sootman's Journal: Remembering Cybersmith

So, it's already the end of 2006. That means it's been ten whole years since I worked at Cybersmith. I can't believe it. My life is just whipping by. But, be that as it may, I've always been into nostalgia, so I think I'll write down as much as I can remember about the place and see if anyone else has anything to add. Feel free to comment if you ever worked at one or visited.

Cybersmith, for those that don't know, was a cyber cafe, and one of the first in the SF Bay Area. (And probably close to one of the last--they never really took off quite like a lot of people expected them to.) In SF, there was CoffeeNet on Harrison, and Internet Alfredo right near where 280 dead-ends, and another one with a kinda generic name right near (almost under) the Bay Bridge, and Cybersmith was the fourth I found. I was actually doing a Yahoo! search (or maybe AltaVista) for cyber cafes in the area and I saw, in an article about CoffeeNet (probably this one), a mention of Cybersmith.

Long story short (too late!) I called, asked if they were hiring, and headed down right away. As it turns out, it was their very first day open when I showed up to apply. Being a techy type of person--exactly the kind of person who would be visiting cybercafes in 1996--it surprised me to learn that they were looking more for retail types than techy types, but luckily I had a few years of movie theater experience and I got the job. My first day, coincidentally, was the "official" grand opening a week or so later. Cybersmith was actually based on the East Coast, with 3 stores in and around Boston, and a few of the original employees were from Boston. The store was in a nice location on University in Palo Alto. My commutes were always off-hours and it took about a half hour to get there. This was when 101 was becoming pretty high-tech--on the way to work I passed Oracle (this was right around when the Internet was starting to take off, and they opened a new Benz dealership right next to Oracle), and Excite, and Sybase, I think, and a few places like that. Now 101 is just packed with those places but when it was all new was very cool to see happening.

Aaaaanyway... Cybersmith. It was a very cool place. It was in the 'small town' part of Palo Alto--just a short walk to Pizza-a-Go-Go, yum--and the store itself was nice. Real wood floor and custom cherry-wood furniture. All the computer stations had these curved benches so 2 or 3 people could share a computer. The monitors (17" Compaq CRTs) swiveled too.

Ah yes, the computers--Compaq Presarios, except for a couple Macs in the back where you could take your picture and put it on a shirt or mousepad, or make a screensaver. We had (let's see if I remember) 16 Internet stations which were 133 MHz Pentiums, and 12 game stations that were 166s. I always thought the fast Internet would be a big draw but it was the games that kept asses in seats. People would come in and play Command and Conquer for hours. Most kids came in to game and most adults had fast access at work by then.

Besides computers, we had four N64s--some of the first in the country, I was told--and two Dreamcasts. Also a cool two-player VR game (name?) with those big headsets, which ran off of a 486 with two graphics cards (one for each eye) and was a whole lot of fun. Also a dopey morphing photo booth, an attraction we called "smellovision" (which had a larger headset and simulated flying over stuff, complete with scents) and two arcade-style games--snow skiing and jet ski. The original manager was a really cool guy who could take first place on the ski game standing backwards--it was quite impressive to watch. I never got that good, but after many plays (employees played for free, heh) I could do a respectable run on the bunny slope. The original manager left soon after I started--like, a week or so--and the rest of the staff was just a regular good staff.

We also served food, though, sadly for a cyber cafe, there was a catch: because of how laws were at the time, we weren't able to let the people wander around, or even use the computers, with food--it had to be eaten in the dining area. Kinda took the "cafe" out of "cybercafe" (or took out the "cyber;" your choice) not being able to eat while at a machine. But the food was really, really good. I ate there about half the time (our employee discount made the prices reasonable); the other nights (I almost always worked nights) I went to the aforementioned Pizza-a-Go-Go. (Great pizza, and they had some kinda deal where you could get a slice, a drink and a shirt for like five bucks. I've still got mine, and wear it, but it's kinda falling apart--I really need to see about getting a new one.) The one thing I remember being excellent (the lady who ran the counter was really quite good) were the focaccia sandwiches. The pizza was pretty good, though Go Go had better pies, and more variety, of course. (Mmm, pesto.)

So, that's about it. I loved that place to death, though I only worked there a few months. I had been mostly out of work all that summer--just temping some--but right after I started, I got a call from a place I used to work at, wanting me back for substantially more money, so (to keep my taxes simple, since the new/old job was in another state) I worked through the last full pay period that I could and still get my last check before the year ended. So my last day was probably just before Christmas. I remember taking my sister there and we had out picture taken and put onto a mousepad for my aunt. (Just so happens it was a really good picture.) The rest of my family came by once or twice.

I hated working the "door" (standing outside trying to get people in) but otherwise it was great. After hours we'd play networked Quake (hence this article's icon), joining a game found on stomped.com if there weren't enough of us in-house for a good match. I got my ass kicked more than I'd like to admit but it was still damn good fun--I've always liked playing video games against human opponents rather than computer-generated enemies. It's much more fun to play against someone who's just as fast, smart, and well-armed as you, rather than wave after wave of beasts with bad AI that you just mow through, or ultra-powerful bosses that take 20 tries to beat.

So, that's about it. Kinda random, no big point or conclusion, just some assorted memories from a happy time in my life. Anyone have anything to add?

Now, Cybersmith--my store, and the whole company (a division/sister of Learningsmith and Booksmith, like 'blacksmith' or 'goldsmith' I guess)--is long gone. (As is almost every other place I've ever worked at, sadly.) It stayed around for a couple years but it never did that great, I guess. I mean, it did OK, it was never totally empty, and sometimes it was quite packed, plus birthday parties were surprisingly popular, but I guess Palo Alto has some pretty steep rent and it takes a lot to stick around in that area. I visited a couple times, went and saw Titanic with my old boss once, but after a couple years, it was no more. It stayed empty for a while. I forget what's in there now, but last time I was there, I think I remember smiling when I noticed they still had the same light wood floor. (Which, by the way, I had to mop most nights. Well, I didn't have to, but someone had to, and no one else ever did.)

Huzzah!

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

I never even knew there was one out there. I hung out at one of the Boston-area ones sometimes right after it opened my freshman year of high school. Mostly the computers weren't worth using unless someone else forgot to sign off of one and we could use them with someone else's money, but I remember they had a couple Saturns that winter before they came out in the US, with Virtua Fighter and Panzer Dragoon. The weird VR thing you mentioned didn't work all that great, but it was kind of fun to try it.

I