Café Culture – café life – and now, café death?

Café Culture – café life – and now, café death?

I consider myself lucky [for once], to have been born about five years after the end of World War Two. Going by what several early writers, I have read, did say of the fifteen years after WW II – those fifteen years were said to have been “baby boom” period worldwide. Populations began to explode – and life style came to be definable. Moreover, among them was the “café culture”.

Sidewalk café had become a big thing. In other words it was the new ‘café life’ style.

Journalists and photographers spiced their newspapers and magazines with [life] loaded pictures that gave business to the sidewalk newspaper stalls. Even here in Africa, where I write from – the sidewalk café became the point of popular contact making…

The spot where deals and multi-million businesses were hatched and clinched. The café was a living place – many marriages were sparked at the café.

Out there in the greater world - the dress code also came to be known as pacesetting fashions. With designers often, scripting or doodling their design outlines on the sidewalk café. Landscapers and architects visualized their concepts from the sidewalk cafes.

Great Novelists, men and women, were often spotted candid, brooding over their many-many book plots on the sidewalk café… in all the leading cities of the World.

The compact American suit, Stetson and cowboy boots – were dropped for a pair jeans and T-shirt [James Dean & Marlon Brando] ‘50s looks changed everybody – as we were growing up – to later consume all that in vast literatures of the world and, the Hollywood movies created out of them throughout the 1960s and 70s. We read and watched them all.

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The Internet Café – did not emerge out of the blue, as the younger generations born after the 1960s seem – not to imagine!

The ‘Café Culture’ has a history… it is therein that writers, authors, thinkers, designers, artists, architects and later software engineers evolved.

In the early days of the [personalized] computer, was the [Java script] – the first time I became aware of that software. I was reminded of Java, which is a place somewhere in the vast Indonesian Islands.

Many fantastic ‘Java [movie] Scripts’ shot by Hollywood groups in Indonesia with lead characters like ‘Brad Harris’ sent us lining up the box-office in Kampala Cinemas – that time run by Asians.

So when some two years or so ago, when I re-visited Kampala and, there it was [Café Java] – where now Kampala’s young enjoy each-other’s company, I was amazed in a different kind of way!

Meaning that, I see a lot more than the average – though I am sure, my type of fellows do exist around the world. Those who have lived and survived through the entire post WW II evolution - that characterize the milestones our contemporary civilizations are actually made of or hooked to.

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I am sure though that if ever they exist anywhere in the world [I don’t want to Google out] – anything called [Café Death or Death Café]. Or even enter into or sit on the sidewalk table of one.

Because I believe completely that, the “Café Culture” has always been pro-life. The World’s Arts and Sciences were thought-out and written by very creative writers and authors who were consumers of the Coffee. If ever there was anything called so… then at the background of the founding mind – is HIV/AIDS. I say this without any disrespect to entrepreneurship ideas and principles. Though, even the mad-mad scientist who created the virus might have been or is a consumer of Coffee. Which perhaps to a certain point - justifies the existence of the ‘Death Café’.