my favorite coffee place jumps the shark

for five years now, i've been coming to le petit cafe, across the street from my apartment - good coffee, enormous and cheap omelettes, and a place to sit and read or write for awhile.

i think i've posted here before how hardworking everyone here is, how tommy built this place up from basically a coffee and bagels hole in the wall, to an impressively elaborate space 3 times the size, with a heated garden, an movable tree fountain with articulated arm branches (?!?) and a killer menu. there's woodwork, gilt this and that, and for some reason a mural on the ceiling that recalls a certain chapel.

but now, for the holidays, a locomotive train that runs around the perimeter of the place, suspened from the ceiling and at the moment, passing over my head. there are sounds, lights, and other reminders that sometimes too much of a good thing is exactly that.

that, or i'm a cranky old man already.