The Lost Draft

There’s a deep, enduring connection between New Yorkers who write and the coffee shops that fuel their masochistic desire to do so. The team behind The Lost Draft, a coffee shop in Soho, is aware of this. And unlike other coffee shops with their hour-long seating limits, uncomfortable chairs, and obtuse WiFi and bathroom passwords, they celebrate it. 

Let’s start with the important stuff: The coffee is very good, there are snacks, and the WiFi is free. You can choose to sit at a director’s chair at a bar or spread out at a table. No one is going to give you side-eye if you spend two hours staring at the blinking cursor on a blank Google Doc while you slowly sip an Americano and contemplate your life choices.

There’s a film theme to the space that’s carried through the director’s chairs, the old movies projected on a side wall, the typewriters in the window. But what we really love about this place is the fact that the theme goes beyond surface level. You can rent out the back room for table reads at the very reasonable rate of $50/hour. There’s a little post office box where you can submit a script or film pitch, and a real live human will actually read it. 

Will anything come of this submission? Probably not, but that’s showbiz. Still, as far as we know, there’s no other coffee shop in New York City offering writers a space not only to write, but to validate their identity as writers, while simultaneously serving a latte that’s good enough to merit the five-dollar price tag.