“case study number two in why fairmount cannot sustain a decent coffeeshop…”

Saul Cups, 7:03:38 PM:
ugh

Saul Cups, 7:03:46 PM:
flying saucer sucks

Saul Cups, 7:03:47 PM:
big time

Saul Cups, 7:04:01 PM:
there isn’t a single TOLERABLE coffeeshop in my neighborhood

Saul Cups, 7:04:22 PM:
i’d rather be stuck at walnut bridge coffeehouse than mugs or saucer

thos. more, 7:04:42 PM:
where’s fsaucer?

Saul Cups, 7:05:00 PM:
26th and brown

Saul Cups, 7:05:06 PM:
it’s the place where i went one weekend

thos. more, 7:05:09 PM:
never heard of it

Saul Cups, 7:05:17 PM:
and people were talking about eating rabbit and venison

Saul Cups, 7:05:23 PM:
i decided to give it another chance

Saul Cups, 7:05:33 PM:
i arrived around 10 past 6

thos. more, 7:05:33 PM:
too bad we ran mojoe out of business

thos. more, 7:05:35 PM:
oh!

Saul Cups, 7:05:41 PM:
i knew it closed at 7

Saul Cups, 7:05:48 PM:
the barista says

thos. more, 7:05:48 PM:
what about that place by wf

thos. more, 7:05:53 PM:
java’s brewin’ ?

Saul Cups, 7:05:53 PM:
‘you know we close soon?’

Saul Cups, 7:06:02 PM:
‘um, like in 50 minutes?’

Saul Cups, 7:06:10 PM:
‘well, you’re welcome to hang out till then’

Saul Cups, 7:06:18 PM:
‘you mean, i’m welcome to hang out till you close?’

Saul Cups, 7:06:20 PM:
silence

Saul Cups, 7:06:28 PM:
fucking rude

Saul Cups, 7:06:33 PM:
and stupid

Saul Cups, 7:06:35 PM:
so i sit down

thos. more, 7:06:37 PM:
maybe they have a pre-close policy

Saul Cups, 7:06:43 PM:
just like last time

Saul Cups, 7:06:47 PM:
everyone there fucking knew each other

thos. more, 7:06:50 PM:
‘funny’, the same thing happened to me during my pleasant holiday in sweden

Saul Cups, 7:06:53 PM:
and were talking at each other from across room

thos. more, 7:06:56 PM:
‘we close in one hour’

Saul Cups, 7:07:03 PM:
about dumb shit

thos. more, 7:07:07 PM:
maybe their usual customer expects to sit there for 9 hours

Saul Cups, 7:07:11 PM:
the barista was the worst

Saul Cups, 7:07:22 PM:
talking at very high volume

Saul Cups, 7:07:27 PM:
and their internet was out

Saul Cups, 7:07:30 PM:
and he didn’t even tell me

Saul Cups, 7:07:34 PM:
i hate that place

Saul Cups, 7:07:38 PM:
it’s almost as bad as mugs

thos. more, 7:07:42 PM:
fuck saucers

Saul Cups, 7:07:59 PM:
when i write the tableau

Saul Cups, 7:08:04 PM:
it will start with

Saul Cups, 7:08:26 PM:
“case study number two in why fairmount cannot sustain a decent coffeeshop…”

Saul Cups, 7:08:51 PM:
everyone who lives in this neighborhood is a douchebag

thos. more, 7:09:28 PM:
you can just post this chat as the tableau

thos. more, 7:09:48 PM:
‘saucers isn’t worth any more effort than an online rant’

Saul Cups, 7:10:05 PM:
yes

thos. more, 7:10:43 PM:
i’ll do it

Saul Cups, 7:11:22 PM:
i hope they go out of business

thos. more, 7:11:50 PM:
are you going back there this weekend?

thos. more, 7:11:55 PM:
to learn your lesson again?

