We brainstorm like our lives depended on it while the café was the kind of place where the air itself felt overpriced. Everything smelled like roasted ambition and lavender sanitizer. Light jazz oozed from invisible speakers, barely audible over the gentle clack of a thousand MacBooks. Patrons lounged like caffeinated royalty—graphic designers in beanies pretending to work on indie games, law students with five empty espresso shots lined up like trophies, and influencer moms staging a photo shoot with their baby’s half-eaten croissant.
One woman was definitely in a Zoom meeting with a judge. Another man next to the fake plant was probably writing a manifesto. It was the kind of joint where people judged you not by your drink, but by your laptop sticker aesthetic and your ability to prono
