Internet Cafe Hobo

Back in the bad old days when Internet access was not easy to come by in the US, cafes offering a little jitter with your surfing proliferated. They catered to travelers and students, artists and writers; they were community centers and neighborhood hangs. But as the cost and availability of 'net access changed, their ability to support themselves as a web hub declined -- and cafes with computers for rent by the minute morphed into cafes with BYOL(aptop) and misc. wi-fi access policies. Since we spent some of our coffee slinging years behind the bar of an Internet cafe, you can understand why they hold a sweet little place in our hearts. So it's no surprise that when we ran across this BBC web documentary series that's tracking a journalist as he's traveling around the world from Internet cafe to Internet cafe -- reporting on the stories he finds along the way -- we really dug it. Now we're sharing! Complete with maps of his travels, snapshots and audio as he explores how the Internet cafe is still a big part of many communities around the world.