Pleasures of drinking fancy coffee outdoors among others

Downtown Grand Rapids on Labor Day weekend at 9:30 a.m.

The French have lot of words to describe city lives. Boulevardier is someone who spends time on the avenues looking at others' fashions and behaviors, as well as to be seen by others for one's own public self-expression. Flâneur is someone who takes pleasure in strolling and observing society as it is, as it used to be, and as it is changing into its future form. Wikipedia says both terms are near synonyms of each other. This Saturday morning photo includes school age children, single adults and couples young and middle-age, as well as an occasional retiree. Nominally, they all have a reason to travel to this city block where several tasty retail shops cluster: one for coffee, one for baked goods, and one for butcher's wares. A few yards away is a delicatessen, too. The sidewalk seating, complete with sun shades, invites people to enjoy the sunshine and the company of others they are meeting, have traveled with, or simply enjoy as effervescent background of anonymous fellow citizens.

The demographic profile of the customers who make the effort to attend, probably repeatedly, spend, and consume tasty food and drink is not something that connects all city residents. That is because the price is higher here than other sources of caffeinated hot beverage and sugary baked foods. The city-center location is not very car-friendly. But people on foot or (e)bicycle may view this inconvenience as a positive feature to limit cars and to make the shopping/eating trip into a destination experience instead of functional food gathering exercise. Finally, not all demographic segments consider mingling with fellow eaters to be a good use of time and attention, either due to the nature of using up these precious resources or because other demands rank higher in responsibility, urgency, or accessibility - even if the idea of lining up for barista coffee and freshly baked food were things everybody aspires to.

Leaving aside what might be attract the people in the picture to the products and the experience of lingering on the sidewalk, what might be some of the components that the customers feel when they select a tasty indulgence (out of the ordinary day's habits) and then proceed to dwell long enough to consume some or all their purchase; or they abide long enough to enjoy their time in company of friends or family they have met by plan or by accident there? The possibilities are many, but not endless: any of the following, in isolation or in combination, could enter into the person's decision to travel to the shops, consider the possible purchases before committing to one, and then also deciding to linger awhile in an open seat that might present itself on the sidewalk. One reason could be no reason: simply an impulse to seek out something tasty that the person remembers from an earlier experience. Or maybe the person has a socializing motivation: seeking a "third place" (neither at home, nor at work) to meet someone new or someone they already know. Or maybe there is the lure of hubbub from others for a solitary person to be around others, even if anonymously. The more intense form of this hubbub lure is for people watching, the desire to see what others say and do and how they look. A dissociative motive might be to gain satisfaction by telling oneself that pricey coffee and treats are signs that one belongs to the kind of people who do such things; a sort of amplified self-image to see one's own reflection in the experience there.

Whatever the primary reasons that motivate a person to shop and then to sit down to eat and drink, judging from this picture on a fine summer morning at the end of August, the practice is well established and seems to be in no danger of disappearing.