I am always interested in identifying trends, particularly when they reveal something about how we want to live. I have also spent much of my career creating experiences that bring people together. Recently in San Francisco, I experienced what felt like a new version of both.
Start at Hedge Coffee in the Mission. Hedge is a coffee roaster, and on Sundays there is a DJ playing vinyl. People come for coffee and music, and then they stay. They listen. They talk. They hang out. Something we have traditionally associated with nighttime—a DJ, music, gathering for an extended period of time—is happening during the day, without drinking being the reason to be there.
This is happening in San Francisco and elsewhere. Coffee shops are becoming places for DJ sets and daytime parties, and people are gathering around music, coffee, and being together. Some are calling them coffee raves. The name matters less to me than the shift: people are finding new ways and new reasons to be together.
From Hedge, get on a bike and ride to Mission Dolores Park. The distance is short, and suddenly the gathering moves outside. People spread across the grass with food, music, dogs, children, books, friends, and whatever version of a day in the park they want to create.
Art has always offered me another version of this. We gather around an experience. We look, listen, encounter something together, and share space with people we know and people we don’t. Whatever brought us there becomes the starting point for what happens between us.
Coffee, matcha, music, parks, art, whatever you are interested in can create the conditions for community. Right now, people seem to be reconsidering when, where, and why we come together. I’m excited to see where this takes us!
.JPG)
