The cafe is somewhere near the Philadelphia Art Museum. I knew not because I saw the iconic ionic columns on the way over but because I saw the location on my Google Maps app. After a skating a short distance, I found myself stopping in a quaint corner shop. The greyish column located immediately outside the door seemed decorative without a distinct function and did not seem to fit within my three known archetypes of columns.

I opened the glass door to the sound of Yellow Submarine by the Beatles playing on the loudspeaker. I instinctively ordered a dark roast and picked the seat nearest to the window. I had that luxury since the shop didn’t seem to be filled to the brink. The mug I received was white, soothing, and round. It was quite unlike the dark, heavy, and rigid mugs that I have received from countless other coffee shops. I appreciated the sentiment.

The front had been lit with the most amount of natural light, but there seemed to be quite an ephemeral environment about the shop as a whole. Paired with the lack of people, the air seems to carry the impression of a dream, similar to the last scene in Taxi Driver. The corridors of my mind contained quite many unresolved problems, but the manifestation through my external perception seemed quite jazzy. Until, of course, like Betsy, I leave.