[mafribe]

   coffee shops are mostly [...] 
   not conducive to friendly conversation. 

I think the opposite is the case.

The only reason we coffee-workers tend to be anti-social "monads" are social mores: we don't want to disturb others and we take other's lack of social activity as an indication that they don't want to be disturbed. That's why we don't make the first move and start a friendly conversation.

This assumption is wrong.

I conducted an extensive social experiment. After working in cafes, libraries and shared workspaces for years, and not talking to anyone, I decided to overcome my social shyness and violate the unspoken rule not to initiate conversations. I went extreme and set myself a target to initiate at least 5 conversations with strangers per day. I did this successfully over years. I pretty much never got a negative response. The worst thing that happened was that the conversation fizzled out after a the initial exchange of mandatory pleasantries. Clearly most other coffee-shop workers are in the same situation and are quite happy to have somebody to chat to. Communicating successfully with strangers requires a bit of social savvy and the ability to read body language, so you can avoid boring or bothering them, and ensure to make a conversation of interest to them.

Once you get into this habit you can reflect on things like: what features of a location are furthering communication between strangers, and what don't.

I recommend to give it a try.

[tedmiston]

My experiences have been consistent with yours. Though if I really have hard work to do in a coffee shop, I'll put in headphones. In the office we have a "don't interrupt someone wearing headphones" rule (it still happens once or twice a day), but that seems to be a good signal to people in a coffee shop as well.

[mafribe]

Good point.

It requires a bit of social acuity to understand who's really focussed and doesn't want to be disturbed, and who'd be quite happy for a pleasant chat.

An easy trick to gather intelligence on what they are doing before initiating a conversation, is to walk past them, maybe to get a drink or on the way to the bathroom, and glance at their screen. If you see the familiar colours of Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube or other time-sinks -- and they are on display surprisingly often -- you can be reasonably sure that your approach will be well received.

Body language gives clues too ... bobbing along to a rhythm? ... no, they are not working on P vs NP or the latestst deep neural net convolutional reinforcement learning ... And if you can hear the music emanating from their headphones they aren't highly alert to a job requiring deep thinking either.

[tedmiston]

That's also a good point.

The other day I went to my neighborhood coffee shop an hour before work to just have a coffee, sit, and reflect. No computer, just me and a pour over.

I jumped into conversation with a few others at the bar. Sometimes I forget one can be in a coffee shop without a screen. It was much easier to focus on conversation and sensual things like the tasting notes of my coffee, instead of the nagging fomo of email and social notifications.