Saul Cups, 7:11:56 PM:
no

Saul Cups, 7:12:08 PM:
the barista and some customer were having a debate

Saul Cups, 7:12:18 PM:
about whether one should feel sorry for the somali pirates

thos. more, 7:12:21 PM:
mugshots would be ok if they didn’t have the ‘restaurant’ and the sex creeps

thos. more, 7:12:44 PM:
hm

Saul Cups, 7:12:55 PM:
take away the bacon, the kids, the baristas and mugs would be fine

thos. more, 7:13:01 PM:
i don’t feel sorry for pirates

Saul Cups, 7:13:14 PM:
it was fucking absurd

Saul Cups, 7:13:34 PM:
you have my permission to post this chat as a tableau

thos. more, 7:13:41 PM:
i wish the seal snipers would set up on the ramparts of eastern state penitentiary

Saul Cups, 7:13:54 PM:
http://www.theflyingsaucer.net/blog1/

Saul Cups, 7:14:03 PM:
don’t include that part when you c&p

thos. more, 7:14:13 PM:
which part?

thos. more, 7:14:15 PM:
the link?

thos. more, 7:14:40 PM:
that site looks stupid

thos. more, 7:14:43 PM:
i closed it already

thos. more, 7:15:06 PM:
i expect a cafe site to have hours and info about fair trade coffee & soy milk

thos. more, 7:15:26 PM:
not a newspaper full of feeds the baristas think are hilarious

thos. more, 7:15:40 PM:
‘funny things chlöe found on gawker!’

Saul Cups, 7:16:00 PM:
i know

Saul Cups, 7:16:06 PM:
i meant don’t include part about snipers

thos. more, 7:16:13 PM:
?

Saul Cups, 7:16:18 PM:
i don’t want saul cups to have fbi after him

thos. more, 7:16:28 PM:
the fbi were on that sniper ship, too!

thos. more, 7:16:34 PM:
they were all in on it

thos. more, 7:17:01 PM:
those seals weren’t on the ship when that shit started

thos. more, 7:17:16 PM:
they were flown there,

thos. more, 7:17:28 PM:
and they parachuted into the fucking ocean!

Saul Cups, 7:17:35 PM:
i know

thos. more, 7:17:36 PM:
and had to be plucked from water and put on ship

Saul Cups, 7:17:36 PM:
i mean

thos. more, 7:17:42 PM:
is that the easiest way to get on a boat?

Saul Cups, 7:17:49 PM:
i don’t want anything about snipers in phila assoc with scups

Saul Cups, 7:18:07 PM:
that’s the last thing scups needs

thos. more, 7:18:19 PM:
i just meant i want fairmount hill to be safe from pirates

thos. more, 7:18:48 PM:
not that bacon dbags should be shot

thos. more, 7:19:24 PM:
oh dear, what is this shit

thos. more, 7:19:32 PM:
Google Latitude Introducing Google Latitude

thos. more, 7:19:38 PM:
‘See where your friends are right now
Enjoy Google Latitude on your phone, computer, or both.’

thos. more, 7:19:41 PM:
great

thos. more, 7:19:53 PM:
another tool for my stalkers

thos. more, 7:20:49 PM:
maybe next google will have a website where you can turn on your ‘friend’s’ webcam from your own browser

thos. more, 7:21:38 PM:
Google Bug enables you to turn your friends’ cell phones into listening devices from your computer!

You were rocking a green and yellow ‘Brasilia’ shirt. You have a red hot body and lovely face to match. I was with someone, but it wasn’t my girlfriend. If you could hear us talking, you may have noticed I was giving her relationship advice! I would like to take you out sometime.

what day did you see the brasilia shirt?

Sunday

Haha, I’m pretty sure that was me- thank you for the compliments. If you don’t mind me asking, where did you see me ?

Well, whether or not it was you depends upon if you work at a coffeeshop, and upon the number that is on the back of the shirt.

Naturally, I work at Red Hook on 4th. Best coffee in Philly, I may add, and great vegan cheesecake.

The magic number is 8.

Yes, it was number 8!

By the way, I saw your shirt when was a customer at your coffeeshop on Sunday.

I appreciate the compliments. Thank you ! Say Hi next time, I’m not all that mean, really.

If I make it down there this weekend, I’ll definitely say HI.
You seriously are a gorgeous girl. Totally!
But don’t worry, I just posted as a joke to see what would happen; I’m not looking to hook up.
Anyway, hoping you respond…maybe asking for too much? Please?!
Have a good night!

While Ashley was chatting up his ‘sexy barista’, trying to assure her that he was not in a gay relationship with me without going so far as to reveal that he has a wife (providentially, he had insisted that I stash his wedding band in a drawer in my chambre earlier in the morning), I took a look at the family-friendly flyers covering the door to the WC, where I noticed a flyer for a book, Consuming Starbucks, that was either being released at Joe or was being read at Joe or was for sale at Joe — I have no way of knowing without actually reading the entire flyer.

