And a few blocks downhill, on the campus of the University of the Sciences of Philadelphia (USP), a Starbucks, after an angry season of controversy, was taking shape, the archenemy, to some minds, of all that is local and independent and artisanal.
It was move-in week in this sweltering, reviving swath of campuses - Penn, Drexel, and USP - the streets choked with out-of-state license plates, the sidewalks thick with new students knotted in protective clusters.
But you didn't need to pay tuition to get an education on the street politics, values, and elbows-out competition of the people who practice the sustaining arts of croissant-baking and cupcake-vending, dark-roasted coffee and tea.
For Michael "Challahman" Dolich, the owner and head baker at Four Worlds, the Starbucks pill was going down bitterly. He has USP students living next door now, even above the lively bakery - a fresh market he hopes to add to the regulars who have followed him since he baked in his basement at 48th and Baltimore and sold from a box on the porch. (He still drops off baked goods there, but now along with stops at Weavers Way Co-op, the Fair Food Farmstand, and Mariposa.)
So it was with a whiff of betrayal that he learned of the Starbucks arising four blocks away on the campus that had seemed so warm to his venture, a bright spot - offering remarkably good baguettes, cranberry-walnut loaves, and almond croissants - on the dreary avenue.
Some of that same resentment of interloping was being directed at a far less global figure - the cupcake lady whose roving truck was briefly confiscated recently by city licensing officials for straying beyond its designated vending zones.
While the media played the violin, casting her as an innocent victim, the cart and truck crowd bordering Penn and Drexel had a less-forgiving take.
