Cyber Cafes, the New Coffee Houses for Asian Youth

NCM: Ethnic Media Nationwide

Pacific News Service
Nguoi Viet, News Report, Anh Do

GARDEN GROVE, Calif.--For the boys, the cyber cafe is like a Starbucks, “but more fun,” they promise.

In their shop, low-voltage lamps create mood lighting, walls are splashed sunshine yellow, ebony and cream, and a huge menu offers drinks like mocha sand and choconut joy.

Customers are glued to the screen, battling each other in the latest games and sending instant messages across the world. Servers behind the counter mix boba, the tapioca pearls that started a craze in Taiwan and became a sensation across the Pacific, all the while chatting about broadband Internet and DSL.

This is the scene at ICE, Internet Cafe Entertainment, started by college buddies who, rather than going to law school or medical school as their parents wished, chose to learn how to paint and lay tile, max out their credit cards to buy 40-plus computers and write a business plan, all to launch a dream.

The risk was huge.

They took it in 2000 and now, they’re retrenching, rethinking, relaunching.

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