As I returned to my table, I whispered to myself that I should see if this book would be suitable for inclusion in Cafe Tableaux’s Recommended Texts. Moments later this mental note was lost as Ashley began his interrogations regarding the barista’s ‘availability’.
thos.: ‘Available for what?’
Ashley: ‘Dating, I guess’
thos.: ‘I don’t think she is interested in dating customers.’
Ashley: ‘Why not?’
thos.: ‘I’ve been a customer here for two years, and I haven’t discerned any interest in dating me’
Ashley: ‘Have you ever talked to her?’
thos.: ‘I talk to her every time I come here!’
Ashley: ‘What do you say?’
thos.: ‘I’ll have a coffee. Maybe a bagel. What do you think about my work?’
Ashley: ‘She knows your ‘work’?’
thos.: ‘It doesn’t seem so.’

I convince Ashley to sow his oats elsewhere, and, after his ‘emergency run’ to the restroom, we sprint up Baltimore Hill and shell out $4 for the trolley ride to this week’s BiMon SciFi Con.

After Ashley’s public humiliation at the hands of an anally-restricted, insecure toadie from Michael Graves’s office and a fruitless encounter with a hottie from Tennessee Tech or somewhere, we pick up Ashley’s coat and bag and head into the streets to investigate the promised ‘best bookstore in Philadelphia’. Three minutes after exiting the PSFS building and two-and-a-half minutes after realizing that we don’t need coats for a dérive from Center City to South Phila to Fairmount, we turn the corner at 12th and Walnut and see Joe Coffee Bar at the other end of the block.

Much like some people use the term ‘hipster’ — an indexical referrent meant to encompass all the music, clothes, stores, magazines, bikes, or bars an irritating person might consume — as an insult when the precise reason for the person being an irritant can not be found, I often fail to understand any way to describe architecture from the 1970′s without just using ‘70′s‘ as an adjective.

I think they used the term ‘contemporary’ at the time; I grew up — yes, Thos. lived in the 70′s — recognizing the mode as anything including 45-degree angles and cedar siding, and nothing in my architectural education came close to touching this era in US history, except perhaps a photograph of Charles Moore’s Piazza d’Italia (Fuck.) at the close of my Trachtenberg. To me this ‘style’ is a blend of a stripped, muted reaction to both the hedonistic, drug-addled excesses (no more psychotropic colours) and the hippie, whole-earth movements (solar heating, ‘natural’ materials) of the 1960′s. Whatever the fuck academics like that prick back at PSFS might call it, it pervaded the mall food courts and office parks of my youth; even at the time, I knew it to be soulless and shallow.

Joe is stuck into such a distasteful shell. The space is undeniably uncomfortable, but it is neither campy enough to be kitsch nor offensive enough to be hated. Even looking at the logo, I get the idea that if Ralph Nader was a designer, he would put out such a cafe as Joe.

If not for the horses ambling down the street, towing carriages stuffed with tour guides in colonial-era suits, one might mistake this location for one of the cafes lining Memorial Drive which our Decatur tableauxists patronize with much relish, only without the neon-coloured Blenders or Frostee drinks.

This was not what I had expected from Joe. In the past, conducting research as we mapped our forays into the cafes of Philadelphia, Saul Cups and I had come across this modestly named coffee ‘bar’ on the web, and its stats were tantalizing: Fair Trade, yes; Organic, yes; Soymilk, yes; WiFi, yes. Finally, there was within reach a decent cafe not located in West Phila. We argued over who would review this establishment, yet, as weeks went by, exclaims were heard:
‘Why are we at White Place? We should be at Joe!’
‘I can’t believe I’m drinking shit from Tuscany, instead of checking out Joe!’
‘What did I drive to New York for? I haven’t even been to Joe yet!’

On the day that we eventually visited, our hopes were rapidly dashed. The coffee, soymilk, vegan treats and all the usual shit were fine, of course, but the environment was such an assault on anyone with well-developed visual acumen, it was impossible for a lazy Sunday of boning up on your Neruda much less get your Cryptoclassic decoded. We left with one sentiment in mind, the classic diatribe: ‘Fuck Joe’.

