A journal entry or two ago, I mentioned that I walked past a café I had never noticed before, that I noticed something unusual—and that I intended to go back and check it out. Well, I did. Let me explain how I discovered the cafe.

I was cutting through a narrow alley between two busy roads, one of those hidden Greek passageways that cut through meandering streets—the kind of walkway you only notice when you’re looking for escape.

I’d passed it countless times without realizing it was an alley: from the street I had only noticed the blank walls, the large garbage bin, and a brick wall at the back end that seemed to seal it shut.

By chance, glancing into the opening, I saw people in the passage, and I realized that it wasn’t a dead-end alley like I assumed.

Two women appeared to have come from a narrow opening to the left of the dead end wall—an opening invisible from the street, as if the alley had quietly kept its ‘bend’ a secret from me until that moment.

So I stopped and looked at the passage – and as they were walking towards me, I decided to turn into this alley path and see what’s to the left of the ‘faux’ dead end.

As I approached the ‘dead end,’ I heard music—classical music coming from the passageway.

Piano. Forceful. A bit ‘overwhelming’. At that point, I was curious.

As I reached the bend to the left, I was stunned to see that the ‘alley’ opened onto a tiny street, tucked away at the bottom of what looked like a small hill.

This tiny street was literally hidden between the surrounding roads, and it felt like a ‘sunken’ hiding spot – surrounded by old paved stairways climbing up to the neighboring streets. As if one tiny street were basement level.

The music—that furious piano—was coming from a café just a few feet away from me, situated exactly in the center of this tiny ‘underground’ square.

I was in a hurry; this shortcut had already taken me slightly off course, but I glanced inside as I passed.

It was nearly empty. A woman sat alone at a table, writing. Music filled the room; the air smelled of patchouli, smoke, and coffee. The shutters were painted cobalt blue. The floor was laid in terracotta tiles, worn unevenly with time, their small earthy squares rising and dipping like the miniature hills outside.

There were only a handful of tables, dark old worn wood…but somehow I felt the color of amber—glowing like honey—coming through from somewhere. The chairs were old, traditional old-world Greek cafe chairs, worn by time into a dull, very dark brown; others were sturdier, newer(?), and painted a vivid cobalt blue. To the left I could see a bar with a copper tray filled with briki pots, a few moka pots, and a pile of cups—and behind the bar, a large poster that simply read: Absinthe.

Nothing about it was ostentatious. That was exactly the allure. It had the quiet charge of a Left Bank den—something dissident, intimate, and self-contained. The kind of place that makes you feel you’ve stumbled onto a secret and that if you don’t go back, you’ll lose it.

The café had something, and that something lingered in my mind long after I left, refusing to be defined. I sketched the cafe and the street when I went home, and yesterday I finally had the chance to go back.

When I returned, I stepped inside—the cafe was built a few steps lower than the ‘lower level’ street… and I found myself to be the only customer.

Just me. Unusual.

The cafés along the neighboring downtown streets are always crowded, yet this little amber-and-cobalt gem stood completely empty. It felt as if I entered a time warp.

So I spoke to the girl behind the bar, dressed head to toe in black, with a distinctly emo-gothic air and the gaze of Ginevra de Benci.

She told me the café had a history stretching back to the 1840s. For well over a century, it had been something of an underground refuge—a den for dissidents, rebels, intellectuals, writers, and artists.

That aura must have attracted me: I realized I had picked up on the dense, charged atmosphere of defiance, questioning, and rebellion. It was still in the air. Along with the sounds of classical music and overwhelming patchouli.

“The music?”, I asked…

She said it was Russian classical pieces, pointing to a stick on her laptop connected to a small speaker.

The owner, she said, had inherited vinyl albums on a shelf years ago with the cafe and recorded the music.

“Who is the owner?” I asked.

She said it is her aunt. The cafe has been handed down from one generation to the next – never sold to an outsider.

The family who carries this legacy?

Rebellious, different, outsiders—poets, rebels, scholars, madmen, misunderstood, in the margins, bohemians that never found their place in the setup of society.

I left there absolutely intrigued and overwhelmed.

It wasn’t the coffee that they offered, but the vibe, the energy, the experience.

But then I wondered if this ‘feeling’ is accessible to everyone.

It ‘s there for those who can tune into that vibe…and it probably is invisible to those who tune into other frequencies. Like tuning into a distant radio station, you can only hear what you are built to ‘pick up.’

To most passerbys, it probably looks like an empty cafe. One whose doors are open but must have gone out of business years ago…with no sign of activity.

To others? Like me? It is a slice of the intellectual/creative scene of eras past…still humming with rebellion.

It is a vibrant piece of creativity, housing the thoughts and ideas that found their place in this den of nonconformists, questioners, and dissidents.

This buzz is housed behind a cloak of invisibility, preventing the mainstream of today from seeing the rebellious stands of yesterday.

Cloaks, masks, drawers, books, labels, conversations. They all serve to cover up, protect, and tuck away from the masses what was only ever meant for a chosen few. – Sosanni

It is why I stopped when I found this image of the chest of drawers today.

A piece of furniture to some. An antique with a history to others. And to a few, it’s all about the notes that were written—their words tucked away from prying eyes and placed in the drawers.