Freehand is for Aritst

I took my first trip into Fishtown this week since moving to Philadelphia a little under a

year ago. I took the 23 bus from Germantown to Northern Liberties and then the G1 the rest of

the way. When I got to the G stop, I realized that I had never noticed how different that area of

Philadelphia felt. Lots of open space and three lane roads; I couldn't help but compare it to a

beachtown. The rest of my ride was short, but so full of life. Lots of small family owned

restaurants lined the streets, and people were out talking to each other while enjoying the

sunshine.

Before I knew it I was in Fishtown, and it didn't take long for me to notice that I had

stumbled upon a lovely hub of small businesses. I explored an independent bookstore with

thought provoking finds, a coffee shop littered with plants and vintage record sheets plastered to

the walls, a thrift store with fish art and handmade Phillies sweaters, a fiber arts store with

materials hand dyed with plant fibers, a beautiful plant store with disco ball pots, and a

montessori school wedged between it all. All of the street lamps were littered with stickers, art,

and posters of events past and happening soon.

Located on 308 E Girard Ave was my favorite store of the day: Freehand Art Supply.

When I opened the door I was greeted by the sound of lovely shop bells and Harvest Moon by

Neil Young playing over their speakers. The atmosphere was calming with light pink and green

painted walls. I was greeted by one of the owners Kim Quinn and she told me that the store had

opened just three months ago. Even with their short time being open, I could tell that a lot of

thought and effort had gone into the curation of this shop.

There were zines to my left, most made by local creators as well as coloring books, and

stories of famous artists. I found myself smiling and looking through mini notebooks that

encouraged the users to explore and make believe, puzzles, paint by number, and books teaching

you how to recreate simple 15 minute drawings.

Not only do they offer supplies for seasoned artists, but they also had an area for young

artists to enjoy which included childrens aprons, cardboard construction sets, and bath crayons.

They had an impressive selection of painting supplies including brushes, rolled canvas, acrylic,

gouache, and most excitingly, handmade watercolor. There was a section for block printing with

different colored inks, pads, and carving tools.

Towards the back of the store there was a table to test out some of their supplies before

buying them right next to a mini gallery showcasing works by local talent for sale. Anyone

interested in submitting their work can head to their website and fill out a submission form to be

considered.

Upon speaking to the owner, she told me that her business partner Russel Edling and

herself are very centered around community building and making art accessible to all which

became clear in their reasonable price points. “Meeting people has been the most fun,” said Kim.

Freehand will soon be offering art classes and they currently host an art club each Thursday that

offers light refreshments in a space where people can bring their own crafts to work on and meet

other creatives. The store also offers a supply exchange where customers can bring in supplies

they no longer use and trade for items donated by others.

After leaving Freehand Art Supply, I found myself already thinking about my next visit. I

would personally recommend this shop to anyone in the area looking to add to their collection or

browse the lovely selection of items they offer. This store is tiny but mighty and has lots of

exciting things to come; I would urge anyone interested in art to keep an eye on their Instagram

@freehand.supply for any updates from the owners of any new and upcoming items or events.

Ozzy Lives

Autumn Marie Cazier

I walked a short distance from my house to the Philadelphia Record Exchange, a record store that was established back in 1985 and has survived the ever-changing neighborhood of Fishtown. The Record Exchange is a bit different from typical record stores, as they participate in buying and trading used records. A major selling point is that they pride themselves on primarily selling vintage records.

A song by Jean-Jacques Goldman surrounded the atmosphere on a small stereo in the front of the store, right underneath the gothic text store sign. A fold out chalkboard sign lay adjacent with a drawing of a dog with a vinyl in its mouth representing the logo. As you enter, you are greeted by a long tan and white hallway with wooden floors, dawning vintage posters. 7 inch Elvis singles line the steel vent, and the lights are dimmed by a giant star at the end of your journey. The Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin, and Mazzy Star posters, and plaques greet you on your search.

