York Corner
A few weeks back, our old friend Howard Koeppel phoned us with a tip that we decided to act upon this past week.
(Does anyone not know Howard? Tall, lean and white-haired, he's active, outgoing, big-hearted, bright, humorful and garrulous, and he wears many hats, the most public of which is probably the one he dons when he plays wisecracking auctioneer. But he also gets this paper to the post office each week, and we all owe him thanks for that alone. Thanks for it all, Howard!)
What Howard recommended was that we pay a visit to the Meadowbrook Plaza "Internet Café" that Bob Rogers runs as part of the business he calls UpSurf.net.
So that's where we found ourselves on a recent Sunday morning at about 10:30 a.m., and, as luck would have it, the boss was in.
Three years ago, when Bob was just starting this enterprise from his home in York, we'd interviewed him, and we were pleased when Bob, immediately upon our arrival on Sunday, pointed us to a spot on his wall where the resulting article hung, matted and framed.
It served as a reminder to us that Bob haled originally from New Jersey, earned Associate's and Bachelor's degrees, both in computer science, from East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania, and was first lured to this region by a New Hampshire computer job. He ended up settling in York in 1992, following his marriage to York native Wendy Berger.
The article was dated Jan. 21, 2004, and, at that time, Bob's fledgling business was based on offering computer users high-speed internet connections, locally-based and personally maintained, at prices as little as half that charged by conventional internet service providers. He was also designing and hosting websites with, again, an emphasis on low costs and local attention.
This month, Bob told us - and with a big, characteristic, grin - that he was proud not only simply to have survived in the time since, but to have flourished and expanded.
The biggest expansion was out of his home and into a storefront. It came as Bob perceived a demand for computer repair and began to provide it and computer accessories, right along with his other services - and after he'd teamed up with business partner Bill Dunn, whose idea it was to create the "café."
York resident Dunn, who works full-time for Central Maine Power, "has a novice's knowledge of computers," Bob told us, but perhaps for that very reason he perceived the value of offering the public secure access to computers in a "public" place.
Today, one little room in UpSurf.net's quarters in Meadowbrook houses six flat-screen displays arranged with keyboards along two counters, the computers behind them all custom-built by Bob as examples of what he now sells. There's a color-laser printer there, and in front of the computers are comfortably padded and swiveling office chairs that rest on a wall-to-wall carpet, while plants and glass-framed posters on the walls, as Bob put it, laughing, "class it up just a little bit."
A variety of people come to that facility, Bob reported, for a variety of reasons: travelers to get computer directions to, and information about, their destinations; returning vacationers to get prints of their airline-ticket boarding passes; investors to check on stock prices; business people to review their e-mails; residents and others to print pictures, mail faxes or just surf the internet while waiting for their own computers to be repaired.
Additionally, for people with their own laptops, wireless service is available outside in the parking lot, and laptops can be borrowed from Bob for that application, too.
Of course there are charges for use of the café, but Bob told us that he's concerned to keep all "very affordable and very fair." One half-hour on the internet costs $5, as does a printed copy of a boarding pass; a full hour of internet time goes for $10, and Bob makes individual arrangements for use over other extended periods.
To those who suggest that it makes no sense to pay for computer use when it's available free at places like libraries, Bob emphasizes what to him is the extreme importance of security. He maintains "clean" machines, he stresses, and the safety so ensured, he argues, justifies the small cost.
"It's kind of like a small office," Bob said of the café, "but we try to keep it friendly."
Somewhat hesitantly, but to illustrate the friendliness, he showed us a fishbowl there containing many different-colored small pieces of folded papers, each of the papers folded in the same way. They were Origami "frogs," Bob, told us, made by a little girl who'd learned the craft at the Boston Museum of Science. She sat at the café, said Bob, for an hour and a half one day, making them from the paper on his notepad - and left them for him to give away.
We left that day with a paper frog that was pink - and we'll be back here next week with more about UpSurf.net.
