Diesel Cafe closes at 11:30, starting April 16

[ron_newman]

A sign at Diesel regretfully announces that they will close at 11:30 pm every night, starting next Monday.

They say they aren't getting enough business during that last half hour, and that the current midnight closing makes it hard for staff to get home on public transportation after cleaning up for the night.

Comments

[pushupstairs.livejournal.com]

I can definitely feel for the public transportation aspect.

thankfully, I just got car insurance yesterday and my registration reinstated, so unless I'm going to work, f the T!

[jadasc.livejournal.com]

Shame, that. I was hoping they'd be one of the places that might benefit from the discussions of later business closing times in the Square. YMG also closes at midnight, and it'd be nice to be able to leave work and grab a cup of coffee.

[alphacygni]

I'm impressed and pleased that they consider their employees' transportation needs, instead of just saying "be here when we need you, or be out the door", and forcing their employees to put yet more cars into the mix in Davis.

[insignia11.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. Who drinks coffee at midnight anyway?

[ron_newman]

night owls.

The woman at the counter yesterday told me that Austin has 24-hour coffeehouses. MIT used to have one in its student center. Boston used to have one called "Curious Liquids", at Park and Beacon streets.

ah curious liquids

[cthulhia]

just thinking about its demise (it turned into a Fox News office) makes me morose all over again.

Re: ah curious liquids

[joyfulkel.livejournal.com]

amen

Re: ah curious liquids

[spatch]

There's insult, injury, insult to injury, and then there's a goddamn travesty.

How I miss the coffee drinks and decks of UNO cards the size of a brick standing on its end.

Re: ah curious liquids

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

Aw! I have oatmeal for you!

[closetalker11.livejournal.com]

I miss Curious Liquids. It was dirty, but I liked it anyway. It was my favorite Cafe Au Lait in Boston.

[jenaflynn.livejournal.com]

Yep, Austin used to have Mojo's Daily grind.. it was open 24/7 and it was freaking lovely. A nice little coffee house, just off Guadalupe. I fondly recall sitting outside on New years day, enjoying a 65 degree Texas winter day. ;-)

[syntheticnature.livejournal.com]

MIT used to have one in its student center

Used to? Well, crap.

[ron_newman]

Maybe does again now. I haven't been over there in a year or two. I know it shut down at one point for lack of sufficient business. When I went to MIT, there was no LaVerde's Market; now there is.

[rifmeister.livejournal.com]

It no longer exists. There is still a room one can hang out in, but nothing is sold there anymore.

[miraclaire.livejournal.com]

I very much miss Curious Liquids.

[pyrric.livejournal.com]

People who work nights.

Signed,
Just getting home from work.

[theloriest.livejournal.com]

college students

[ifotismeni]

caffiene addicts. last night i drank a large coffee and went right to bed. :)

More late night would be nice...

[mjperson.livejournal.com]

When Dolly's was open all night near Davis, we'd go in there frequently at 3AM for omlettes and coffee. There were always other people in there getting their night fuel.

Re: More late night would be nice...

[spatch]

We're already mourning Curious Liquids elsewhere in this thread. Now bringing Dolly's into the mix is just really bringing me down, man.

Night people are the best people! We need our sustenance!

[lolichan.livejournal.com]

I love Diesel Cafe. And I can understand, especially about the T. .. . The fucking T should run later than it does... They charge us more money, they should run trains later. Dammit.

[secretlyironic.livejournal.com]

Yet another reason the T should run all night: it's really hurting the Davis Sq. economy.

[mattdm.livejournal.com]

In MBTA improvement miracle land, sure. :)

That comes way after "making the current service run well" on my list.

[secretlyironic.livejournal.com]

Yeah. If I had a trillion dollars, man would I change the way they ran that show.

* Escalators and elevators that work
* Service extensions-- all the lines should go further out. Red line to Lexington, anyone?
* All-night service
* Winter non-suckage
* Green line completely replaced with underground service using real trains.
* Wider stairways in Park St.
* A one-or-two-day grace period on monthly passes so there's a couple days you can buy a new pass in the next month, so as not to totally overload the system.

