The way Jack Shin sees it, he's selling the city's cheapest vacation.
Spend $4.95 for a cup of drip coffee and drink it in his 100-foot-long model of the Titanic, which he built on a busy stretch of Western Avenue, and Shin guarantees you'll come away refreshed.
"Everyone is working and making money to pay bills and they're very tight. One coffee here and they feel like they've been on a cruise and they're relaxed," Shin said.
The claim may seem as over-the-top as Leonardo DiCaprio yelling "I'm king of the world!" in James Cameron's film, but it's a winning formula in Koreatown, the city's unlikely capital of late-night coffee shops.
The businesses have become the area's de facto country clubs by bringing a whiff of gentility to Koreatown's alcohol-fueled night scene. The shops are almost exclusively patronized by Koreans who will pay high prices not just for the java but for an atmosphere in which they can do business during the day and meet friends at night.
"The tables are better, the service is better. Everything is better than Starbucks. . . . It's like Seoul," said Seoul native Kevin Pak, 48, who comes to Shin's Cafe Jack three or four times a week.
Cafe Jack looks like a teenage girl's dream bedroom circa 1997. There's a wall of DiCaprio and Kate Winslet photos adorned with red twinkling lights as if it's a shrine. The wood furniture looks like it belongs on a cruise ship. A staircase leads to the second floor, where you can lean out over the bow and imagine the street's really the Atlantic Ocean. The only thing that disturbs the vision is the Korean pop music in the background instead of "My Heart Will Go On."
Shin said he's seen "Titanic" more than 100 times. "I really like this sad, lovely story. It was my dream to build something like this in Koreatown," he said.
Shin said he'd seen themed cafes in Korea and wanted to build one here. There are currently about a dozen high-end coffee shops in Koreatown.
Even though joe only became popular in Korea within the last 20 years, coffeehouses have quickly become part of the culture. There are now almost 150 Starbucks in Seoul, where one branch is four stories to accommodate the crowds.
Because apartments in Seoul are generally smaller than their U.S. equivalents, many Koreans spend hours socializing and doing business in cafes.