In the midst of Joan Jett, Bruce Springsteen, and The Chemical Brothers, I saw it. A Black Sabbath Live at Hammersmith Odeon vinyl. Displayed on a wall on the left side, in visible sight for all to pass by. With the recent passing of Ozzy Osbourne, I was flooded with memories of a better time, a simpler one. The greatest teacher I ever had back in high school. In the early 2010s in lower Manhattan held the classroom of Pete Collins. Decked out in a variety of rock posters from Iron Maiden, Slipknot, and his favorite, Black Sabbath. Pete would often dawn his Black Sabbath shoes while he taught us about the Roman Empire and the woes of rock ‘n’ roll. He encouraged and embraced what it meant to be different. Teaching in Manhattan since before 911 and beyond, Pete identified the outcasts and made everyone feel just a little bit less alone. I remember being a nervous little freshman in a brand new city, with bright blue hair and a Kurt Cobain shirt on my first day of high school. It was through Pete that I felt a sense of belonging. Even nine years later, I still find any excuse possible to visit that classroom and reminisce on the era of Ozzy knowledge, and hearing Alexander the Great radiate the halls.

The tune of David Hockneys Diary waving me goodbye as I made my departure. The Record Exchange is a great place for those looking to escape or be reminded of pre-Internet memories. Open seven days a week from 11 AM to 8 PM, it’s a paradise for classic rock ‘n’ roll music lovers.

The Lantern That Never Closes

Gina Brower / Xin Ying

There’s a point in every broke month where the math stops being funny.

You’ve counted and recounted. You’ve shifted the auto-payments. You’ve done the mental

gymnastics with the credit card like it’s a part-time job: if this hits Tuesday, that doesn’t scream

until Friday. You are, officially, tired of your own resourcefulness. That’s usually when Xin Ying comes in.

Not as an indulgence—this isn’t the white-tablecloth “we really shouldn’t” kind of place. Xin

Ying is the opposite. It’s the restaurant equivalent of a sigh of relief: warm light, plastic menus,

quiet clatter from the kitchen, and the soft promise that for under twenty bucks, all in, you and

your kid can feel like people again.

On paper, it’s nothing special. Narrow storefront, faded pictures of food taped up in the

window, the same vibe that hangs in a thousand takeout spots. If you Googled it, you might

scroll past. But in person, Xin Ying is a whole ecosystem. It’s where the neighborhood goes

when nobody has the energy to pretend.

By 5:30, the regulars start drifting in.

There’s the older guy from two blocks down, who orders shrimp with lobster sauce every single

time and always leaves a tip that makes the cashier blink and smile. The group of teenagers

splitting boxes of fried rice, performing the calculus of “how much can we get if we stack all our

crumpled bills.” The couple in work hoodies sharing egg drop soup in silence that reads less like

tension and more like truce.

Then there’s us.

It’s been a week. I’m carrying the kind of quiet panic that hums at the base of your neck: rent,

groceries, book dreams, real ghosts, real kids, all of it. My daughter is hungry and tired; I am

hungry and tired; the fridge at home looks like a still life assignment from a depressing art class.

I do the math. Xin Ying wins.

We step inside like we’re clocking in at a place where, for once, someone else is in charge.

The woman behind the counter recognizes us. She doesn’t make a big show of it, just that tiny

upward flick of the mouth that says, Ah. You again. She hands over menus even though we

basically know them by heart. It’s part of the ritual. Reading the choices makes us feel like we

have some.

My daughter orders chicken and broccoli, every time. She loves the tender chicken and crunchy

but forgiving broccoli, loves the leftovers, loves the small ceremony of the white box. I get

spring rolls and pork fried rice, and a hot and sour soup if I can swing it. Food that lands heavy

in the best way. Food that says: you will not go to sleep empty.

By the time we sit, I’ve already started to unclench.

Xin Ying isn’t trying to be a destination. Every detail is slightly worn; every detail works. What

makes it matter is the way it holds everyone’s tiredness without comment.

A man in paint-splattered pants picks up a bulging takeout order. A nurse in scrubs scrolls her

phone while waiting for her order. A delivery driver sits for five minutes between runs. No one

here is performing “going out to dinner.” We’re here because life is a lot, money is weird, and

rice with something over it has miraculous properties.

My daughter taps open a fortune cookie before the food even comes. She reads it to me with

inappropriate gravitas. “Good news will come to you by text.” We decide that means someone’s

going to buy my book, or at least pay one of my invoices. I tuck the sliver of paper into my

wallet next to the actual problems.

The food arrives in under ten minutes, because of course it does. Cardboard containers, all that

unapologetic takeout texture. It smells like memory: garlic, soy, fried dough, the faint metallic

whisper of sesame oil. The kind of smell that makes even a hard day back down.

We take it home and dig in.

This is the part I wish I could explain to people who sneer at “greasy takeout” like it’s a moral

failing. Xin Ying is not just about cheap food. It’s about the way my kid’s shoulders drop when

she sees a full combo plate. It’s about the kitchen stove we don’t have to turn on at home, the

pan we don’t have to scrub. It’s about being able to say yes when so much of life is no.

