Owning a Piece of the City, One Caf?t a Time
I found the café in early September on a side street just off a major thoroughfare below 14th Street. It was raining. I had tea and two cookies. If New York that night was a rain-slicked street and dirty puddles on the subway stairs, the café was the opposite: a sanctuary of bronze, butter and mahogany.
My last visit was a month later. I arrived around 1 o'clock and sat at my usual table. At 3 the owner came in for a few minutes. At 5 I left for an errand. I planned to return for a glass of wine with my boss and some late work. But when I returned, the waitress informed me of a new policy: no laptops after 6:30.
By the time I reached the nearby Starbucks I was nearly in tears. How could a no-laptop policy have been so crushing?
The answer begins with a rain-slick city. In my immigrant imagination, New York attains mythical size, as vast and incomprehensible as the sky and sea once were.
Imagine arriving, attempting to understand it only able to live in one room, one street at a time. A Baton Rouge, a Providence-these can be understood. A handful of museums, a district or two of bars, two or three theaters. New York overwhelms.
But the café was always apprehensible. The menu was always the same and the check identically delivered. Outside loomed Broadway, Chelsea, villages East and West-these could not be understood. But I could understand the list of pastries and five kinds of wine. By the middle of the month I was coming every day, for tea and work, feeling that I owned, if not a city, at least a piece of one.
One day the Japanese tourists arrived, 10 of them, grinning and laughing. One wore an oversized white dress shirt and seemed immaculately pleased to be in New York, taking photographs. I felt a paternalistic pride. The café was finally making it. Soon there would be other tourists and a Groupon.
But on the day of the first Groupon, the owner went to every table, telling jokes and making introductions. He didn't come to mine. He caught my eye briefly on his way to the bathroom. After this, I began to feel misplaced. My fellow workers were replaced by elegant, conspiratorial wine-sharers. I lingered in the back and felt ashamed when I stepped outside to take a call, like I was interrupting something.
The day before the 6:30 rule, I stayed until 7:15, drinking wine and sending emails. I left a big tip and smiled broadly on the way out. It was nearly fall-soon hot tea would be a necessity, soon the café would become even more essential.
The waitress, at least, looked sorry as she told me. I think she understood. My entire time at the café I had seen just two others working so late. Perhaps they were a menace. But it seemed more likely I was. Someone had a vision of his café. It did not include me.
When I arrived at Starbucks, I had to wait in line. Behind the counter, the attentive beauties had been replaced by wage slaves, barely stopping their conversation to take your order. I was served a tall, chemical coffee in a paper cup and took it to an unclean table. Everything was worse than it is at the café. But I felt a little better-I knew no one would reject me.