The strangest thing happened the other day.
Two people over twitter asked about coworking. Our awesome friends of Uncubed all chimed in without our asking and recommended Uncubed. That’s awesome in and of itself. We love that the community feels strongly enough about us that they’ll recommend us.
Both guys seemed interested and we made sure they knew we’d love to have them come check the space out. Both seemed like they intended to do just that.
Then yesterday (the initial twitter exchange was about 2 weeks ago or so) one tweets that Uncubed and another space nearby are out. Too shady of neighborhoods and too far from downtown. Say what? He spent one day at another coworking space, and formed that strong of an opinion?
The other guy, replies and says he too ruled us out for similar reasons. (He never tried either space as far as I know) We tried talking to both who clearly don’t know the neighborhood or downtown for that matter. One even went so far as to say Taxi was in a better spot. I love Taxi but that place is just past East Bum Fuck at the corner of “nowhere” and “Hard to get to”
Oh, Unucbed, is the “A” and Taxi is the arrow. If “better area” means nothing around and only one road in or out, then yeah I guess Taxi is better.
One questioned whether his car would be safe when he worked at night… Jake pointed out that the hundreds of people who come thru Uncubed for meetups each month, plus members who work late have never once, had an issue. As a resident I can say, the only cars I’ve seen broken into (and yes it does happen, just like it does anywhere in downtown) are the cars that look like they’ve got good stuff and are left for a while and clearly not being paid attention too.
It was clear in their tweets with us and others who chimed in to defend the neighborhood, that neither knows the area. Hell neither even ever came to Uncubed to try it out. But while part of me wanted to convince them they were wrong and win their business, another part (which won out) pointed out that it was a losing battle. Some one who’d made a decision with little or no facts or research, isn’t likely to change their mind in the face of contrary evidence. The fact that our “shady neighborhood” is also where my house is, home to several great bars, many awesome indie coffee shops, tons of small businesses etc. clearly wasn’t a factor. Maybe it’s because there’s less sidewalks?
It was clear, neither would be members. The community that is Uncubed wasn’t important, something else was, and we didn’t have it. It still stung to be ruled out without even having a chance tho.
At any rate, since I can’t rail against those two guys directly because that’s bad business and plain silly, I’ll blog about them so I can have the last word in an argument they didn’t know they were having. After all isn’t that largely what blogging is about? :)
