit. Be sure to join Aero’s Empty Coffee Shop Club SL Group for notices of Coffee Shop Meetups and LM‘s for new discoveries of coffee shops around the grid.

And every now and then take a look at your SL friends list. Who’s online ATM? Who haven’t you visited with in a while? IM them and ask them to meet you at one of the great coffee shops featured here! It’s a nice way to catch up with a friend. It’s a nice way to enjoy and patronize the beautiful SL coffee shops people have built. Unlike coffee shops in the PW, these coffee shops weren’t built to turn a profit, they are pure labors of love. Share the love!

~ Kate