The Coffee Shop in Union Square, located on the bustling corner of 17th St. and Union Square West, is famous for several things: the waitresses are models, it turns into a Brazilian dance club on the weekends, was voted Best Bar for Modelizers in the Village Voice, and New York says it boasts a "high risk of poor service and unpleasant encounters with attitudinal (but often pretty) people" but praised the crayons and puzzle place mats for kids. This noisy, WiFi-less den is famous for something else within the tight-knit community of Silicon Alley: it serves as the de facto meeting place for VCs and founders such as Union Square Ventures' Fred Wilson and IA Ventures' Roger Ehrenberg. "Pitch your startup to First Round Capital here. They're right across the street," says the Foursquare tip left by Charlie O'Donnell. 

But it seems that after years of fealty, New York's nerdiest investors are moving on. This morning Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, who checks into Coffee Shop at least twice a week, declared he'd had enough. "First day of #coffeeshopboycott (@ Friend of a Farmer w/ 2 others) [pic]: http://4sq.com/sE6vu3," he tweeted, inspiring a flurry of queries. In answer to Foursquare's Dennis Crowley, Mr. Wilson explained: "I can put up w/ mediocre food & bad coffee but when they disrespect one of their most loyal customers its time for #coffeeshopboycott." Mr. Wilson did not respond to an email asking him to elaborate. A few founders voiced their support for the boycott on Twitter.

As it turns out, Charming Robot's Dan Maccarone said he's been boycotting Coffee Shop for five years; Steve Schlafman of Lerer Ventures actually quit the Coffee Shop just last week. "Because New York values convenience, people will put up with mediocre breakfast food," Mr. Schlafman said. "Also, people like being seen there. I was kind of fed up with it."

He independently decided to start taking meetings at Friend of a Farmer, the only Union Square eatery with a worse name than "Coffee Shop," a few blocks away on 18th and Irving. The place fits his hippie sensibilities, he said. "Before I was trying to be more stealthy about it," he said. "It's all kind of a joke. My only concern is that after everyone starts going to Friend of a Farmer, whether [the restaurant] will even be able to handle it. It kind of sucks that Fred tweeted about it."

As for Coffee Shop, he says good riddance. "Look, that place is so overplayed," he said. "It's just convenient and it's kind of one of these things that stuck. New York is a place that values innovation and doing different things... I guarantee everyone will be going to Friend of a Farmer in two weeks."

Betabeat called The Coffee Shop to see if the restaurant was aware it had burned a few super users. Charles Milite, one of the owners, got on the phone right away. The cafe's not-so-active Twitter account followed in the voyeuristic tradition of power lunch spot Michael's by tweeting about which bold names were in the house. "British siren Rachel Weisz and Director hubby Darren Aronofsky having lunch at Coffee Shop with adorable son Henry Chance this afternoon," was the last tweet, in August. But Mr. Milite had never heard of Mr. Wilson or the boycott.

"I wasn't aware at all," he said. "I know that we have a lot of these young guy techie types. It's such a busy place and such a diverse clientele here that no one particular segment would completely hit us in the face. It's a pretty big place and its pretty active."

Indeed, there was cacophony in the background when we called around 2:30 p.m. in the waning hours of lunch, and of the 19,095 check-ins and 149 tips on Foursquare, less than a dozen pertain to the restaurant's critical role in Silicon Alley's economy.

"We don't like to hear that we're giving bad service," Mr. Milite said. "But I'll have to look into that and find out. He could have just had a bad experience."

We read him the tweet, which indicated a string of bad experiences.

"Interesting, okay. Well I don't know," he said. He said he would ask the general manager, Renee, who might know more.

In the meantime, Friend of a Farmer has started racking up the check-ins. Will Silicon Alley's finest be satisfied with the "cozy, country cafe," or will Friend of a Farmer (3,673 check-ins) fail the founder test?

SkillSlate is now more like a Zaarly-esque, real-time classifieds where customers posts requests and service providers respond. Which is how the start-up nabbed a fire dancer for tonight's fete. Founder Bartek Ringwelski posted an ad on the site: "I'm throwing a party for 100+ people for our startup on Tuesday, June 26th, and I really want to invite someone different for entertainment. I'm looking for someone who is an expert sword swallower, juggler, magician or has some other amazing talent. In total, I'm looking for 10-15 minutes of you doing your talent. Please provide some background on yourself and, if possible, a video of you doing your thing," he wrote. He passed on the ventriloquist ($120), the ribbon dancer ($250), and the magician who can swallow razor blades and needles but no sword ($200).

But within 48 hours, he had a fire performer: Matthew Pagliaro, who we see is being paid $75 to do two five-minute performances with fire poi, which are flammable balls on chains. Good thing the pivot party is at the DCTV Firehouse, LOL LOL. 7:30 p.m.

TECH NEWS IS BORING. Adrian Chen's meta-post about tech blogging and how boring it is and how sleepy it makes him to read infamous Apple fanboy MG Siegler's thoughts about Facebook's iPad app--"Make it stop! This is the most boring shit ever"--and what it will look like and when it will come out is a hit! Almost 8,000 views in two hours and a pick-up from Techmeme, Dave Winer and Slate's Farhad Manjoo.

Mr. Siegler responded on Tumblr with a post titled, "Rhymes With Douchebag."

Nevermind that Chen is complaining about tech news not really being “news” while writing a story that is even less “news” in the name of pageviews. We all do that sometimes.

This was a legitimate tech story.

And it certainly wasn’t tech news about tech news about tech news about tech news.

TUMBLR PUTS THE BEASTS TO SLEEP. Tumblr has stopped using The Oatmeal's hand-drawn Tumbeasts but continues to periodically crash. "Tumblr still going down," Matt Inman writes. "Unfortunately, they stopped using the mascots I drew for them." However, Mr. Inman is giving the tumbeasts away. "A good Tumbeast should never go to waste," he declared, and is making them available for any start-up with an unstable website to download and use. Swag. We'll tell Observer.com.

MORE SKILLS YOU CAN USE. Like how to do email... There are two spots left in Dave Tisch's How to Communicate With Investors class, happening tomorrow and reprising in August. "This session will include The Basics: rules for getting the best attention for investors and customers, followed by Q&A," Mr. Tisch says. "The focus will be on emailing, social networking, basics of engagement and how to do it better." There are 44 pupils of Tisch, and the $660 goes to HackNY. Do it do it, says TechStars ex-hackstar Tal Safran. "Tisch's advice on this topic is invaluable and the proceeds will go to an amazing cause. Guaranteed to be entertaining as well." We're hoping for a question on how to use ellipses...

VC-SIGHTER. A Dennis Crowley check-in that mentioned spotting Fred Wilson while meeting with Albert Wegener and Charlie O'Donnell at The Coffee Shop just might inspire a mobile app: "Fred Wilson spotting, complete with leaderboard on most sighted places, user with the most sightings, most sighted guests he is seen with, industry vertcals of people he is meeting with the most B2B, B2C, Cloud, etc. Lol," suggested consultant Dean Collins, who yesterday heckled Dan Frommer at a panel over the blogger's unflattering view of QR codes.

FUCK FACEBOOK. Facebook is stupid.