You know the cup. The blue cup with the Greek columns and the words that say We Are Happy To Serve You. Every coffee cart in New York City has that cup. It costs the guy four cents. He charges you a dollar. That is a twenty-five hundred percent markup on cardboard and you pay it gladly because the coffee is hot and the cup is beautiful and you are standing on a sidewalk in the greatest city in the world.

I do not know who designed that cup. I looked it up once and forgot. It does not matter. The cup is more famous than the designer. The cup is more famous than most musicians. The cup has been on more street corners than I have and I played on street corners for forty years.

That cup is the perfect product. It does one thing. It holds coffee. It does not have an app. It does not have a subscription. It does not want your email address. It does not track your location. It holds coffee and it looks like a Greek temple and it costs a dollar. If I could design a career that clean I would still be alive.

Every morning on the Lower East Side I would get a coffee in that cup and walk to my corner and set up my guitar. The cup was the opening act. You cannot play guitar and hold a coffee at the same time so you drink it fast and you put the empty cup next to the hat and sometimes people put money in the cup instead of the hat and that is fine. The cup does not care. The cup is not precious about its purpose.

They tried to kill that cup. The chains came in with their grande and their venti and their cups that have your name spelled wrong on the side. But the blue cup is still there. The coffee cart is still there. The guy who does not speak English but knows exactly how much milk you want is still there. Some things you cannot franchise. Some things only work on a street corner.

See also: Sunwalk — the walk to get coffee on a March morning. The Hat — another object that does one honest thing. The Nickel — five cents, the most honest transaction. The Corner — some things only work on a street corner. The Busker — another thing you cannot franchise. The Shelf — Sun Ra on objects that hold more than their contents.