Some Weird Notion

I guess as far back as the early nineties when I was still in college, there was this idea in my head about having my own cafe. I thought about a cafe at the time as a place to hang works of art and lounge around thinking about big questions. The idea has always been for me that it was a place where people meet and want to be, not just to consume coffee. I think a cafe's function is as a place where the mind can roam free from the mechanics of everyday living. Cafes that succeed, I think, are simple places where organic materials such as wood and stone combine in ways to give the people that come there the sense that the place has been and will be there for a very long time. They create warmth and a home like atmosphere, much in the same way the facade of many old banks once give depositors a sense of stability and security. These big hulking buildings with marble floors and grand ceilings, giant columns guarding the entrance, all combined to appeal to people's sense of permanence. Banks may not be paragons of permanence or security but we sure seem to have responded to the elements of architecture they utilized. Cafes are different from banks but people don't necessarily need to be enticed to enter with use of facades especially not patiently false ones. People want to be in a cafe to see and be seen, to socialize with others in a comfortable setting which is not an implied party the way a bar which serves alcohol might be. I think it's easy for cafe owners to get caught up in the commodity "coffee" they are trying to sell and forget that the real attraction is "place". There has to be harmony between the business of coffee and the social aspect of the "coffee house". As cheeky as it may sound and I'm sure it's been said before, every cafe should strive to be the third most important location in peoples lives behind work and home, the home away from home. This isn't some weird notion, just something obvious that's been out there all along.