Little Shop

There’s a modest little shop front on the corner. Big glass frontage that shows a tiny café inside, it’s mostly unremarkable. The walls are painted a plain white and adorned with only a few black and white photos in bleached wooden frames. The tables are, again, plain and a bench runs the length of the front window, which is to say that there’s a short bench. The man behind the counter makes coffees all morning, drinking some, tipping others out that aren’t quite right. But mostly fuelling the loose but interconnected community who drift through on a daily basis.

It’s a standard kind of scene on the fringe of the city, there must be countless other cafes just like this one. But it has its special moment. The thing that’s special about this place isn’t the patrons, and it isn’t the cabinet of treats, or even the coffee, although the coffee is very good. What is special about this place is where it is, its little corner spot. Across from the café there’s a side street, a gap in the buildings that line the ridge where the main road runs. Through that gap is a view to the centre of the city. Tall office buildings and chicken coop apartment blocks, and maybe a glimpse of the harbour that the city sits over. A lovely view, but this isn’t what provides the magic for the café. The gap in the buildings across the street, it allows the view, which certainly helps, but it also allows the light. Facing towards the east it has the perfect outlook towards the rising sun. Every day, even when it seems to be wet and cloudy and dim, the sun somehow manages to force its way through that crack in the urban curtain and get itself trapped in the tiny café on the corner.

Over the morning, when the sun pushes in, the café lights up. It warms even in winter and traps the brightness with its white walls and big glass front. Life, the sun gives it life and it breathes as the door opens and closes, coughs as the used coffee is knocked into the bin. The people bump into each other and chat and leave a little bit friendlier as they go towards their lives in the city. The man behind the counter is content in his busyness, the production line is smooth and life just flows on.

People tend to mostly drink their coffee in the morning. The man has a few customers later in the day. He goes through the motions for them, he sweeps up after the rush and he starts to prepare the food for tomorrow. The sun is shining on some other café now, his time has passed, the performance is over. Now he can breathe out. Standing by the window he looks over the street and towards the city, it is still a nice view, a nice place to stand in the afternoon and maybe have a drink as the skyline starts to flicker and the sky darkens. But he knows it would never work as a bar, or a little restaurant serving red wine and pasta. The magic in his place is in the light, and the light comes in the morning.