[A humble request: If you can, please donate to help me carry on tracing word histories. Thank you.]
The noun café-hopping now usually designates the recreational activity of visiting, during a single outing or day, multiple cafés in a town or city area, to sample various drinks, foods and atmospheres.
—Cf. also the British-English informal noun pub crawl, which designates a drinking tour of a number of pubs or bars.
However, originally, especially in the phrase to go café-hopping, the noun café-hopping designated, in American English, the practice of enjoying the nightlife of a city or town by visiting multiple bars and nightclubs.
These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences of the noun café-hopping that I have found:
1-: From The Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, California, USA) of Wednesday 20th June 1917 [part 2, page 3, column 3]:
Liberty.
MATRON FREE AGAIN.
Watts Woman Who Slapped the City Marshal’s Face at a Meeting of the Trustees, is Released the Second Time from the County Jail.Again yesterday Mrs. Martha Windbigler of Watts, who slapped the face of the City Marshal when he invited her to go “cafe hopping,” * was released from the County Jail. Superior Judge Craig ordered her freed.
She was convicted of having assaulted Marshal Giles of Watts during a meeting of the City Trustees there. She had complained of the conduct at some of the cafes in that community. Marshal Giles suggested she accompany him on a tour of the cafes. Mrs. Windbigler interpreted the invitation as an insult and slapped the officer’s face.
She was given a jail sentence, but has been released twice on orders from Superior Judge Craig.
* Mrs. Windbigler’s strong reaction indicates that the noun café-hopping (which is in quotation marks in this text) and the connotations attached to this noun were already well established. Interestingly, Mrs. Windbigler was described as a respectable lady “with four children at home and an interest in the welfare of Watts” in The Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, California, USA) of Sunday 24th June 1917 [part 4, page 14, column 5].
2-: From Terms—Cash, a short story by the U.S. journalist and author Jack Lait (1883-1954), published in The Bee (Danville, Virginia, USA) of Saturday 3rd November 1928 [page 8, column 7]—in the following, Nestor Murenradt, “of the Busy Bee in Piqua, Ohio”, who is visiting an unspecified big city, is talking to Myrtle, “an emergency model, an art student”—here, the phrase to go café-hopping seems to refer to dancing:
“I know you’re a call model. You sell your time. That’s O. K. Why can’t I buy some of it?”
“How do you mean?”
“This way. It’s 11:27 now. I’ll pay you $5 an hour for every hour you stick with me from 11:30 on—I’ll take you anywhere you wan’t [sic] to go and get you home any time you want to quit. We can go cafe-hopping. I dance pretty fair, they tell me. If you go along till 2:30, you make fifteen smackers—and so on. Is it a deal?”
3-: From Highlights of Broadway: From the Circle to the Square, by the U.S. journalist and author Jack Lait (1883-1954), published in the San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco, California, USA) of Sunday 17th December 1933 [Magazine Section, page 4, column 4]:
Albert Berryman, the dapper major domo of the Paradise on Broadway, has been associated with Nils T. Granlund (N. T. G.) continuously through the entire black years of prohibition and depression. For these two there was never a day’s lay-off. From basement cabarets to the flourishing upstairs gold-mines, they have rarely separated and have never been inactive. Granny’s name has been up in lights longer and more continuously than that of any other dozen stars on the Main Alley. Albert, when he has a night off, goes cafe-hopping around the other night-spots.
4-: From the column Star Dust: Movie and Radio, by Virginia Vale, published in The Northwest Kansas News (Colby, Kansas, USA) of Monday 24th May 1937 [page 3, column 3]:
Social life and cafe-hopping were at low ebb during the weeks when there was talk in the air of a strike of the Screen Actors’ guild which counts all the great in its ranks, but the homes of Robert Montgomery, Jim Cagney, Fredric March and a few other leaders were continual mob scenes. These men won the undying gratitude of extras and bit players, for they were battling to improve their pay and working conditions, not their own. Everyone is relieved that no strike was necessary. These leaders rallied the support of their fellow-players so quickly and thoroughly that the producers gave in to their demands without a struggle.