The woman behind the counter moves like she’s been doing this forever. There’s a man in the

back calling out orders in Mandarin, metal hitting flame, a rhythm that sounds like competence.

Maybe it’s a family business; maybe they’re strangers who became one. Either way, they’re

feeding half this block, whether the block notices or not.

“Mom, this is so good,” my kid says around a piece of broccoli, which is a small miracle in itself.

I look at her: happy, full, safe. I look at my receipt: still okay. I look at my daughter, shaking off

the day, trusting this tiny place with their dinner and their dignity.

That’s the thing. Xin Ying never makes you feel like a burden for being broke and hungry. You

hand over your last twenty and they hand it back to you in the shape of a meal big enough for

leftovers. You don’t have to explain. You don’t have to apologize. You just have to decide

between wonton or egg drop.

When we sit out on the front step, the sky’s gone from steel to dark. The moon glows a tired,

constant light. Around the corner, someone’s laughing. Outside, we zip our coats against the

wind and talk about our day.

On hard months, that’s what Xin Ying is: mercy on a Tuesday. A reminder that you live in a

neighborhood where, even when everything else is precarious, there’s a door you can open

that leads to hot soup and enough.

I’m broke. I’m anxious. I’m still betting on a future where my words pay better. But tonight, my

kid is full, I’ve had real food that didn’t come from the “miscellaneous” pantry shelf, and there’s

leftover chicken and broccoli for tomorrow’s lunch.

The lantern’s still burning behind us.

That’s worth writing about.

2403 E Somerset St

Philadelphia, PA

19134

215-423-6531

The Ledger

Thunderbird Salvage 

Thunderbird Salvage calls itself new/used/vintage/eclectic, which is a mouthful until you see the aisles. Then it reads like a map legend. The categories don’t argue here; they harmonize. A chrome lamp flirts with a box of yellow-spined paperbacks. A velvet blazer leans against a milk crate of 45s. A drawer of forgotten keys sits beside a bin of orphaned knobs and handles, the ones that make a cabinet suddenly itself again. It’s a small city of former lives: citizens of wood and brass and cotton, each waiting for the right gaze to give them their papers back. 

I don’t think of it as shopping. I think of it as listening. Salvage is a language, and the grammar is use. You learn it by touch—by the way a chair tells you it will stop wobbling if you honor its loose joint, by the way a jacket hangs when you promise you’ll wear it out in the weather it deserves. Salvage is not about perfection returning; it is about function reimagined. A dent becomes provenance. A scuff becomes a sentence from the previous paragraph that you’re allowed to keep. 

One of the first things you notice is the bones of the place. The flagship shop lives in what used to be a church, and once you clock that, the mood shifts. Pews are gone, but the long room still carries voices. Stained glass light breaks across a jumble of frames and mirrors. There’s a sermon here if you want one: redemption as a daily practice, not a miracle; the holiness of “good enough, again.” 

I take the morning slow. Salvage punishes hurry. The good finds prefer to be found by people who set down their phone, breathe, and let their eyes adjust to the texture of “almost.” On a high shelf: a ceramic greyhound with a hairline crack like a lightning bolt between its ears. On a lower one: a stack of cafeteria trays the color of childhood peaches. A mason jar of mismatched screws that might solve three different problems if you are patient and lucky. A dented cake pan that remembers birthdays you didn’t have. It is all ordinary and, under the right hand, more than ordinary. 

A woman near the vinyl racks is humming, not with the music—there’s no song on, just the thrum of a building settling—but with recognition. She pulls a record, sighs, and presses the cover to her chest the way readers do with a sentence that lands. A man holds a brass doorknob up to another brass doorknob and nods like a jeweler, satisfied by the weight of it. Two teenagers discover a crate of old teen magazines, squeal at the hairstyles, and commit to the bit by trying on a houndstooth jacket that fits one of them like it waited for this hour. 

The ledger in a store like this isn’t only money. It’s attention. You pay with noticing. The staff keeps the books in more than one currency: what comes in, what goes out, what gets rescued from the curb in time, what arrives because a house is emptying, what is carried in by a person who can no longer keep the things they kept for thirty winters but wants them to find a new story. You can feel the ethics under the price tags—the insistence that stuff is not trash until we declare it so, and that declaration should be the last resort. 

