January 3–10, 2002

naked city

First Look: ING Direct Café

Though I’d love to imagine otherwise, I am not unaffected by TV commercials. I want Verizon Wireless to connect me to my foreign-located-father even though he lives in Southwest Philly. I want Dentyne Ice to freeze both my mouth and the outside of my brick-front house. Darn it, I still want to know where the friggin’ beef is.

Add to this list the ING commercials that stated, "It’s not an ending. It’s a beginning." I spent all summer 2001 wondering what the heck ING was, with its glass monstrosity of a building along Walnut Street. Oddly enough, ING Direct — a bank with savings and checking accounts, a loan agency — is also the RitSquare-area’s most colorful coffeeshop: the ING Direct Café.

The cafe’s facade may be a bit Big Brother Corporate with its myriad widescreens that always seem to be blaring financial statements and Louis Rukeyser’s television programs. Then there’s ING’s futuristic flat-faced computer monitors atop bright-white Formica tables resting on the pseudo-bubble-wrap material floors. There’s the ING product placement, from safety vests to mugs. And of course, there’s ING’s bold (very bold ) use of shiny orange in the decor, maybe too much in league with ING’s Orange Savings Accounts, low-interest Orange Loans or five-year high-yield Orange CDs.

But somehow, for all ING Direct Café’s high gloss — as envisioned by architectural-design firm Saxon/Capers Architects and the Gensler design team — it’s still cozier than the several comfy-couched Starbucks located along Walnut. As ING Direct’s second sleek cafe in America (the first one located in Manhattan), this coffee club is, like Urban Outfitters, an op/pop proposition amid tonier locales; a caffeinated respite that actually serves public function. ING serves a social need — like the Palm Pilot and the cell phone — by allowing users on the go to surf the Internet as well as do their banking or check stock numbers. This makes the always-busy ING Philly’s first supremely successful Internet cafe. Besides, does your bank have a vintage orange-and-blue Indian motorcycle in the corner?

—A.D. Amorosi

ING Direct Café, 1636 Walnut St., 215-731-1410.