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Isreal Adeyanju co-owns Kọ Café, a West African coffee shop in New Jersey that attracts locals for its food and community events, including open mic nights, live podcast recordings, and workshops on homeownership and career development.When the café opened in 2023, Adeyanju was renting the space for $1,400 a month.…

I grew up in a small town in eastern North Carolina. After high school, I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.I went to Philly for college and fell in love with big-city life. So when I came back South after graduation, I moved to the largest city in North…

Lisa La Valle and her husband dreamt of moving abroad once their children finished school.After they separated, La Valle found herself at a crossroads: either stay in New Jersey, where she’d spent most of her adult life, or leave the US to build a new life alone in Europe.”I looked…

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Pat Santiago, a 28-year-old cofounder of Accelr8, based in San Francisco. The following has been edited for length and clarity.Last year, I moved to San Francisco to cofound an AI startup. Living in a hacker house seemed like the best way…