It would be easy to pin salvage to nostalgia and call it done. But nostalgia flattens time. What’s happening here is the opposite: time thickens. The past is not sealed; it’s porous. The present gets room to improvise. A school locker becomes a pantry. A church light becomes a kitchen star. A classroom map becomes a dining room argument piece. A bin of tools becomes a reason to fix one more thing before buying another new thing built to be thrown away. 

In the corner, there’s a carousel of coats with a modest sign. I try on a navy pea coat that suddenly makes October make sense. It’s heavy in the right way; I can feel the weather it kept off someone else. Maybe a dockworker. Maybe a teacher who walked to the bus in the dark and graded papers in the kitchen light. I put it back—for now—and tell it I’ll circle back if it keeps talking. 

A store cat ghosts by and ignores me responsibly. Somewhere, a price gun snaps. A bell on the counter announces a customer finding the courage to bargain. A kid asks, “What is it?” and the answer is a monologue about film cameras that makes his eyes do the thing eyes do when the unknown turns into “I might learn that.” The music, when it comes on, is a little dusty, which is correct. 

If you want proof that this place is more than a shop, look at how it behaves when the city needs a specific kindness. When a huge art school in Philadelphia closed and students were locked away from the work they’d made, Thunderbird helped pull the paintings and sculptures and sketchbooks from the building and opened its doors so students could reclaim their work for free. The rest—easels, tools, supplies—went on sale so the equipment could keep doing what it was built to do instead of dying in a dumpster. The hall they use for pop-ups and events turned into a reunion of hands and materials, the kind of event that suggests a simple idea: we take care of each other by not throwing each other away. 

That second space—Thunderbird Hall—lives a few blocks away and, on weekends, flips into a by-the-pound free-for-all of clothes and surplus tools. It’s an honest admit that sometimes the right price for a second life is “bring a strong bag and a good back.” When I can, I go there for the fun of it: the dig, the laugh, the moment you hold up something in line and a stranger says, “Oh my god, that’s so you,” and you believe them. 

The ethics of salvage dovetail with the math of the moment: landfill costs, climate costs, the cost of style without the budget for new. But beyond the planet and the pocket, there’s something human at stake: the permission to be repaired. Salvage refuses the shame of mending. It says: people have patina too. It says: if your hinge squeaks, we do not throw you out. We oil it. We keep going. 

I buy two things I didn’t mean to: the peach tray (for letters) and a dented aluminum cake pan (for screws, for luck). I love paying for small usefulness. The clerk wraps the tray in newsprint as gently as if it were porcelain. At the counter, I see a crate of old house numbers, enamel and chippy. They are all the wrong numbers for my address and exactly right in their stubborn, serifed way. The city is full of addresses that used to be; streets are palimpsests, and this store is a scribe who knows how to read the underneath. 

What I don’t buy is the sermon. Not because I don’t need it—I do—but because I already heard it, and it belongs to the room. It is short. It goes like this: We are allowed to be used. We are allowed to be chosen again. We are allowed to be useful after the first use is done. 

I step back out onto Frankford with the tray and the pan under my arm, the coat’s memory still on my shoulders. The block has woken fully now: a coffee shop door cycling open and closed; a contractor’s van with a cartoon ladder on the side; a bike bell; a dog that looks like a sock with eyes. The morning is not more beautiful than it was before I went in, but it is better arranged. Salvage does that. It gives your attention a shelf to stand on. 

Later, I’ll put screws in the pan and letters on the tray, and they will do their jobs modestly. If a guest asks, I’ll tell the long short story: a church that became a store, a store that became a community habit, a habit that keeps objects and people from slipping through the cracks. I’ll mention there’s a second site down the avenue where weekends turn into treasure hunts, and that sometimes, when a building somewhere closes hard, this crew shows up with a softer door. I’ll say all that, and then I’ll hand them the tray so they can feel the weight of a small, rescued thing. It’s lighter than it looks. 

I try to imagine a city without rooms like this and don’t like the picture. Fewer repairs. Fewer slow mornings that teach you how to see. Fewer arguments that end with a laugh because you both want the same lamp for the same good reasons. Fewer proofs that value can be rescued from the category of “used.” If salvage is a ledger, then each purchase is an entry, each conversation a note in the margin—“Found by: October. Purpose: To carry letters, screws, and faith.” 

At the corner, I look back. The sign out front, a choreography of salvaged fonts and welded whimsy, is a reminder that a city is a collage. We get to choose how we glue it together. I pocket the receipt like a stub from a show and head for the train feeling taller by exactly one shelf. 

