With the rise of the gig economy, coworking spaces are targeting this growing audience. But what makes some of these places popular and others more under the radar?
If you happen to be strolling along Seventh Avenue, as I do often, and see a flash of blindingly bright yellow, try pausing. You know, it’s that thing you’re supposed to do at yellow traffic lights (yeah, you). While pausing, take a look down the side street — especially if you’re a freelance writer, contractor, small business entrepreneur, or consultant with no office.
Rounding out its first year in business, the sunshiny storefront of Park Slope Desk signals the glaring needs of local professionals.
I often find myself schlepping my laptop around town, trying to find a WiFi place to park for a few hours (or I admit it, longer) without spending $20 or more on coffee, lunch, and baked goods. There’s not much to find besides coffee shops and libraries within the neighborhood limits. And some are better than others when it comes to your workday needs and budget.
Basic needs include: A surface for your laptop, although a couch or cushy chair does the job too; free WiFi; electrical outlets if you plan to stay longer than a couple hours and don’t have a fancy laptop charger battery. For me, a quality caffeine source is key too. Entrepreneurs need an address for their business mail, and Google requires a physical location in order to place it on the map and make it searchable online.
Oh, most important requirement of all: Other people. Working from home in isolation isn’t for everyone, not even the writers of Park Slope. Just being in a room with people working alongside you is a powerful tool and emotional balm. We’re social animals, after all.
“It’s nice to have the support of other people working nearby when you want it. Otherwise, it’s very isolating,” says Michelle Backer, who runs her Park Slope Tutoring company, plus Brooklyn Citizen, a nonprofit organization helping women, from her desk at Founders Workspace in Windsor Terrace. “My daughter’s school is right nearby, and it’s made my life much more manageable.”
Coworking Spaces
The only full-time, dedicated coworking space officially within Slope borders is the appropriately named Park Slope Desk at 501 11th St., which opened November 2017, in the spot previously occupied by beloved Applewood Restaurant.
“When you’re at home, there are a million and one things to get done: laundry, dishes … We provide what I call a clear space. You come here and focus on that one thing. It’s a refuge where you can come to concentrate,” says Cosmo Lee, who owns Park Slope Desk and the building in which it resides.
Besides real estate, Lee has other businesses that he needed space for, but not all the 2,500 square feet on two floors, so he’s transformed the extra space for coworkers with three rooms with three different vibes: bright yellow, exposed brick, and what Lee calls “sensory deprivation white.” All desks are flex desks, so no one is assigned to a particular spot. Everyone can move from desk to desk, room to room, depending on the mood and needs of the day.
The front room is that bright yellow with desks and long power strips lining the walls, underneath tapestries that reduce noise. Speaking of noise, no cell phone use is allowed inside, unless you go downstairs to the three private phone booths or conference room, both next to the lockers and lunch room with kitchen. There, you’ll find unlimited Café Bustelo coffee, Twinings Tea, free printing and paper, as well as other basic office supplies.
Fitting with the neighborhood, many of Lee’s members are writers. But where they’re doing that writing is changing, as coworking spaces offer a variety of environments to suit different needs that can’t be met by cafes.
“The neighborhood needs it,” Lee says. “There’s nothing actually in Park Slope like this. I, like a lot of people, have tried to work in cafes, but it’s too distracting and noisy, and home — it’s not a good place for me to work.”
Perhaps the most recognized coworking spaces are those owned by WeWork. Founded in 2010 with its first location in Soho, today there are more than 210,000 members at 300 locations in 28 countries worldwide. While in Park Slope many writers seek this kind of shelter, elsewhere the membership leans toward more entrepreneurs and small business owners. In New York City, 50 of the 60 locations are in Manhattan, becoming the largest private occupier of office space in the borough. In or near Park Slope, however, there are none.
Founders Workspace, which Teresa Lagerman and Abby Palanca opened April 2016, is just three blocks shy of the neighborhood border, in Windsor Terrace to the south. The exposed brick, floor-to-ceiling windows that let the sunshine in, and local art on the walls provide a pleasant working environment. Downstairs is a small lounge and lunch room with a tiny kitchen and two phone booths for private phone conversations. Like Lee, the owners started the business to meet their own coworking needs first, which then blossomed into something bigger. “There aren’t that many places that let you linger, and I do not work well at home,” says Palanca, a real estate broker.
Founders has become a community space, where a CSA has a pickup, the Sackett Street Writers Group meets, and local artists display their work. “We’re not competing with WeWork or The Yard,” she says of their spot that has only 11 full-time desks plus a part-time drop-in community desk area. “I find a lot of our workers like our quaint community feel and flexible hours. It’s a quiet space so you can get work done, definitely quieter than a coffee shop.”
With 24/7 secure access, The Yard on 13th Street is less than a block away of the northwest corner of the Slope, but claims Gowanus as its ‘hood. There are other locations, such as south Williamsburg, several places in Manhattan, plus spots in Philadelphia, Boston, and Washington D.C. The Yard of Gowanus has a lot of warehouse-style common areas, an inner courtyard, private offices, exposed brick, a kitchen with complimentary La Colombe coffee and Kusmi Tea, and a conference room.