However, crossing the street with Ashley this sweltering March afternoon, it occurred to me that Joe is perfect for its setting. Adjacent to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and surrounded by middling offices conducting forgettable businesses, it is a spot ideally smoothed to ensure the monotony of the district. Blue button-down types who wear red ties are just barely abstaining from killing themselves as they take a break from their temp jobs upstairs. Folks who are watching their relatives die from gunshot-inflicted sepsis or who are getting paid to undergo experimental HPV treatment have too much on their mind to absorb an unfamiliar view. The locals must be able to drift from the cubicle to the chemotherapy lab to the hospital gift shop to the cafe to the Wendy’s across the street unimpeded by radical thought.

We never checked out that Starbucks book that has something to do with Joe, but we did verify that they are joined with Chapterhouse, Green Line Cafe, Kaffa Crossing, and a few other local cafes in Philadelphia’s Independents Coffee Cooperative, which is pretty awesome.

If I had to walk another 50 yards in my heavy trenchcoat and longjohns carrying my 30 pound pack, I would not have made it. Although the promise of hot black joe did not seem to be an antidote to the unseasonable heat and the sun which pummeled the back of my neck, it was the sun, which would foil the rest of the day’s perambulations, that would serve as the delicate saviour of Chapterhouse in the little moments to which it brought solitude.

I will not ever understand why the uptight prick who moderated my paper session at the ACSA conference felt my 8 months of solid work less worthy of discussion than 2 folks who preferred, like the opportunists they were, to deify an architect and his process, hoping to support some kind of myth of the virtuoso or the master. It was clear that these people had never worked in an office. Built architecture is not and cannot be the realm of the virtuoso. Who is going to draw the interior elevations of the janitor’s closet, ‘Rem’? Although it is indicative of these hacks’ opinion of what architecture is. It is the ‘big picture.’ It is not the moment, the tall entry stair designed with abnormally tall risers to keep stay-at-home moms at home and not chilling in cafes with their giant strollers, or the discovery of a schizophrenic restroom that the master had not even seen the drawings for as he would certainly not have thought that pixelated wainscott a fair idea but it is there now nonetheless, or the way the light peeks in from around a corner where you can barely insinuate a window with sheers. But for us, that is life and architecture and space and memory. It is not the process or the ego, it is what we steal from it and them.

In the far rooms, the sunlight pulled back linen curtains, slightly, and poured over the sill, like from an overflowing basin of soy milk.

The sunlight, just barely, like a kiss from a face being hauled away by archangels into white skies, gathers into the space. Afternoon in a room, any space where sunlight is alien, to me, most spaces, has the most melancholy of touches. An afternoon that I came home early from work, to an empty house, shortly after it had been robbed, the sun looked like an intruder. I sat at the kitchen table with a box of empty spice bottles, a sheet of adhesive paper with the names of spices printed on it, and several tubs of spices from the farmer’s market. I listened to one of the only CDs I had at the time, Arvo Part’s ‘Spiegel Im Spiegel.’ It was barely there, just a violin and a piano somewhere in the shadowless house, slowly growing dim. The methodical process of trimming out labels with an xacto knife, peeling them from the backing, affixing them to a bottle, and funneling spice into the bottle, and not belonging there at home, where, because of the hour of the day, I also felt like an intruder, was quite possibly the most disembodied moment in my life.

The cast of characters could be distilled in Chapterhouse, swimming through the tangible milky sunlight. The tall girl with her sweatpants tucked ironically into her fancy boots as if to celebrate the fact that she was wearing sweatpants. The bro with the ipod. The bro with the ipod who took the opportunity when the girl who asked him if she could plug her laptop into the outlet behind him to take off his ipod and leave it off and chat her up as she tried to work. The gentlemen on the tete a tete chair, one facing into the corner and one watching the world go by dimly. The gentleman facing the room sees in the sunlight an apparition of a breeze which does not cause the curtains to stir and dries the sweat on his lower back. He feels as though he is in a ‘cool dark place’ and has stripped down to his shirtsleeves in order to drink his coffee without throwing up or passing out.

