The Bread Shop, a coffee joint on Broadway in the days before Starbucks, was run by a bona-fide ex-hippie, had endless free coffee refills, no two rickety chairs the same, 80-year-old screen doors and an unrenovated tin molding ceiling. Most of the Bread Shop was kitchen and oven, and the seating area was a few small tables where you could squeeze in and dream away the day, if you liked—reading, talking, watching life go by, listening to the chopping and kneading. If it was still here today it would be crammed end to end with people hunching over their laptops trying to ignore each other, but back then it was a real social scene. I used to go there most mornings for breakfast until it closed. It was replaced for about two months by a neon-white tiled styrofoam ceilinged establishment called Bunny’s Feast, and then became a Chinese takeout. I still miss the Bread Shop. This piece, written at the time it closed, is my tribute.