Favorite Triangle area coffee shop

[Jones_]

so Cafe Helios is the only game downtown for late night coffee, right? Is Crema open late? Actually, with the demise of Percolator in Quail Corners, Cafe Helios and Crema are about the only places in the whole darn city besides that pernicious chain store from Seattle...

[Euphorius]

Third Place will be open until 11 P.M. on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays starting the last week of this month.

[JeffC]

Guess the owners of Third Place found out that when they started closing early to get rid of the beatnik wi-fi freeloader crowd (as we have been told on other threads on this topic), they also lost a bunch of paying customers. We went by there at around 7:30 on a Saturday night a few weeks ago--Lily's was hopping, people were walking around...and Third Place was closed...they certainly lost a buttload of paying customers that night, including me and my partner...

I can report that the new coffee place at Quail Corners completely lacks the soul and ambience of Percolator (it's in a different spot in the center--one of the outbuildings). Interior is like a Starbucks, but without comfy chairs, and it has a small, unremarkable deck that overlooks the asphalt sea of the shopping center parking lot. As my partner derisively remarked, it caters to the "realtor" crowd...

[ncwebguy]

Busy Bee is (was?) open at 6 am for coffee and breakfast goodies and has wi-fi.

Not sure how easy it will be for them to draw business away from Morning Times, Creama (which has a small kiosk inside Wachovia for the last few months), Port City and the Marriott Starbucks, but I hope they all can carve out their respective niches.