Gregory's ServerYea it's difficult, no question.
I just remember the 1990s and early 2000s (in Berlin) when you had a lot of underground-spaces where very "normal" people went to seek help repairing their broken radio .. and got the help there from the very nerds who not only did that, but constructed their own (very crazy sometimes) devices, started coding and made experimental music.
These connections did a lot good. And they are all broken now. (Also money destroyed all the physical spaces.)
@berlinfokus @jsbarretto
the same also happened in UK, Netherlands, France (I was part of this scene in late 90s) - we didn't even call them "hackspaces" or "makerspaces" as such, they grew out of the squats/raves and finding a lot of abandoned hardware in buildings that were used for parties, a lot of which we got working again - my then hometown was Reading in SE England, which had a lot of tech companies but also much "boom and bust" that led to many going bankrupt