Satellite Coffeeshop is the exemplar for curbing one’s zeal for breaking off a tableau within a New York minute of sitting down in a new cafe — i.e., spending 20 minutes in an easy chair and scribbling down a few vignettes about the room.

Had I done this, my pen would have gushed forth ink in a pattern of letters to make the most rosy-eyed anarcho-cyclist blush. On my first visit — discounting the few visits I made before Satellite moved from a stand in the defunct Firehouse Farmer’s Market to its current location — I exclaimed, aloud, that Satellite was my new favourite coffeeshop in West Philadelphia.

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Sometimes in this line of work you drink a cup of blackjo “just because.” It is not the lure of the steamy low lit den with pressed tin ceilings, or the wide open transparency of a corner shop with white walls and stripe-shirted baristi, or even the desperation of the pedestrian in the strange city looking for somewhere to take a beastly dump spawned by their morning cup at one of the aforementioned types. Sometimes you just want to go in for the sole reason of getting to make some notes about the place, to get it, as an oddity, under the belt of the project.

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