no. 98: the internet made flesh

The cafe that just opened in my neighborhood seems less a commercial undertaking than a public art project.

They sell exquisitely but insufficiently expensive coffees and pastry, and have room for fewer than 20 people. The average check there is probably $10 or $12, the place is open 30 hours a week, and my eyes water when I try to estimate how much the renovation cost.

Nothing is actually made there other than coffee. They’re an offshoot of a much larger bakery nearby, which affords a vital privilege: they receive trays of raw croissants from the mothership, and bake them as the need arises. A hulking proofer-oven combo lurks in the back like the muscle, the only objects that serve no ornamental purpose. The freshness of their pastry is measured in minutes, and this is accomplished without a mixer, a workspace, or any bakers at all.

What they actually sell is calm, and a backdrop. The room has high ceilings, a fireplace, and a gallery of white plaster. Screens aren’t banned, but there’s nowhere to put them. Instead, there are sheepskins, copper accents on everything (even the espresso machine), and enough potted plants to fill a greenhouse. Most of their cups are handmade. It’s both beautiful and legible to the camera, ultra-refined airspace. If you haven’t seen it on your phone yet, you’d think you had when you walked in.

The staff buzzes around trying to look nonchalant, but they’re painfully earnest in their beanies and Blundstones and barrel-cut everything. They make coffee, feed the fire, and fuss over the record player. They take payments and clear tables. There’s a tiny bookshelf behind the register, which frames a different book each time I visit. I imagine they change the books like records, with the tips of their index fingers, on opposite edges. It takes two people to put a log on the fire. Everything happens with great deliberation.

It’s a statement about the purpose of modern cities: to bring people into proximity, then insulate them from each other. The internet made flesh.

I like to imagine this setting was built, not to stab reality with another jagged shard of instagram, but for the staff. On weekends there are four of them, in a space that seats twenty. They feed the fire, load the oven, make coffee, talk to people, wash cups. In one sense this is the work of high capitalism: chiefly emotional, employing few concrete skills, for struggle wages. In another, these are the tasks of daily life, rebranded as employment.

Today daily life isn’t generally considered a fitting purpose in itself, because it has no financial value. This place catches thornlike in the fabric of the market and threatens a tear. Here tending a fire, keeping a space clean, making warm drinks, become an occupation, valued work, for 8 hours a day. The space within these walls – serene, ergonomic, monastic – makes this seem no more than how things should be. You might think the customers are consumers, while staff are actually living.

I hope you find work that’s truly yours in 2025. I hope you find a way to be faithful to your tasks.