Keep the cafés!
Photo: Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (1987)
It's a bright Saturday morning and I get out of bed. Walk slowly towards the bathroom. I turn on the tap and wash my face. I open the cupboard of toiletries and find my face products - cleanser, toner, serum and day cream. I scrub, apply moisturiser and finish with sunscreen. I lift my toothbrush and toothpaste from the container, gently squeeze out some toothpaste and brush my teeth. Then I find my outfit for the day. Preferably a floral dress in a lightweight fabric, preferably cotton or silk, possibly a pair of high-waisted trousers and a nice shirt. I prepare my bag - a small make-up bag, mobile phone and a book. I keep it simple and organised. Finally ready for today's excursion while humming the song Couleur café by Serge Gainsbourg: "L'amour sans philosopher. C'est comm' le café."
Café. Just the sound of the word sounds like a finesse. A finesse that everyone should be able to find every now and then. Because life in a café is different from life anywhere else. The sounds, the scenes, the smells and all the magical moments that occur once in a while. All the pages you get to read in a novel or short story in an hour. Or the newspaper.
A daily excursion does wonders for your everyday life. A cup of the day's coffee and pastry for your own chores can be compared to a yoga class where the focus is on breathing in and out. In cafés, however, breathing is more in the form of judgement and less static. As long as you have sat down in silence, with your body in stoic calm, your brain can reconnect and your consciousness can absorb all impressions. Consciousness and a cup of coffee, yes!
So what is it about café life that is so appealing to so many? The crowds or the freshly brewed coffee from a fancy importer? There are many good reasons to stop by some cultural event, but one of them has to be the great culture created in cafés in your neighbourhood or in some continental city. The hustle and bustle of people from all corners of the city, each with their own aura.
The newspapers that take up almost all the space around the table, regardless of whether they are right- or left-handed. The décor, whether it's light-coloured pine wood from some modern Scandinavian store or from the La Belle Époque era.
The music is on or off, soft pop or Norah Jones - a familiar sound in many cafés' speakers. The light from outside shines in through the small or large glass windows, well placed from all possible angles.
Café life is an event that offers a lot of small and big things. Even on the patio, you can see a sea of life, people running quickly after the bus, or those sitting and watching the catwalk of people strolling down towards the square.
Café life is part of a solitary or social gathering, and a place for a creative salon for those particularly interested. Especially when it comes to the classic cafés and their traditional origins.
Throughout history, timeless and iconic cafés have proven to be an important arena for politics and philosophy for several prominent people. For example, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre and their friends are known to have visited Cafe de Flore or Les Deux Magots. At the latter place, Simone de Beauvoir wrote parts of The Second Sex. During the French Revolution, cafés such as Le Procope (which still exists) and Foy, which was located by the Palais Royal, were the scene of loud debates. During the student revolution two hundred years later, sophisticated young people sat in cafés and discussed politics.
In London, pressmen Addison & Steele decided that their magazines, The Spectator and Tatler, would be born at Will's Coffee House in the 19th century. Europe's café life is well known as a political arena.
For over 350 years, the café has been part of many people's everyday lives. Inviting menus with dry or wet school bread, sandwiches on Danish rye bread, top-class chocolate cake or a trendy favourite in the spirit of the times: Raw cake! Could it be a sign of the decline of café life?
In both Adamstuen and Frogner here in Oslo, the new fashion chain Raw Cafe has set up shop, where you can enjoy healthy cakes with matcha tea or cafe au laite with soya milk. Decorated with pastel-coloured trinkets and low seat cushions. These trend-based cafés have destroyed the space for discussion and quiet reading and replaced it with a space that invites a slightly different atmosphere than the continental cafés. For example, Grand Café in Oslo. It's a shame that the place had to undergo a new refurbishment in modern style to become trendy again. Grand could have been a continental café during the day and a restaurant in the evening.
What's next? Shoeless guest seating? And yes, there is such a thing. At Pust in Majorstuen, where I lived just over a year ago, they have their own shoeless zone for those who can't find free space in the venue when it's hectic. But enough about that. Barefoot or not, cafés help to raise people, but now it seems that it's people who are raising the café. Café life is hanging by a thread if it is to be constantly replaced by new concepts that cry out for wholesomeness, not least with a decor that tells us we should care about civilisation and education. A continental coffee is unlikely to radiate this.
What about preserving the history of café life? Not just to preserve the old just because it's the oldest, there's room for modernisation and refreshment, but it's also important to preserve the traditionally cultivated lifestyle that most people enjoy in their busy lives.
Protecting the traditional doesn't have to be an anti-demonstration against the new. Historyless and soulless life can arise if cities become to "well being-fixated". And not least, people of culture benefit from a continental location. Especially writers who need a change of scenery from time to time, and not least artists with all their ideas and reflections.
The traditional café life also makes us tighten up a bit, we make an effort in our choice of attire, mode, as in the old days when you went to a café because it was seen as high culture. People didn't exactly wear sweatpants when they went out to enjoy a cup of coffee.
A traditional café creates a culture where we meet and gather to brew some ideas and thoughts or simply gather strength for ourselves. We should cherish that.
Fortunately, there are some exceptions. Kaffebrenneriet from 1994 and Stockfleths from 1895, two chains that offer a bit of classic café life and democratically offer coffee at a decent price, and a plus for the stamp card that gives you free coffee after every 5th or 10th cup. But a minus for not offering any more reading material.
Another good reason to go to a café would be if they offered a selection of newspapers and magazines, as they did at Cafe Central in Vienna around 1913. Then they offered 251 numbered publications. The selection is not as large as it once was, but writers and philosophers still go here to read international or Austrian news.
This is something we should learn from here in Norway. The risk of theft of reading material is not a good enough argument for not offering this. Cafés should civilise people by showing them trust. Not least, this is favourable for abolishing some of the laptop culture with people who read paper. And not least to give those who have less to spend an opportunity to sit down with a newspaper.
The classic cafés are places that allow us to take care of the human herd, regardless of whether we are rich or poor, and in a kind of harmony, in the face of each other. Where everyone is accommodated, and where everyone must behave accordingly.
Protect traditional cafés and life as such, and don't be afraid of high-calorie pastries and traditional coffee importers. Dieting belongs to the private sphere anyway. Traditional cafés are an open and democratic sanctuary young and old, and are also an important part of modern urbanism. Preserve them!