I was recently at an Embers restaurant late at night. In Minneapolis, there are very few 24-hour businesses, and Embers is one of those last-ditch refuges of the bored or hungry night owl. At a table next to me, two women and a man were pulling folders and a laptop out of their bags. As I half-watched, they were making plans and discussing ideas over their scrambled eggs and hashbrowns. Then abruptly a cranky, tired-looking waitress came over and made them stop. "This is not an office," she snapped.

The three looked up, as surprised as if she'd stuck her head into their boardroom and said the same thing. I felt surprised too, because an Embers is only a step removed from my own meeting-room of choice: the coffeehouse.

I suppose we are to believe that Embers is a legitimate restaurant, whereas coffeehouses inhabit another category all their own. Deliberately shabby in décor, they are designed for maximum comfort and informality, while the dual presence of caffeine and other alert young people gives the air of creative tension, of things happening and about to happen.

Nothing much has changed about the essential nature of the coffeehouse since its advent in seventeenth century England. Democratic in its very structure (a handful of change buys you loitering privileges for as long as you want, something no other for-profit institution offers), they've always been a gathering place for philosophers, revolutionaries, and other antiestablishment types. Since the Beat generation invaded them in the mid-twentieth century, they've also become legendary as enclaves of the artist and poet.

With the coming of the laptop and telecommuting, and the rise of freelancers and small business owners, the transactions taking place at coffee shops have become even more varied and complex. In Minneapolis, at least, it seems like every GenXYer has at least one side project outside of their nine to five job (if they even have a conventional career), and we need a place that's not-home, not-work, where we can carry them out.

In the past few years, I've interviewed a woman for a magazine profile, been interviewed myself for a newspaper story, written articles, plotted screenplays, had a job interview, and met with a discussion group - all at coffeehouses in downtown and Uptown Minneapolis. My girlfriend has done most of the above, as well as attending organizational meetings for the Twin Cities Pride Guide - and these are just the more conventional uses I've noted.

Recently, my girlfriend had need of a notary public, and as we don't own a car, we needed him to come to us. We didn't feel comfortable letting a strange man into our apartment just because he'd taken an hour-long class and obtained a license, so we gave him the address of a coffee shop a block away. I was amused at this new use for the already ubiquitous-in-our-lives location, so I looked around as we waited. In addition to the regulars huddled over their laptops and sketchpads, two young men unloaded a box of papers and began organizing money, brochures and other scraps into neat piles while talking intently. I studied the brochures from the corner of my eye, and it was with an odd sort of pleasure/pride that I realized our suburban notary public was being forced to conduct business two tables away from an apparent meeting of a chapter of NORML (The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws).

Speaking of that heroic organization, I must pass on the rumor that a friend of a friend uses coffeehouses as a safe place of assignation with purveyors of certain legally embattled products. The cafés provide a comfortingly neutral reference point for these cautious, officeless businessmen and their even more paranoid customers.

Since all of these activities marginalize the actual purchase of coffeehouse wares, the shops themselves often struggle to stay afloat financially. But the enduring demand for them is evident because, in my neighborhood at least, for every one that closes, another one or two appear in its place. The fact is, from the most opulent boardrooms to the scrappiest picket lines, coffee greases the wheels of human ambition. So the industry doesn't have to worry; its patrons will never take their businesses elsewhere.