I love these old early 'net stories. I remember when many universities had publicly addressable IP's to everything, even workstations, and routers for even major telco companies had the default credentials. It was a crazy several years.
There was an Internet cafe near me when I was in college but I never went to it. I didn't see the appeal, since I had a PC at home, but watching this video I can see why the average person would have found them fascinating.