YOU LOG ON HERE OFTEN?

By GINIA BELLAFANTE

They enter sporting chic bobs, shifts, minis, Airwalks, tie-dyes, shirtsleeves. The crowd includes wide-eyed preteens as well as graying members of the baby-boom generation. "I spent five hours here yesterday going through Netscape and playing computer games," says Davie, an affable 12-year-old who is sweetening a latte and proving that not all young Manhattanites are the Colt 45-swilling troublemakers depicted in the film Kids. "I like the drinks here--and the snacks."

But customers who pack the Cyber Cafe in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood are there for more than just the coffee and goat-cheese sandwiches that seem to be available every other block in New York City. Instead, they are lured by the 40-megabyte computers that adorn every table, offering access to the Internet as well as to a community of fellow cybernauts. The Cyber Cafe is just one of three wired eateries to open in downtown Manhattan during the past few months--and one of at least 100 such establishments that have booted up around the country and overseas. Computer bars can now be found everywhere from Scranton, Pennsylvania, to Boise, Idaho; from London to Hong Kong. One is even expected to open in Kuala Lumpur later this year.

That's quite a growth spurt considering that cybercafes are founded on the odd proposition that people will leave their home computer and trek to a bar--just so they can stare at a computer screen again. "People think it is asocial to sit at a computer terminal at a cafe," says Nicholas Barnes, the co-owner of Manhattan's @ Cafe. "But you can sit at the computer and discuss world politics with the people next to you or people in Singapore." Many singles, in fact, are finding cyberboites a congenial place for real, as opposed to virtual, mingling. It is such a nonintimidating atmosphere, says Joyce Frost, a banker and first-time visitor to @ Cafe, who views cafes like this as a good place to strike up conversations. "I can talk to a guy and ask him to explain this or that to me. It has more of a focal point than most bars."

Cybercafes (which typically charge $5 to $10 an hour to log on, though many provide discounted or free access with the purchase of food and drink) offer other high-tech icebreakers as well, such as CD-ROMs and new videogames. In Los Angeles, Cyber Java draws crowds with its videophone facilities. Cyber Cafe offers classes in Net navigation and Web-page authoring. At Cybersmith in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the country's grandest computer playland cum restaurant, regulars can congregate around a virtual-reality flight simulator ready for testing.

Cybercafes attract computer nerds and novices alike. "Some of our most devoted customers are people who never touched a computer before," says Lynn Siprelle, co-owner with her husband of the Habit in Ashland, Oregon. Marshall Smith, owner of Cybersmith, says 85% of his customers have computers at home but come in for the advanced technologies available at his eatery. "Everyone has heard of CD-ROMs, but only about 10% of the country actually has a CD-ROM drive of their own," he says. Cybercafes have proved to be attractive marketing venues as well. Donna Karan advertised a new men's fragrance on a screensaver device that debuted at New York City's @ Cafe; New Balance and Microsoft are among other companies that have feted new products at techno-halls across the country.

Bringing computers into the neighborhood bar is not a development cheered by everyone. "Frankly, I think the whole thing is silly," says Clifford Stoll, a recovering technophile and author of Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway. "I go to a cafe to get away from computers. I go to a coffee shop to talk to people, not machines. I go to my corner wateringhole to be close to my neighbors, not strangers who are located across the continent."

Maybe so, but socializing over computers is better than not socializing at all. Part of the idea, says Siprelle, is to get computer nerds away from their terminals and into an environment in which they feel comfortable. "We want to get the geeks out of the basements and into the streets." Sounds good in theory; now if we can just figure out what happened to roller-skating waitresses and telephone bars.

--Reported by Sharon E. Epperson/New York and Patrick E. Cole/Los Angeles

With reporting by SHARON E. EPPERSON/NEW YORK AND PATRICK E. COLE/LOS ANGELES