Ibolya shadow

The Ibolya Cafe, where Matt Welch, David Reilly, Miklos Gaspar,Susan Skiles, Ken Layne, Renee Cordes, Jim Lowney, Ben Sullivan and I used to hold the Budapest Business Journal’s editorial meetings, has gone the way of the dodo and print newspaper scoop. But Rick Bruner, visiting Budapest recently, finds the Ibolya’s unlit neon sign still hangs above a new cafe. Matt, who was also in Budapest over New Year’s, reports, “at current rates of development, the entire city of Pest (Buda is the hilly half across the Danube) will be one sprawling café/wine bar/bistro/restaurant by roughly 2007.” And anyone wondering why Matt

The Ibolya is 20 seconds walk from the Cafe Central, where the concept of six degrees of separation was birthed in 1929. Of course, while the Cafe is now nicely restored, when we were working in that neighborhood in the nineties, the place was a combination bagel store and video arcade.

Finally, anyone wondering why Matt recently wrote that “gulping down cheap & sweet champagne, even for a short while and mixed with better quality stuff, can lead to acute, projectile-style poisoning, for up to 20 hours,” should check out this photo to see Matt’s hangover in the making.