SoHo, Thompson Street: Fresh Roasted Coffee

Wandering on SoHo streets in Manhattan you always come upon small miracles: here is Thompson Street, between Spring and Prince. A tiny space looking rather like a storeroom, a wonderful coffee, impossible to find in too many places in America. A tiny space, full of marvelous stuff, with delicious smell. It's dark inside, the bulbs hanging by the ceiling are not of any good, just to play with shadows. You are led rather by the smell of good coffee.
The whole has that ancient air, you'd say a small shop on an old street in old Bucharest, or old Istanbul. A tiny, tiny shop, full of good stuff, an old Armenian, or Greek, or Jew at the counter. There are no more in today's Bucharest, I miss them, this tiny thing reminds me of my childhood, long forgotten memories are coming, calling others, older and older. Where I was all these years? Or did I sleep, a long sleep of sixty years?



The young lady at the counter does not look at all like the shopkeepers that I remember from my childhood. She's very modern, with a chemise over her outfits, with a very XXIth century smile. The other lady, who's just buying her daily cup of coffee, is totally different: with her tall black hat and XIXth century look she's coming right from a Maupassant story. She would have been very possible in old Bucharest, she wouldn't been possible today outside SoHo. I have seen one, though, in old Baltimore, on the Charles Street. She was buying a cup of coffee at the Clayton Fine Books.




(New York, New York)