The only social reward I received from my academic labours at the conference was to be asked whether I had read ‘Invisible Cities’ by the golem who had played a more melodramatic Arvo Part piece, Fratres or Summa or something, during his paper presentation. Had we seen him back in the sunny streets, walking west, he walking east, he might have been the one on whom Thos. had pulled out his knife, flicked it open with his thumb, and showed his ‘war face’ whilst pretending to drive the knife up through his chin, the sun glinting off the blade.

addendum:
Chapterhouse Cafe is a member of Philadelphia’s Independents Coffee Cooperative.

Satellite Coffeeshop is the exemplar for curbing one’s zeal for breaking off a review within a New York minute of sitting down in a cafe — i.e., spending 20 minutes in an easy chair and scribbling down a few vignettes about the room.

Had I done this, my pen would have gushed forth ink in a pattern of letters to make the most rosy-eyed anarcho-cyclist blush. On my first visit — discounting the few visits I made before Satellite moved from a stand in the defunct Firehouse Farmer’s Market to its current location — I exclaimed, aloud, that Satellite was my new favourite coffeeshop in West Philadelphia.

Satellite was, and is, everything that Green Line Cafe is not. The space is textured, colourful, and lively; the same is true for the employees. And the customers. And especially the music.

Whereas Green Line is lately overrun with upper-middle-class, upper-middle-aged, white breeders – a classification in which each component is not a fault, but when totaled create the most passionless, interchangeable automatons one can find in a freshly gentrified suburb. These zombi show up at Green Line late in the morning, tots in tow, apparently because sitting wide-legged a cafe is the ‘thing to do’, not because of any deliberated, personal decision made independently on their parts.

Unlike every other cafe in West Philadelphia, you do not have to smuggle in your own vegan margarine or Tofutti if you eat bagels at Satellite; you may wish to avoid the bagels, however, as they do not have a toaster and instead ‘grill’ the bagels in the same unwashed press as their cheese-filled wraps. The shelves are full of vegan cookies, brownies, and cakes. Most importantly, they have a number of varietal coffees through which they cycle each day, rather than a single bitter house blend.

Naturally, Satellite is indistinguishable from the multitude of college-area coffeehouses that groups like Citysearch or Zagat might call ‘funky’ just because the furniture doesn’t match or a barista might be heard cussing. Nevertheless, if you are already stuck in West Philadelphia, beyond the expanding borders of ‘University City’, it is likely that anyone* with whom you are hanging is going to be at Satellite, anyway.

Despite the spectre of Green Line fading after every visit to Satellite, the veneer soon was worn clear. The operation of Satellite is poorly oiled; they consistently are short of items they offer – for example: pesto, tomatoes, coffee. The client?le are often as ridiculous as any you’ll find in a Center City Starbuck’s, and, at times, even the music can be powerfully awful**.

Having grown up with crusty punx; I barely noticed the customers draped in filthy costumes that are more patches than clothing. It is curious, but hitherto unremarkable that the number of the kids covered with paint is disproportionate to the amount of painting going on in the city. What cinched it for me was the second time I noticed a girl drinking coffee from a pseudo-Mason jar.

I’ve seen a slew of people bring their own travel cups or mugs into all manner of cafes. That is reasonable. In fact, Satellite knocks 50 cents from the price if you bring your own mug. The distinction here is the types of vessels which Satellite clients choose to bring: former containers for peanut butter, beans, or bruschetta. Drinking coffee from a glass jar is preposterous posturing beyond all rationality.

There is a reason that coffee mugs are porcelain or ceramic: thermal conduction. This lesson is not missed by these jar-drinkers, based on the method of gripping the jar by the rim with two finger tips they have developed to avoid a scalding wake up call.

I’ve never spoken to anyone at Satellite, so I merely can presume the motivations of these people. The only purposes I can imagine, based on the political positioning of the typical West Philly Kid, are matters of thrift and of ecology.

Make no mistake; I am cheap. I could squeeze the shit from a buffalo nickel. How it would please me to have one of those nickels for each time I’ve had to suffer derision from a fellow tableur because my shoes have a few holes, because my sweater is the ‘wrong’ brand, because I buy brake fluid from Pic’N'Save, or because I’m trying to get one more season from my bike tyres.

I understand well the attempt to draw parallels with ‘po folks’ of the Depression who could not afford glasses and had to reuse jam or Mason jars. However, people who lost their farm and can not afford to pick up a mug for pennies at Second Mile or One+Five probably would not be riding up to a cafe at 11am on a Gitane fixie and dropping $1.75 for 12oz of Sumatran, anyway. The faked deprivation is made naked by this contradiction.

