I'm only saying experiences that depend on access to cheap real estate are harder to come by here, and one of the trade-offs of choosing to live in an expensive city is having to go to the burbs sometimes to experience them, just like one has to go to the burbs to go to Ikea, pavilion-style concert venues, a Korean spa, etc. Whether the experience of sitting in a coffee shop is worth the trip is will vary from person to person, obviously.

That said, I do sometimes bike out to Vigilante if the weather's nice. It's about a half hour's ride from my house, and it is, indeed, a nice place to hang out.

Rent is a major cost center for coffee shops, and urban rents are especially high. It probably just doesn't pencil out, cost-wise, to price an hour's stay into every cup, given what square footage costs here. There are great coffee shops in the suburbs that can afford to be much more generous with space (maybe give Vigilante in Hyattsville a go, or Northside Social in Clarendon).

Yeah, this was similar, but Thai and Vietnamese flavors instead of Korean, so like, lemongrass and coconut milk rather then gochujang and sesame oil. For whatever reason the Korean-inspired ones have just been way more successful and I'm not really sure why (there's also Seoul Spice, TaKorean, etc.).

It's aspirational. Amsterdam, which now seems like a cycling utopia, had a cycling modeshare not too different from the US until the 1970s, when citizen outcry about motor vehicle deaths prompted major policy changes, which resulted both in drastically improved cycling infrastructure and disincentives to the owning of cars (taxes, etc.). Now cycling modeshare there is about 30%, but the infrastructure and policy came first, and the modeshare followed. DC ostensibly has a goal of increasing bike/ped/transit combined modeshare to 75%, and the way to accomplish that will be improvements to the infrastructure and service for all three, after which (hopefully) more people use them instead of driving.

I haven't been particularly impressed with Vision Zero stuff so far, but "[t]he entire D.C. transportation policy" as being about bikes is disingenuous: they've also added dedicated bus lanes, new crosswalks, leading pedestrian signals at existing crosswalks, traffic calming measures that increase pedestrian safety by reducing car speeds, etc., etc.