A GUIDE · UNION STREET

Where to work quietly around Union Street

We run a small room with two desks in the back of a shop on Union Street, so we have an obvious interest here. We’ve still tried to write this the way we’d tell a friend — including the times you shouldn’t bother with us.

The libraries

There are two branches within about eight minutes’ walk. Marina Branch, 1890 Chestnut St, is the closer of the two. Golden Gate Valley Branch, 1801 Green St, is a beautiful room and a minute further. Both are free and both are properly quiet. They close as early as five or six most days, and only run to eight midweek — Marina on Wednesday, Golden Gate Valley on Wednesday and Thursday.

The catch isn’t the hours. It’s that no seat is held for you, so on a weekday afternoon you can walk over and find nowhere to sit. And there is steady movement — people coming in, browsing, leaving — which some people never notice and some people cannot work through.

If you haven’t tried them, try them first. They’re free and they’re good, and we’d rather you found that out than paid us to learn it.

The cafes

Most of Union Street is workable before about eleven in the morning. After that the music comes up, the grinder runs, and the tables turn over. By four the afternoon crowd has arrived and by five most kitchens are closing. If you work early and finish early, a cafe is the cheapest good option in the neighbourhood.

Wrecking Ball Coffee, 2271 Union — the serious cup on the street, and they close at four. It fills up and gets loud by mid-morning, and it shuts before most people are done. Coffee Bodega, 2201 Union — quick and unfussy, also four. Fine for a short session, not for an afternoon of work. Union Street Coffee Roastery, 2191 Union — a little quieter, until five. Telve, 2163 Union — the one that stays open into the evening, till seven. Rose’s Cafe, 2298 Union — open latest of all, till nine, and the least like a work room. Café Thuma, 2197 Chestnut St — coffee inside the Thuma furniture showroom, so it is calmer and less echoey than a normal cafe, and nobody minds a laptop. Open 10am–6pm on weekdays, 9am on weekends. It closes at six.

If your concentration collapses when someone takes a call at the next table, you already know cafes don’t work for you, and no amount of good coffee fixes it.

The space that closed

NEON, at 1974 Union St, was a drop-in workspace one block west of here. It has closed permanently and its website is gone. People liked it — 239 reviews and a five-star average — and if you are reading this because you were looking for it, that is why you could not find it.

We are not a replacement for it. NEON had an open door and an events calendar; our room has two desks and a rule about phone calls. If what you wanted was somewhere to work near Union Street, we are one block east, open until 7pm.

Home

The problem with home isn’t noise. It’s that the room where you rest and the room where you work are the same room, and after a while neither one does its job properly. Leaving the house is often the whole treatment.

Our room

Two desks in the back of Andon Market, 2102 Union St. Power and a monitor at both desks, and a sink in the room if you want to rinse a mug or fill a bottle. Phones on silent, calls outside, soft voices — that’s the entire social contract.

Your first hour is free through Sunday, August 23 — you only pay if you stay longer. After that it’s five dollars an hour, twenty-five for the day, and ten dollars flat if you come after four o’clock and stay till we close at seven. Paid at the counter on your way out. Nothing to book, no one to email, no application. Open Tuesday to Saturday, ten to seven, and Sundays ten to six. Closed Mondays.

What you’re paying for is not the hours and it isn’t the coffee. It’s that the desk is yours until you leave, and that nobody will take a call at it.

The honest limitation is the size. There are two desks. If both are taken when you arrive, we’ll tell you at the counter, and sessions here tend to be short enough that waiting is sometimes reasonable. If you need a guaranteed desk at a guaranteed hour every day, we are the wrong room and a bigger place is the right one.

How to choose