Best Place to Spend Quality Time with Your Laptop
Hands down, Red Rock! Anytime of the day or night, you’ll find Red Rock Coffee full of people with their laptops. There are 98 power outlets in the upstairs room and another 37 downstairs.* The Google WiFi signal is clear. The cappuccinos are delicious little works of art. To get the full affect, you need to also get the coffee cake.
There are several reasons for the popularity of Red Rock:
- Good quality, well made coffee drinks
- Friendly knowledgeable staff
- Power outlets everywhere you look
- They consider themselves a community-gathering place for all different kinds of groups—knitting, reading, tweet-ups or meet-ups, business or homework.
- Monday night Open-Mic has been around for 15 years
- Committed to the arts with an emphasis on live music
- Story hour and Kids Art Events
- The view of Castro Street from the upstairs windows is fabulous
- Location, location, location
- Red Rock is where all the cool kids are…
I’m always surprised whenever I need to go to their website. I never expect a coffee shop to have such a hip website. The site has a calendar of upcoming events, mostly music. If you have never been to an Open-Mic on Monday night, you really need to go. Sometimes I can’t believe that the person I’m watching isn’t already famous. Other times, I’m just happy to be entertained.
I really like that they’re nonprofit and that they find a cause and commit to donating a certain dollar amount to it. The current push is to raise $5000 to help stop Human Trafficking. They have all kinds of information on the counter about what we can do to increase awareness and bring an end to this modern day form of slavery.
Red Rock Coffee is definitely one of the coolest places that makes Mountain View what it is and I love that they’re part of our community.
*And I don’t really know exactly how many power outlets they have, but I’d say that there’s enough to go around.
There’s a whole lot to like about this place: the location, the fact that there is an entire floor that has been basically set aside for the laptop crowd (leaving plenty of tables for those who want to just sit for a short time ‘n enjoy some delicious beverage and snack,) and the building itself!! It started out as the Farmers and Merchant Bank in 1905 (and survived the ‘06 earthquake when other buildings on Castro did not), later morphing into the Bank of Italy, which became Bank of America. Somewhere along the line, the commodity changed from money into coffee beans, not an altogether bad exchange of currency. Drink up!!
I love hanging out at Red Rock. Its a great place to get work done. All the collective work energy in the room is motivating.