Love is labor. I show up. 

Fiore

Gina Brower

A morning field study of pastry, patience, and the small mercies of craft.

The morning didn’t so much begin as admit that it was already happening. I’d been

awake long enough to watch the light ride the wall from pewter to pearl, rehearsing

worries I couldn’t do anything about, when the word presented itself like a solution:

Fiore.

Not the grand kind of solution—no miracles promised, no life-turning confession—just

the modest, practical answer of sugar and heat and someone else’s hands making

something beautiful. A reason to put on shoes.

Outside, the street smelled like wet brick and laundry soap. A white van idled, coughing

up a cough that matched the ache in my ribs. I tucked the scarf tighter, set my pace to a

private metronome—four steps inhale, four steps exhale—and let the neighborhood work

on me as I passed through it. A chalkboard in front of the bodega read TRY JOY in a

handwriting confident enough to be persuasive. The corner lot, usually loud with kids,

was quiet; a stray basketball sat in a puddle, half-reflecting the sky. Two blocks down, a

new mural was in its awkward middle stage, halfway between sketch and bloom. It

looked like someone had paused the act of courage.

Fiore arrives before you see it—the slant of sweetness, a low perfume of butter and toast,

a breath of coffee that has already made up its mind to be strong. The door opens to a soft

pressure-change and the hush of a room that knows why it’s here.

Inside: heat you can stand in. Pendant lamps with a worn green patina throw circles of

light onto a sea-foam counter with rounded edges; the front panels are clean white

molding, and the floor is hex tile that remembers every morning. Behind the counter,

baskets of biscotti, cellophane-rustling little treaties; shelves stacked with brown paper

coffee bags and glass tumblers; a “Pick Up Here” sign perched in a wire basket like a

friendly instruction. The espresso machine mutters like an instrument tuning; the brewer

hums a low note that makes sense of everything.

The line inched forward with that morning civility you don’t find at any other hour—no

one pretending to be more important than the dough. People nodded instead of spoke. A

woman in a red coat scrolled without scrolling, her thumb hovering over the glass like

she was blessing it. A little boy in a dinosaur hoodie pressed his palms to the display and

fogged it; an employee wiped the arcs away with a practiced kindness. We shuffled as

one organism: desire with a number.

When it was my turn, I stepped to the counter and forgot English. A young woman

waited me out with a warm smile that said she’d seen me before. She didn’t rush me. She

permitted the choosing.

“Good morning,” she said, because sometimes you need to hear it.

“Morning,” I managed. “Uh—can I…,” and then the sentence dissolved because

language has to pass through appetite to come out whole. I couldn’t decide what to

choose so I asked her for a recommendation. The “Torta de Mele e Nocciola is seasonal.

That’s why I prefer it.” I landed on finally, with the relief of a plane touching down.

Then, after a pause: “And a pistachio thing.”

She nodded, already moving, already translating pistachio thing into a tart I hadn’t

noticed, green as hope in winter. She called the order to the server in a cadence that made

it sound like a spell, clipped and musical. Steam began its morning aria. I held the receipt

like a small treaty and watched her work.

Watching someone deft at their craft is a way to be forgiven for your own mess. The

server grabbed a small brown box and lifted the torta—a slice of apple and hazelnut cake

with a tender crumb and shy gloss—set it down like it was fragile knowledge and not just

pastry. From a separate tray he chose the pistachio tart that looked like it had slept

perfectly, then made it a pair as if even pastries might want company. She handed the box

to me like a gift and I took it with both hands, trying to seem worthy of the exchange.

I carried breakfast to a table by the window, where sunlight sorted itself into rectangles

on the floor. The chair wobbled one millimeter; I shifted until it learned how to stand.

Outside, a couple walked a dog the color of toasted bread. Inside, the radio played

something gentle that knew better than to intrude.

If you eat a torta inattentively, it scolds you by telling no stories. I went in slow. The fork

slipped through an easy crust and a crumb that tasted like morning discipline—apples

softened into kindness, hazelnut rounding the edges with a quiet nut-brown warmth.

Powdered sugar made a brief weather across the plate. The first bite landed with apple

bright on the tongue; the second unfurled into the deeper register, that roasted nocciola

hum that feels like a hand steadying your wrist. It was the taste of work done correctly. It

told me stories about hands I hadn’t seen, early mornings I hadn’t suffered, someone

else’s attention paying my debt.

