Saly Noémi: Café?! Változatok és változások Időszaki kiállítás 2007. február–május (Budapest, 2007)

almost say that what was formulated as a requirement for cafés became a restriction in the case of coffee bars. While cafés were permitted to stay open twenty-four hours a da)', coffee bars had to close at 11pm and were not allowed to open before three in the morning. While every café had to have at least two billiard tables, coffee bars could only keep one and were not allowed any other café games. The number of cafés where music was played constituted a considerable part of the total - they even had a separate branch within the trade association, whereas music and singing were forbidden in the coffee bars. We know very well - this is one of the universal methodological tenets of historical research - that the prohibitions and limitations formulated in laws and rulings always refer to the real conditions, reflecting them in a restrained and normative way. And in reality, despite the relative!}' limited source material, we have ample proof that the main endeavour of the coffee bars was precisely to fulfil the functions of cafés as far as possible and ultimately to become cafés. This is not only substantiated by information about the infringement of restrictive rulings and documentation on the battle fought in the trade press, but it is also important statistical proof which permits us to clarify the relationship between one of the myths mentioned above that kept the memory of Budapest cafés alive and the real situation. We refer to the famous number five hundred - passed on for good measure in the second, corrected and expanded edition of the Budapest Lexikon (Budapest, 1993, Publisher: Akadémiai Kiadó, p 653) - the number ol calés that were supposed to exist in the capital at the turn of the twentieth century. As with all myths, there is a certain basis for it. There was in fact a single year - 1896! - when their number not only reached five hundred, but even went beyond this figure by almost another hundred. I lowever, there was no other example ol such an amazing leap either beforehand or afterwards, what is more the next year we have figures for - 1898 - stands alone with its 431 cafes, that is to say the number never again managed to exceed four hundred. Apart from this huge leap, the increase referred to above - then the decrease after World War 1 - takes place at a more or less steady rate. The reason for this is clearly to be found in the boom triggered by a series of millennium celebrations, but that is not what interests us here. For what we see is that the astonishing leap in the number ol cafés went hand in hand with a similarly drastic decrease in the number of coffee bars. While there were 666 in 1890, in 1896 there were only 409, the number creeping up to 770 again by 1899. It is clear therefore, that many coffee bars managed to describe themselves as cafes even if only temporarily and it is also certain that the 1900 decree, mentioned above, stipulating a floor space of 150 square meters, was directed precisely against this endeavour. Ultimately, the majority ol places with a much smaller floor space - typically run by one family or a single individual - in fact only diflered from the café in size. They tried to keep newspapers and even had an answer for the café-restaurant - or café offering a complete menu of hot food - which appeared at the beginning ol the last century. Be sides the coffee bar permit, the)' often obtained restaurant permits and were thus able to serve a variety ol hot food to their customers, usually from lower social classes than the clientele of cafés. The patisseries were born and multiplied m Budapest together with the cafés, although they were far fewer in number before the First World War. By dint of slow and steady growth, they exceeded one hundred by ihe