There is a coffee shop in the United States where people with nowhere to live love it.

A member works in the store.

Members come and go, including an emergency-department doctor who moonlights as a gymnastic trapeze instructor, a Chinese academic translating Allen Ginsberg into Chinese and a 74-year-old psychotherapist who invites members to her home two doors down for a generational exchange. There are also plenty of regulars-Apple clerks, NYU students (many of whom seem to be law school), and a bunch of startup programmers.

The waiters are also interesting, including Amaury Avalos, a self-styled poet who delights customers with old stories, saying he once punched A $AP Rocky in the face when he and the rapper were rowdy schoolchildren in uptown New York. And then there's Jen Mozenter, who when he's not making lattes is Jane Doze-and who often deejays at Maxim magazine parties. For a while, there was an incredibly handsome Australia waiter, so much so that female members came more often-not to drink his coffee, but to see his hair.

Amaury Lateef Avalos prepares drinks for guests in the shop

"It feels more like a place you come to a lot than a coffee shop," said Eugnie Thompson, 20, a freshman at New York University. He recently bought pants at the store. "I grew up here, and it's nice to have something new that doesn't conflict with Greenwich Village's past and is still in harmony with it."

The items sold, the decor and the layout change all the time, but on a recent visit, I found a $29 handmade Colombia beaded necklace, a $368 rubber-coated cotton raincoat, a $45 knitted beanie with reflective thread from New York and a $68 ribbon-framed colorful watercolor from San Francisco.

"This is my shrine, my sanctuary and my reservation," said Pawi Bitanga, 25. He is a filmmaker, breakdancer, and a member with multiple careers. "New York is so annoying, you can't relax in your own apartment."

Clay Shirky, 51, said that aside from the store's new initiatives, such as the movie night being set up, it retained its old charm. Shirky is an Internet prophet, professor at New York University, and the first member of Fair Folks.

"It's not like SoHo House, you know?" Shirky called from NYU's campus in Shanghai. "I've been going there for years, and I've been drinking my 7 a.m. espresso there every day since the first day it opened, and Fair Folks never has a bunch of fair-weather strangers filling the gym every January."