[spatch]

Considering a great deal of track and tunnel maintenance (well, theoretical maintenance) is done after hours and they don't have the extra tracks to shunt trains through as New York and other cities do, all-night train service is pretty much a no-can-do.

Boy, wouldn't it be a great idea if, say, they ran surface buses along the subway lines after the subway closing? They could do that all night, even! Gee, I sure know a lot of people who would use a service like that, and by golly gosh, there's absolutely no way the T could mismanage that kind of venture so badly that they end up getting rid of it and blaming the ridership in the process.

(hckc-pw!)

[ron_newman]

A better solution might be DC Metro's. Run trains an extra two hours, but only on Friday and Saturday nights.

[elements.livejournal.com]

If they'd run actual trains on weekend nights instead of buses, I think that would seriously have helped the Night Owl keep ridership and stay alive. A huge part of the challenge with the Night Owl was figuring out where to find some of the surface buses, and then having to wait outside in whatever weather, sometimes for half an hour, at Govt Center. If it had been the same wait time but indoors at Park St I'd have used it more.

[mattdm.livejournal.com]

At the time, I heard the rumor that when deciding the revenue brought in by the night own busses, they didn't count monthly passholders. Because, y'know, they've already got all the money they were going to get from us.

Anyone know?

[ron_newman]

I don't know. It is true that monthly passholders didn't add revenue when they took Night Owl buses. Later the Night Owl bus fare was raised, and monthly passes were no longer valid on them. This is consistent with the practice in Amsterdam, for instance.

[mattdm.livejournal.com]

But it's a logical fallacy. They have no way of knowing -- and to my knowledge, never even attempted to find out -- how much having that service available influenced people's decisions to buy monthly passes in the first place. Especially given that the passes aren't really that great of a deal, it's not correct to not count them.

Then they complain about declining ridership.

[tut21.livejournal.com]

Sounds reasonable to me. Now how can we convince Common Grounds to stay open until 11:30 too? :-)

[ron_newman]

what and where is Common Grounds?

[tut21.livejournal.com]

I knew that looked wrong when I typed it. I meant True Grounds in Ball Sq.

[mattdm.livejournal.com]

Common Ground is in Allston. :)

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Well, they have a sign up saying that they're experimenting with later hours -- starting April 23 for a month they'll be open until 9 on Sun-Thurs. Not 11:30, but hella better than now. Patronize. :)

[elements.livejournal.com]

That will be awesome. I live so close to True Grounds but I've never been there because I'd use a cafe like that most on a weeknight, and I'm never home from work enough before 7.

I wonder if this would make it realistic to try reinstating the True Grounds game night again - since game night died there in part because they kept the cafe open just for it.

[androidqueen.livejournal.com]

Unsurprising that they don't get enough business during that half hour. They make it very clear that they're Closing Up And Would Rather You Left, Sir, starting at about 11:30, probably because of the public transportation issue.

That said, I do applaud them for taking their employees' needs into consideration.

[tt02144.livejournal.com]

I think most have missed the content of the message. They're not closing early because the T doesn't run, they're closing early because they don't get enough customers that late to justify the cost of staying open. The fact that it's a convenience factor for employees who use the T is simply extra. Obviously there aren't enough people wandering the square looking for coffee at midnight!

[obie119.livejournal.com]

Sigh....Curious Liquids...my all-time favorite coffee place...The upstairs so sunny, the downstairs so cozy!
I had no idea it was open 24 hours though!

[bridgesyoucross.livejournal.com]

that's funny, because jp licks (where i work) always seems to get WAY busy in that last half hour right before it closes at midnight.

[iabervon.livejournal.com]

I think the real question is: who's out at 11:45, wants to drink coffee, and wants to stay there only 15 minutes? I suspect that they'd get a reasonable amount of business all night if they were open 24 hours, but if they have to close at midnight, the end is going to be sparse.

I'd guess that there are several issues: other things also close at midnight, and so people who stay until closing elsewhere can't then relocate to the Diesel, and people are unlikely to relocate half an hour before they get sent home regardless. People considering going to the Diesel but not sure if they'd make it before closing are less likely to try. And people are relatively unlikely to want stuff to go in the middle of the night, but can't stay with their drink if the cafe closes immediately.