Fiore has its regulars, the people who wear their habits like a second coat. They arrived

and took their rightful places like actors hitting marks they chose themselves. An older

man in a navy peacoat ordered an espresso that appeared as if he had willed it from the

air, then stood at the counter to drink it, not out of haste but tradition. A woman with

paint flecks in her hair bought an olive oil cake “so I can say I made an effort.” The staff

indulged her, careful not to reveal whether they knew her joke was a weekly ritual. Two

teenagers—one in a hoodie, one in a jacket too thin for the weather—split a bomboloni

without looking at each other, passing halves as if they were exchanging signatures on a

treaty.

I ate in slow increments until the plate told the truth about my greed. Then I approached

the pistachio tart with ceremony, as if this were not just breakfast but an answer to a

question I hadn’t found yet. The crust broke with a clean snap. The filling sat there like a

small green lake, glossy without vanity. Pistachio has a way of tasting like memory.

Maybe because it’s always been the quieter cousin, chosen by those who prefer to listen.

The tart did not shout. It spoke clearly and ended its sentences with confidence. A few

chopped nuts on top gave a register of earth to all that elegance, as if to say: Don’t float

away. We’re still in the world.

At the table next to me, a mother tried to explain to her daughter why adult life requires

mornings like this. “You do something hard later,” she said, pouring sugar into her cup

with moderation an ascetic would respect, “so you do something small and good first.”

The girl, serious and unconvinced, asked if this counted as prayer. The mother

considered, then nodded. “In this case,” she said, “yes.”

I ordered a dozen biscotti for later, a pact with my future self. The box was heavier than it

looked. The young woman rang me up, her friendly demeanor another small victory in

the early day. The door gave that soft pressure-change again when I left, and the morning

received me back the way air receives a returning bird—nothing dramatic, just a

rightness.

On the walk home the mural had progressed. Someone had come, in the short time I’d

been inside, and fixed a line that had been wobbling. Now the bloom of color made

sense. It wasn’t finished; it didn’t need to be. A tall man in a suit carried two paper cups

across the street with the concentration of a surgeon. A bus driver waited at a green light,

letting a late runner catch up, and when they did, he lifted two fingers in a salute he

pretended was nothing. These were not miracles. These were measurements of a day

deciding to be kinder than yesterday out of sheer curiosity.

Halfway back I realized Fiore had adjusted my posture. Something about having been

well-served trained the rest of me to behave. I could feel the pastry’s geometry still

reverberating in my hands: a lesson about layers, about what happens when you fold the

same simple ingredients repeatedly until they learn a new language. Perhaps this is what

patience tastes like when it remembers it has a mouth.

At my building, the stairwell smelled faintly of oranges—someone else’s shopping bag

broadcasting a promise. I set the biscotti box on the kitchen table like a trophy and stood

there for a minute doing nothing, which is to say I let the morning finish happening to

me. The window offered its habitual rectangle of sky. The radiator rejoined the

conspiracy of warmth. The plate in the sink asked nothing; I washed it anyway.

Later I would open the notebook and find the page I’d been avoiding. Later I would make

the phone call I had not wanted to make. But right then, there was only the clean outline

of enough. Fiore had fed me without asking for my biography. It had offered skill and

sweetness in the exact ratio that turns appetite into gratitude. It had reminded me that

small things done well hurry the soul along.

I sat down, unwrapped one biscotto, dipped it into coffee gone lukewarm and entirely

acceptable, and took a bite. Almond, the stubbornness of flour living a better life than it

expected. Outside, a bird mispronounced a song and tried again. A siren moved away

from me instead of toward, which felt like luck I hadn’t earned. My phone lit up with a

message from someone who often broke promises, and for once the message was not a

promise at all but a picture of their dog asleep sideways on a rug. I wrote back a heart. I

turned the page in the notebook and wrote Fiore at the top, then nothing else for a while,

because sometimes the title is the whole prayer.

And when the words finally arrived, they did not crowd each other. They took turns.

They left space. They behaved as if they, too, had stood in line and learned civility from

the pastries. Which is to say, they remembered that pleasure has manners, that craft is a

form of mercy, and that the right sweetness at the right hour can anchor a person to

themselves more surely than any vow.

Maybe I will never finish the mural. Maybe I will only ever fix the one wobbling line,

again and again. But I can walk to Fiore and stand with other humans in the benevolent

conspiracy of morning, and I can eat something made by a stranger who wanted it to be

good. I can come home carrying a box that is heavier than it looks and set it on the table

like proof that I am still interested in being here.

