As the freshmen settle into their new lives, they’ll wander around campus mapping out what will be their playground for the next four years. One day, walking between Rockefeller Hall and Olin Library, they’ll stumble upon the Temple of Zeus Cafe. There, an open-floor plan coffee shop, with endless chatter resonating into its high ceilings, will feel like you’ve entered the main room of the New York Stock Exchange.
However, these new students will soon come to realize that the asset most valuably traded here isn’t a bond or an exchange-traded fund, but a round marble table, and with it, a sea of eyes fixated on you helplessly searching for this highly sought after real estate.
In 1964, Zeus was established as a simple coffee and donut shop in the basement of Goldwin Smith Hall, awkwardly styled with old Navy ROTC furniture. In 1993, Thomas Walls, a former employee of Moosewood, reimagined the space to become a “profitable vegetarian-friendly, soup-and-sandwich joint.” Today, the cafe seems to garner a reputation on campus as ‘facey’ — a popular term used to describe a ‘see to be seen’ nature. A nature by which I embarrassingly conform and contribute to.
If you’re lucky enough to find a seat, even after passing four tables absently claimed by a Longchamp bag or set of keys, you’ll now have to wait in line while reviewing a menu that rarely changes. The seat must be found before the food, because you’re not here to eat, you’re here to meet.
Among you will be hedge-fund club members on their fifth coffee chat of the day, or groups of friends laughing with their best pairs of shoes on display. In a place where you're buying a product, our interactions may also feel transactional. No work really ever gets done here, except for the progress of your own self-image.
By the end of your first semester, you may put together that the social architecture of Zeus is a larger reflection of Cornell. The prices are comparable to a cafe in New York City, yet we’re really just in Ithaca, and the sandwiches are mediocre. My usual latte order comes out to an astonishing $9.50 after tax, a price that somehow feels both absurd and completely unsurprising, maybe because much of Zeus’ clientele consists of profligate students who don’t particularly mind spending $7 to $8 on a latte every day — or, perhaps more accurately, have been raised to afford the luxury of not thinking about it.
Sitting at the center of the Arts Quad, Zeus perfectly contributes to the nature of the college surrounding it: expensive, social and deeply conscious of where everyone is academically and professionally standing. Wealth, school clubs and societies aren’t enough, hierarchy pervades even into our morning coffee. There are unspoken rules for the places that are best and worst to sit, and although this may seem arbitrary — because it is, yet we’ve all thought it — the farther you are from the kitchen, the better. But preferably not too close to the outer ring of tables, because then you’re exposed. If the only place you can find is the benches on the perimeter of the cafe, you might as well place your order to go. The ideal seat places you somewhere in the middle, surrounded by a judging clientele and their tables, where you can comfortably look out at the tableless people occupying a place you stood just a moment ago. There, you can perceptually assimilate to your peers, the Ivy League and its elite lifestyle. Once you’re in, it’s easier to look down upon those who aren’t.
This gets to my most troubling opinion of Zeus — and, at that, of Cornell: We are always being judged by our exterior perception. I know the call is coming from inside the house, but the sheer number of people you see and wave to — people whom, just a couple days ago, you were partying with in a fraternity and whose names you definitely don’t remember — or the club member who rejected your application and you can’t seem to stop making uncomfortable eye contact with, that is truly what defines the quintessential Zeus experience.
So, to our freshmen settling into this wonderful campus, and to all of those hopefully reading this at Zeus, I plead with you to break the cycle of performativity. I won’t argue against the fact that we all like feeling seen and enjoy showing off our new outfits, and for this reason, Zeus has its benefits: it truly fosters a place where we can connect with people, even if, at times, that connection is rooted in pure self-indulgence. But this isn’t the qualm I primarily aim to attack. Instead, I look to expose the consequences of an environment centered around one’s personal social standing. Zeus Cafe, and Cornell as its host, can become a place where our position in relation to others seems to matter most — where we see ourselves through the people around us, and perhaps see them through what they reflect back onto us. As Paulo Coelho writes in the prologue of The Alchemist, recounting the story of Narcissus’ death: “I weep for Narcissus, but I never noticed that Narcissus was beautiful. I weep because, each time he knelt beside my banks, I could see, in the depths of his eyes, my own beauty reflected.”
For all I care, sit on the floor, drop your books in front of seniors, wear sweatpants, laugh hard — too hard. But most importantly, just enjoy your $8 latte.
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Adrian Belmonte '28 is an Opinion Columnist studying Government in the College of Arts & Sciences. Hailing from D.C. and Spain, his fortnightly column Saved By The Bel has a voice as cosmopolitan as it is candid. Belmonte takes on politics and media with clarity and a touch of wit. He can be reached at abelmonte@cornellsun.com.