Perhaps one is trying to ‘save’ something by using one’s own jar. Are they saving Satellite’s dishwater? Presumably they use an equal amount of dishwater when they clean(?) the jar back at their squat. Are they saving some glass by reusing the jar? Now there is a pot of spaghetti sauce or bag of lentils that requires a new vessel. It is fair to say that no use of resources is being reduced by the use of the jar.

What could it be, aside from image? Is there any object more ill-suited for this use? Maybe the bicycle inner tube I tried to use as door trim for my F-150 qualifies; we’ve already established my frugality, and no one ever rode in the truck, anyway. Once I saw a 1954 Land Rover with a Budweiser tallboy serving as an oil filter; however, this contraption was fashioned in a resource-poor desert, and, besides, it actually worked. I’m sure the list of reprogrammed items is endless; but if there is a Top 10 of Inconvenient Attempts at Statement Making, the olive-jar-as-coffee-cup ranks high.

In any event, all my attempts at rationalism have been rendered moot by the guy who showed up one morning with a plastic tub — like those used to package hummus or fresh salsa – and filled it with hot coffee….

I still enter Satellite a couple of times a week, as, unlike other tableauxists, I frequently get the opportunity to hang out in coffee shops. Have I gotten too close to Satellite? Well, after my 100th order, no one working there has yet figured out that I get the same drink each time I visit – something not lost on the baristas at some nearby establishments. I remain at Satellite — in it, but not of it — curious of an evolving social phenomenon.

*anyone white
** playing at maximum volume at 7.30am a tape of a tape of a tape of an analog live recording of Aus-Rotten playing your roommate’s little sister’s basement in Minneapolis? unnecessary attempt at cred.

When this place was called Mean Bean, it had a powerful set of advantages, not least of which was its position as a foil to the shortcomings of the other cafes in southern Center City; every time we tried to visit the Stellar on Spruce only to find it closed, or when we couldn’t bide the noise and attitude at Last Drop, or when we were re-convinced that the Pour House was for brunch eaters, we would invariably gravitate toward Mean Bean.

The paper cups of coffee in which soymilk consistently clotted were certainly not the draw, nor was the erratic service. The current week’s twink could barely point the spout at the cup, let alone handle a wand or understand that iced coffee is not brewed by running cubes through the filter. Rather, their expertise was in keeping the beefcake turned up to eleven; in the four or five days that they spent employed, they could not be expected to master the ordeals of the barista as they whiled away the hours tousling their coifs and raising their midriffs.

Once you coached them through the task of filling your cup, you would find that no indoor seating was available; all the tables were on the sidewalk or patio. Covered with a trellis and screened with vines, the patio was adjacent to a community garden, so as you looked up from your Sunday crossword or your Braudel you could find yourself musing on pastoral dreams sparked by eggplant on the vine rather than distracted by the abortion clinic or the ‘Everything But Ice Cream’ shop down the street.

One afternoon we entered to find the room reeking of benzene; the register had been moved, and the counter had been cleared of cups and peanut butter cookies. In place of the usual slab of man candy, there was a diminutive, manicured woman filling out a cocktail dress. In response to our hesitancy and our whispered comments on the changes, she made a joke, perhaps, in the form of a sarcastic, ‘Yes, we are changing things’

Apparently the soy policy is one of those things.

“Do you have soymilk?” The question comes after coffee tab is paid.
“Yes…” Slowly she hands it over the counter. “Ordinarily we charge 50 cents for soymilk.” She waits expectantly.
“OK” Soymilk is poured, generously, and 50 cents is not offered.
“For next time.”

Before there was a next time, the name was changed to The Village Coffee House to reflect new management and more overt gayness; each time we are on the street, we have talked ourselves out of visiting, lamenting the lack of easy cafes in southern Center City.

I was very pleased when I learned that a new coffee shop was being installed right near my residence. Looking back, I’m not sure how I allowed my expectations to be raised so. Located on the left bank of the Schuylkill, along a major east-west artery leading into University City, Walnut Bridge Coffee House is strategically sited to function like a trawl, scooping up Penn and Drexel students walking to and from campus, as well as service the anonymous loft-dwellers who live in the box across the street. Nevertheless, in the earliest stages of my brief relationship with Walnut Bridge Coffee House, I was still in the naive throes of relishing the pairing of ‘bridge’ and ‘coffee,’ and, overall, was looking forward to sampling this neighborhood cafe’s goods.

