cabarets and music, but also groceries and restaurants. Black-market goods are sold here. Smugglers meet here to make their deals. Middlemen feel at home here. Goods are offered and sought after. Lovers come to have their rendezvous. Human trafficking has found a shelter here, not to mention prostitution, which—as always—flourishes in cafés. Hence, matters of art, [56] morality, gastronomy, trade, welfare, the penal code, etc. all mix here alongside each other. Cafés attract consumers, chance clients, and frequenters. Some are hungry for art, the spoken word, music, humour, and poetry. Others look for “contacts”—they want to get in touch with prostitutes to satisfy their sexual desires. Some want to drink a real mocha and eat a tasty piece of cake—rare and major treats available to but a few. Some want to have fun, to get away from the bleakness of everyday life, and breathe in a different atmosphere once a week, once a month, just for an hour. Others have a date with a middleman, or come to close a good deal and then spring for coffee, or vodka, to seal the deal. Others have their office here—they have opened a currency exchange office or a stock exchange. They make payments, collect money, sell, buy, act as a middleman, make offers, and earn, earn, earn. And everybody has (or wants to have) the illusion that the atmosphere of the café will separate them from the reality of the street, from grim everyday life. [57] There were not any major obstacles to overcome in establishing, organising, and developing cafés in the ghetto. Finding premises and capital was crucial. The Sztuka café took over Gertner’s premises on Leszno Street, while most cafés opened up in former offices, institutions, and private flats. Besides, except for 5 or 6 cafés, most are small (1 or 2 rooms). The decor of almost all cafés is quite aesthetic, while in Sztuka, L’Ours,171 or Arizona172 it is even at a pre-war level. Obviously, there are no special modernist decorations, lighting effects, paintings of masters, cubist furniture, looking glasses, or carpets, etc. But against the bleak background, which we are getting more and more used to every day, an aesthetic and luxurious interior itself offers respite to the customer who desires some relief and distraction. There are always investors when there is a chance for profitable business. Besides, you can engage [58] partners (as in the case of Sztuka), even as many as a dozen, just to make sure that the invested capital brings good returns. The calculation is really simple. The investment will pay