More than 1,800 novelists, journalists, playwrights, essayists, PhD students, poets, and screenwriters have used Brooklyn Writers Space, which may be the quietest of all coworking spaces, with high-walled cubicles so there are absolutely no visual distractions. Playwrights Scott Adkins and Erin Courtney founded the sanctuary for writers more than 15 years ago — before “coworking” was a well-known term — so writers can have a refuge away from laundry and dishes, where they can turn off their cell phones and concentrate on writing.
The couple first tried to join The Writers Room on Astor Place in Manhattan, a nonprofit “silent sanctuary” drawing writers since 1978, but they discovered a 2½-year waiting list. So, Adkins and Courtney created their own shared writing space, first on Garfield Place in Park Slope. They expanded with a Carroll Gardens location in 2010, and in 2015, moved their Garfield business to a bigger spot on the edge of Park Slope, on First Street just off Third Avenue in Gowanus.
As other places popped up the last several years and took their members who lived farther away, Adkins and Courtney reclassified their business using the trendy “coworking” term to ensure people could find them and understand what they do. It’s not a networking place with all sorts of luxurious amenities. “It’s pretty much a desk, a lamp, and a chair, plus coffee and tea,” Adkins says, although the Gowanus rooftop deck offers a breath of fresh air.
“The space is just calm — quiet calm. You have nothing to do but write. You have no choice,” he says.
Still, it’s not a complete vacuum from human interaction. Separated from the quiet working area with a soundproof door, the communal lounge and kitchen at Gowanus provide a place to take a break where members can chat. Adkins manages the Gowanus location, and novelist Jennifer Epstein manages the Carroll Gardens location on Court and Degraw streets. The 191 members share 29 desks at Gowanus and 18 desks in Carroll Gardens at different times of night and day.
They offer 24/7 memberships and two kinds of part-time membership, free coffee and tea, and of course, WiFi. Hundreds of books have been written within their walls, as well as Pulitzer Prize-winning plays. “You feel the energy of these people working, and if you’re not, it creates this competitive edge inside you to get to work and get it done,” Adkins says.
Potential members have to apply with references to prove they’re writers, although they don’t have to be published yet. “It’s hard enough to be a writer, let alone take yourself seriously as a writer,” he says. “It’s pretty clear that people who join the space are taking that step to really take themselves seriously. For some people, it’s like their first time that they’re finally considering themselves a legitimate writer.”
As the name implies, Brooklyn Writers Space is not for entrepreneurs, designers, and lawyers.
But there are at least three other nearby shared working spaces for other professionals. Brooklyn Creative League is around the corner on President Street, offering more social events, conference rooms, snacks, weekly potluck meals, member mailboxes, and discounts on local services. Brooklyn Works at 159 on 20th Street, a few blocks west of the Slope’s western border of Prospect Park Expressway, has happy hours, event spaces, conference rooms with Apple TVs, and a live receptionist to greet guests 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. weekdays. Giocare Play Spot on Sixth Avenue and 18th Street opens a room with office amenities to working parents and caregivers from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays while the children play with a teacher in a nearby room.
WiFi Coffee Shops
Whether you can’t afford to pay coworking membership fees or simply prefer café atmosphere, food, and drinks, there are a bunch of options.
Around the corner from Park Slope Desk, South Slope Coffee is often more crowded with people enjoying its welcoming, unpretentious, laptop-friendly vibe with a lot of outlets for laptop cords and cell phone chargers. It was previously called Uptown Roasters because the beans were roasted, you guessed it, uptown. The friendly baristas, like assistant manager Johnny Gardner, will chat with you when you stand up to stretch your legs and grab a bite or drink at the counter. When you’re finished working (or not, no judging), there’s beer and wine as well.
As long as laptoppers buy something, Gardner says he has no problem with how long you stay. But don’t expect the place to be quiet. Gardner relishes his role as DJ, cranking out tunes from indie ‘90s rock bands like Green Day and showtunes like Disney’s “Little Mermaid” soundtrack, to country singer-songwriter-musician Hank Williams and Polish composer and piano virtuoso Frédéric Chopin.
“It’s not a library,” Gardner says. “I think people like human interaction, even if they don’t admit it. They crave it, especially in New York.”
Other favorite work haunts (for me) include Gather, Kos Kaffe, Muse Café & Tea, Chocolateria, and Postmark Café. Of course, there’s Hungry Ghost and Gorilla Coffee in North Slope too, among several others in our neighborhood of free agents.
If you have no workplace that requires a commute, yet you blame your lack of productivity on the chores and distractions of home, you now have fewer excuses than ever. Let me be the one to say it, to myself as well as to you: Get to work, wherever that may be.
Words and Photos by Amy Sowder
Illustration by Heather Heckel
Amy Sowder
If you’re looking for Amy Sowder, freelance writer and editor, you’ll most often find her in coffee shops in South Slope — the ones with electrical outlets. Her work is published in Bon Appétit magazine's Healthyish section, Women’s Health, Men’s Health, Eat This, Not That! Chowhound, Upworthy/GOOD, USA Today, and Westchester Magazine. She’s training for her second NYC Marathon and trying to not use that as an excuse for extra desserts. Cheese, cats, and cats with cheesy names are her other obsessions. Learn more at AmySowder.com