It’s nice that the cafe is on a bridge. On the other hand, seeing that there is no bike rack in front of the cafe, one is left with few options for locking, other than to shackle one’s wheels to a nearby, trash-strewn staircase, or to give up on Philadelphia entirely, toss said bike over the bridge, buy a car, and move to New Jersey. I chose the former option, and proceeded towards the coffee shop — again — this time on foot. Upon this second approach, Walnut Bridge Coffee House’s preference for the pedestrian customer became abundantly clear, for there exists no other signage for the cafe than a near-invisible crimson logo sticker’d onto the establishment’s glass face. All evidence of the cafe’s presence is invisible, unless viewed from the sidewalk while on foot. Such design choices cannot be accidental, I assume — but maybe I give the proprietor(s) too much credit.

After finally gaining entrance to the cafe, I walk purposefully to the counter. “Just a coffee to go, please.” I pay and wait expectantly. The barista motions towards the wall behind me. Turning, I find several coffee thermoses arranged in a line — apparently I am supposed to pump my own coffee. This is an arrangement that, to me, seems to debase what is most sacred about the cafe transaction. Why don’t they just have a coin-operated contraption that dispenses cups, and then dispense with the barista entirely? This is no ‘house.’ I’d rather lug my bike up a storey to my own apartment, brew a pressful of cafe, and serve myself in a more comfortable setting of detached solitude.

On what can be described without hyperbole as one of the five bleakest days of my life, I discovered Kaffa Crossing. I had just been released from 12 hours of hellish confinement aboard the Acela from Atlanta to discover that my luggage and bike had not been placed on the train and that I would have to return to 30th Street Station 24 hours later to pick them up. So, I was left to march into my newest place of residence, an as-yet-unseen room in a stained, ice-encrusted city in which I knew not a soul, supplied with only a backpack loaded with books and trail mix and a grocery bag loaded with my ‘files’.

The walk to my new home was only eighteen blocks, but they were in the direction heading from bad to worse. After passing the Indo-Pak grocery, the collapsed church, the adult video store, and the bulletproof Chinese takeout storefront, I noticed a warmly toned wooden box inserted into the hardest and unfriendliest-looking block east of Upper Darby. Tucked into the corner of the window of the joint is a sign marked ‘Free Wireless’, suggesting that what looked like a small jazz club or movie theater was in fact a coffee house.

The social environment in Kaffa is a match of Russian roulette. When the DSL is disconnected from your home, you should be able to spend a month at a table in the corner, without intrusion from the client?le or complaints from the proprietors, buying your time for the price of a refill of Yirgacheffe and a spicy injera wrap or perhaps a vegan biscotti, until you hear ‘did you get a lot of work done today?’ as you settle your bill or you get a wave from the hardest-working business owner in the neighborhood as you ride by on your Schwinn (before it is stolen).

When you try to visit for a peaceful bowl of ful on valentine’s day, your quiet conversation will be transformed to shouts over a poetry slammer angrily referring to his wife’s sex as her ‘underground railroad’ whilst a horde swarms across the tables for samples on free smoothie night as you are surrounded by newly hung art whose strength is ambition and enthusiasm rather than development of technique or study.

You may even acquire a mild stalker, who questions you about every book you read and where you work. He’ll wonder why you haven’t been to his favorite restaurants or why he hasn’t seen you walking in front of his building. Even though you drape jackets and bags over the other chair in an effort to make your table seem crowded, he’ll drag a chair across the room and sit to confide in you that physical interaction is more important to develop than intellectual discourse, being sure to clarify that he is referring to ‘sexual contact’.

You can arrive on weekend afternoons and hear the Radical Socialists Book Club dissecting ‘Puddinhead Wilson’, but the idea of arriving for ‘A Performance Inspired by Yoko Ono’ on John Cage’s birthday should not be considered.

