~ as cafe tableaux [w] continues to frame the cafe experience in a more polished, cultivated manner than that in which it has been discussed in the past, upenn reintroduces us to the base standards which are held by the typical coffee ‘fan’ with whom we share the streets:

“[Penn Current] bought ‘small’ cups of regular coffee from six local coffee shops, cafes, and other stores…”

• starbucks
• cosi
• au bon pain
• bucks county coffee
• wawa
• dunkin donuts

~ by the way, the fact that bush informs us this morning that we need to occupy iraq because terrorists are scary and the fact that mayor bloomberg rolls out a few hours later and tells us that scary terrorists are threatening the nyc subway is an amazing coincidence!

~ speaking of rolling out, cafe tableaux is online!

~

did they appear out of thin air? perhaps you had just ordered a coffee, and instead were presented with a cadre of bible thumpers in bad suits? were they beamed down from a spacecraft?

this is all very disturbing.

no! there is an unnerving trend in west philadelphia which involves the use nubile, sensually dressed young ladies who are dispatched to your neighboring table in the cafe and your front door at home. they pose as normal students, only upon close inspection does one realize that they are, in fact, actual christians; the text they are studying is the ‘holy bible’ and the syllabus before them is actually a list of ‘watchtower’ drop off points. you speak to these cafe spies at the risk of a lecture with the intent to convert.

on one occasion, however, we were able to observe a clearly collared priest proselytizing on the sidewalk; he was informing a boy in a foam hat and testament t-shirt of the harm in drinking beer from a coffee cup at 9am.

~ sansom street vignette:
‘we know you weren’t expecting us, but we thought you might be interested in talking about some of the things on the news’
‘is that a bible?’ (pointing)
‘yes! it sure is!’
‘i’m not interested. thank you’
‘ok, bye bye.’