The next door will open for someone else tomorrow, and the ovens will relearn the sun,

and I will try again to be the kind of person who notices how the world feeds us when we

let it. That feels like a prayer I can keep: not grand, not perfect, but warm in the hands,

dusted lightly with sugar, confident enough to be persuasive.

Author Bio

Gina Brower reads cards, writes scenes, and sends people songs. Her work looks for the

holy in the ordinary. She lives in Philadelphia and is finishing the stereo‑novel, City

Que Chula, Indeed

By Gina Brower

A quesadilla de flor de calabaza, chips still warm, and a Mexican Pepsi in the glass bottle. A

neighborhood place plates mercy without ceremony—and the day stands up straighter.

I didn’t plan to end up at Que Chula es Puebla. The day had been going along in that gray,

indecisive way city days sometimes do—too chilly for bravado, too bright to hide. Errands made

little stutters of purpose without adding up to a plot. I was walking to prove I could walk. I was

thinking about everything and nothing. Then the smell found me—warm oil, toasted corn, a

flutter of cilantro—and the day made up its mind.

The dining room held a clean kind of welcome: tables wiped to an honest shine, a TV

murmuring an afternoon football game in the corner, the counter stacked with trays that

looked like quiet promises. The walls were the color of a well-meaning sun. It was the hour

when people come not to perform lunch but to eat it. A couple in work boots sat shoulder to

shoulder at a two-top, not talking, at peace in the way that means the day is already hard and

food is the treaty. A mother guided a small boy’s hand through a maze in an activity book; every

time he reached a dead end, she pretended to be surprised. Two teen girls split a straw for a

michelada and rolled their eyes in synchronized affection at a joke I wished I’d heard.

I ordered at the table and tried not to overcomplicate it, the way I often do when presented

with generosity. Quesadilla de flor de calabaza, please—the pumpkin flowers folded into

cheese, those green accents that taste like gardens. The waiter nodded as if I’d remembered a

friend’s name. He brought complimentary house-made tortilla chips and refrieds with queso

fresco, which I knew I would scarf down because restraint is a performance I reserve for less

persuasive days. Then the impulse that felt like a memory instead of a choice: a Mexican Pepsi

in the glass bottle. The waiter popped the cap with a metal opener that had probably freed a

thousand small salvations. He slid the bottle across the counter like a dare to be delighted.

When the plate arrived, it looked like a little stage on which nothing tragic would be allowed to

happen. I chose a table near the window, where a square of light had decided to live for a

while. The quesadilla sat there like something engineered for goodwill—corn tortilla blistered

just enough, cheese soft without surrender, the flor de calabaza peeking out like confetti

stubborn enough to be elegant. On the side: a tidy constellation—shredded lettuce, a slice of

avocado glossy as a promise, two tomato wedges posing like punctuation marks that could turn

any sentence into a surprise.

I started with the quesadilla, because that’s the kind of person I am—let the bite teach the rest

of the meal how to behave. It was sparkling in its sourness and contrasted with the crunchy

and bright shredded lettuce and slice of avocado. The acid set the key; the avocado provided a

bass line; the lettuce supplied the percussion. I am not above metaphors when food is kind to

me. Then the first bite of the quesadilla: the tortilla’s delicate resistance—snap, sigh—followed

by the warmth of cheese and the spring-green hush of the pumpkin blossoms. There’s a way

squash flowers hold onto sunlight even after you take them far from the vine; you can taste the

afternoon they were picked.

I took a sip of the Pepsi and remembered why that glass bottle has survived a century of better

ideas. Cold enough to rehearse the teeth, sweet enough to make the day generous. Like the

“Golden Brown” song by The Stranglers, the Pepsi hit like a tidal wave of fizzy delight. It was

the kind of sweetness that behaves—cane sugar with edges filed down by memory, bubbles

doing small calisthenics on the tongue. It didn’t bully the food; it escorted it.

The chips were still warm, unashamed of their oil. They arrived with that humble confidence

only house-made things carry—the same pride you feel from someone who knows they woke

up early for you. I broke one and dragged it through the refried beans, which were glossy but

not slick, the queso fresco on top a snowfall without drama. The bite landed like a yes I didn’t

have to negotiate. Beans this good make me think of mornings I didn’t see—someone rinsing

and sorting, someone soaking, someone careful with a pot, someone patient with a simmer.