Had I been aware on Day One of my Philadelphia Experiment that Kaffa was one of the richest operational pieces of the fabric of West Philadelphia and that, of all places to blindly inhabit, I was inconceivably fortunate to move into a carpeted basement only two blocks down the street, I would not have spent the first month researching it online and observing it from afar, neglecting to visit until the morning after my roommate’s birthday party, when there were too many people passed out and strewn about the living room and dining room floor for me to activate my coffee grinder and put the kettle on the stove, forcing me from my habit of isolation from my new city. When it comes to approaching the Philadelphia cafe, Kaffa Crossing is both the alpha and the omega.

addendum:
Kaffa Crossing is a member of Philadelphia’s Independents Coffee Cooperative.

Though I have entered Stellar during each of the four seasons, I always associate it with suffocation and heat. The space is confined and the music is unbearably loud and inappropriate for the notions of leisure with which coffee is typically consumed. Strobe lights and pyrotechnics would be more suited to the atmosphere of Stellar than domes of muffins and cupcakes. If you wish to have a seat, it must be on stools perched in a tiny loft hoisted above the espresso machine and under the faux-industrial ventilation armature. Refuge from the smothering interior can be sought in a few plastic chairs on the sidewalk, but the lack of shade and the heavily trafficked street merely completes the assault on the senses.

There is a fair chance that you will never have the opportunity to judge these conditions yourself, however. Stellar is prone to closing without warning and opening without regard to the hours posted on the door. Numerous times cafetableaux has turned the corner with the intention of taking a coffee — to go — at Stellar, only to discover that they are inexplicably closed. On one occasion, I was able to secure an explanation; upon ordering a round of large coffees, I was informed that, due to the lack of business that afternoon, the cafe was closing early, and, as a result, the coffee warmers had been deactivated and only lukewarm coffee was available.

There is not a lack of beverage options in the area, however; each time I have been shut out, I merely drifted one block to the west where the friendly staff at First Food Market fills their pots with Green Mountain.

Old City appears to be an inviting place for work; it is well lit and spared from excessive accoutrement, being instead fitted with uniform, sturdy furnishings; the seating is in a room separated from the rowdy preparation and ordering area by a short hallway (see Novel Cafe). The only adornments upon the walls are reproductions of images and articles representing pleasant working environments on coffee farms at the turn of the century, a time when, in fact, most coffee was picked by slaves under murderous conditions. The lack of distractions and abundance of open wireless networks couple to suggest a suitable work environment — at least, this is how it appears in the abstract form buried in the recesses of memory of previous visits.

Situated on a deadend, cobblestone side street in Philadelphia’s Old City, natch, entrance into Old City Coffee is a case study in how the other half lives. Old City is the domain of order-expectant yuppies – those who value structure over texture and place demands upon cafes accordingly; a parade of such characters marches through the periphery of your perception. Teenage girls express excitement about riding horses through Gettysburg on their father’s birthday. Clerks for the Federal Appeals Court brag about taking their bosses to Chili’s. A middle-aged man in a goatee and mules is diverted from the sports page when his velour tracksuited wife chatters about the access to Metropolitan Bakery in Farmicia. A father neglects his heartbroken tweenie daughter as he utilizes his newspaper as a barrier between them. A barista displays his obliviousness to irony as he shouts about a loud customer who helped herself to tea. A grey-haired male pulls an adolescent girl of dubious relation onto his lap and rubs her bare belly. Each of them is consuming cream cheese-filled French toast or a hazelnut steamer covered with cocoa and whipped cream.

These gastronomic perversities and the egregious shallowness of the customers is contrasted by the grave and sincere interest in decent coffee held by the operators of Old City. They roast their own beans and sell them in bulk, including Jamaican Blue Mountain and the only Indian Plantation beans we have ever seen; they sell a variety of contraptions, such as Chemex and vacuum pots, for brewing coffee superior to that extracted from typical domestic devices; they publish a newsletter extolling the virtues of coffee-producing regions and proper methods of storage; they maintain a calendar alerting you to upcoming coffees-of-the-day such as Zimbabwe AA or Sumatra Gayo Mountain.

Like many Philadelphia cafes, then, Old City would be exemplary if not for the patrons. Rather than annoyances such as screaming kids (Mugshots), insulting service (La Colombe), and head-splitting, invasive music (Last Drop), the disruptions at Old City are supplied by more or less clueless caricatures of self-entitlement. As a cast of clowns cheapens the appreciation of splendid coffee in an unobtrusive space, the most work you may accomplish here may be a series of craigslist rants and raves addressed to the showboats sharing the room with you.