On the Side: Back on the sidewalks, sipping, supping, civility

Along 20th Street between Locust and Spruce on a cool evening last week, a critical mass was building on the sidewalks, alive in the gentle twilight with a humming thicket of cafe tables.

At one outside D'Angelo's Ristorante Italiano, silver-mop-haired Ted Gericke, the durable piano man, was holding easygoing court.

Others were filling up at Snackbar, now with a less prissy menu. A Slow Foodie in from Swarthmore ambled by, savoring the memory of the skate wing at Twenty Manning.

The urban enclave is just a block off Rittenhouse Square, around the corner from the Ethical Society draped with a "Stop Torture" banner. And if it is not subdued exactly, it exudes a soothing mellowness; the sidewalk diners aren't here to jockey for a prime seat - a blood sport at the new bistro Parc on the glittering edge of the park - so much as, well, to have a social drink or light supper.

Not all that long ago (in 1995, in fact), this exercise in genteel and relaxed community was not possible: Sidewalk cafes were banned in the city.

Thirteen years later (after Mayor Ed Rendell unbanned them by executive order) they're expected fixtures, part of the natural habitat; pity the cafe still buttoned up. It will suffer sure and certain disadvantage from May to October, and possibly beyond.

It is a lesson that did not take long to sink in. When the Center City District first did an outdoor dining survey in 2001, the city's center had 69 open-air cafes. Its census this summer showed they'd tripled to 215, the corresponding growth in seats climbing from 1,208 to 3,384.

By one measure, a pedestrian is now likely to pass by an outdoor cafe every 155 feet, or every minute and 15 seconds, on average, at least.

They are blessedly oozing beyond Center City. Dead zones near 18th and Callowhill have suddenly sprouted courtyards. Along East Passyunk Avenue, once the "downtown" shopping district south of the Italian Market, all the curbside tables outside Cantina Los Caballitos are typically filled by a new bike-riding, tattooed generation of South Philadelphians.

In its July report, the district portrayed the cafes as a barometer of the city's revival, expanding the area of restaurants, extending the public space for leisure and people-watching, for natural surveillance and chance encounters, and enhancing, finally, the "sociability" of the street.

All of which is, of course, absolutely true. But there's more: Sidewalk cafes have added yet another meaning to "eating seasonally," acknowledging the importance of venue along with the freshness of the veggies.

And there can be, for all their public enhancements, an endearingly private side to them as well.

Outside Friday Saturday Sunday on 21st Street, a block from the scene at Snackbar and D'Angelo's, two young women were chatting quietly in a Hopper-esque pool of light at the single table that is tucked at the corner outside the door.

At a glance, it might have been Trastevere in Rome or a side street in Seville, but it was just an unseasonably cool night in August, off Rittenhouse Square, in a world, by the looks of things, all its own.