Eating them is like borrowing the reward for work you didn’t do. Gratitude is the only

appropriate posture.

At the next table, two electricians compared notes about a job while quietly demolishing a

platter that could have fed a small committee. One of them, a man with a face that had

memorized weather, found a stray jalapeño under a pile of rice and held it up like an unplanned

assignment. He ate it without flinching, nodded once to himself, and went back to talking about

an outlet that wouldn’t stop misbehaving. I wanted to applaud his lack of theater.

Halfway through the quesadilla, the man who’d taken my order drifted by the tables to make

sure everyone had what they needed. “Everything good?” he asked, which in a place like this

means: Is the world offering you a fair fight today? I said yes in a way that sounded like thank

you. She asked if I wanted more chips, and because I am not a martyr, I said yes. She returned

with a small heap and a wink that said, This is how we fix Tuesdays.

It occurred to me then that Que Chula es Puebla wears its faith lightly—not as ritual but as

craft. The care wasn’t loud or moralizing; it was structural. The tortillas had been pressed with

attention. The oil was at the right temperature, which isn’t romance, it’s discipline. The beans

had that perfect center between sturdy and spreadable. The salsa (I’ve neglected to praise it

because I was too busy obeying it) cut true. None of this asked me to be impressed; it asked me

to be hungry and appreciative, which I was, immensely.

Between bites I watched the room run on good manners learned from ovens. A man in a

courier jacket stood to let a woman slide into the booth; she said gracias like a benediction. A

kid at the counter asked a hundred questions about what was in each tray, and the staff

answered each one as if he were a food critic with a column and a reputation for wounding,

though he was only nine and magnificent. An older woman ate alone at a corner table with a

dignity that made the whole room behave better, myself included. I took smaller bites. I slowed

down.

I thought about how often we chase the grand gesture—a miracle, an omen, a romance that

could lift a car—and how rarely we allow the small ones to notice us back. Maybe that’s what

restaurants like this do. They notice on your behalf. They remember that a day can be turned

by pumpkin blossoms and corn and a bottle cap pried loose with practiced grace. They remind

you that hunger and kindness speak a dialect you don’t have to study to understand.

The electricians got up to leave and bussed their own table without being asked. The cashier

made change with the speed of a card trick and the accuracy of a promise. Someone laughed in

the kitchen, and the laugh came out in the next plate, I swear it did.

By the time I cleaned my tray to a landscape of crumbs and smudges, I’d forgotten what

problem I’d arrived with, which seems as good a measure as any of whether lunch is working. I

carried my bottle to the bin and hesitated—for a second it felt wrong to throw away proof that

the day had been turned. I compromised by taking a picture I’ll never look at again. I wiped my

table with the back of my hand because it felt like part of the agreement. On my way out I told

the cashier the quesadilla was perfect, and he said, “We try,” which is the most honest

sentence of the moral universe.

Outside, the city had remembered its better posture. The air was a fraction warmer; maybe

that was the Pepsi talking. The sidewalk felt less like obligation and more like invitation. People

looked like themselves again, which is rarer than you’d think. I walked a block with the little

clarity that follows a meal cooked by someone who wasn’t trying to impress you, only to feed

you correctly. There’s a holiness in that.

I could write the whole piece in facts—quesadilla de flor de calabaza, house-made chips,

refrieds with queso fresco, Mexican Pepsi in the glass bottle—and you would get the shape if

not the glow. But the glow matters. The glow is the part that follows you out and makes the

errand after lunch feel redeemed. The glow says, You are, for at least the next few hours,

capable of being as kind to others as someone was to you. The glow says, que chula, how

lovely, your life when you let it feed you.

I walked home carrying the aftertaste of the squash flowers and corn, that little fizz still reciting

its catechism on my tongue, and I thought: I will try to deserve this. Not by earning it—hunger is

not a meritocracy—but by noticing enough to turn back and tell you. That’s the contract

between appetite and language. You take the bite; later you learn its grammar. You become the

paragraph that thanks the hand you didn’t see.

And if tomorrow is heavy again, no miracle required. There’s a door up the street that opens

with a bright hello. There’s a counter where mercy is plated without ceremony. There’s a glass

bottle waiting in a cooler, exactly as cold as it needs to be, to remind you that sweetness, when

well-made, behaves. You lift it. You sip. You let the tidal wave of fizzy delight carry the day a

few feet closer to shore. You keep walking. You look for the next good door. You remember

what the man at the register said when you praised the food: We try. You decide to, too.