CAMBRIDGE — When Michael Baym walked into Circus Cooperative Cafe Wednesday morning for his coffee and a pastry, he saw two people dressed all in blue and “basically dancing.”
It was just hours after Democrats had taken control of both houses of Congress, and Baym wasn’t surprised that the employee-owned cafe, in the heart of deep-blue Cambridge, was buzzier than usual. But the jubilant atmosphere was enough for him to fire off a quick observation on social media.
“It is my pleasure to report that the mood at the communist coffee shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts is electric,” he wrote in the post, now viral.
Though Cambridge is thousands of miles from the most seismic midterm races — which saw Democrats not only flip Republican-held seats in Maine and Texas, but also longtime GOP bastions like Kansas and South Carolina — the mood among many residents was ecstatic.
Baym, in an interview, conceded that the cafe’s “communist” label was for “comedic effect.” Strictly speaking, Circus Cooperative is not explicitly Marxist; it’s not even the most visibly left-wing bar in Cambridge. That honor probably goes to New Republik, the Inman Square joint with red walls, Soviet posters, and a Cold War-era bomb hanging over the bar.
But Wednesday morning, the cafe on Putnam Avenue offered a window into what many voters across the country were feeling: surprise, relief, even elation.
“Most days, some people will be happy, some people will be fine. Most people are just trying to get through the day,” said barista May Nerudova. “Today, people are like, ‘there’s an energy.’ They’ve got a pep in their step.”
Circus is a natural hub for the city’s politically conscious denizens. The cafe traces its existence to several former employees of Darwin’s Ltd., a coffee chain that closed in 2023 after its workers attempted to unionize.
As a worker-owned cooperative, Circus Cafe’s progressive orientation is clear. Fliers promote immigration hotlines and pro-Palestine initiatives. Stacks of pamphlets sit alongside whistles for ICE-sightings and stickers printed with the face of an Italian anarchist. A breakfast sandwich is named for a Vietnamese revolutionary — one who notably rejected Ho Chi Minh as too bourgeois.
That’s not to say there’s no room for irreverence. Standing at the register, Nerudova explained a strip of masking tape on her shirt to a bemused customer. Scrawled on it was the message “Woke 3.0″.
“Many people think that [Woke] 2.0 is happening now,” she said, referring to a current of progressive politics that has emerged during the second Trump term. With the faint trace of a smile under her mask, she added: “I think we’re actually moving past that.”
The customer seemed to accept the explanation. “Today, that’s good,” she said, laughing.
Even in a city known, affectionately and derisively, as the “people’s republic,” residents were surprised at the scale of the Democratic wave on Tuesday, which saw progressive candidates notch decisive victories in states like Michigan and Maine.
“They were almost in disbelief,” Nerudova said, referring to the morning’s customers. “Just being like, ‘it’s crazy this is happening,’ looking at each other almost in shock.”
Louise Andrews, 77, happened into the cafe Wednesday morning by chance. Andrews, from cherry-red West Bridgewater, said finding a place where she was free to speak her mind about the vote seemed like a breath of fresh air.
It was encouraging, she added, to see a place where “you’ve got a lot of students here and younger people who are maybe going to make the change.”
Frank Egan, a 30-year-old Cambridge resident, said he picked out a black T-shirt to mark the left’s midterm victory. The message on it? “Fully Automated Luxury Queer Space Communism.”
The shirt, commissioned by a Democratic Socialists of America chapter, was just a joke. But the satisfaction he and other leftists were feeling was real, he said.
“People in Massachusetts are celebrating a good Republican thrashing all across the country,” he said.
And though there were surely many places in Cambridge where strangers were having spirited conversations about the election, Egan said that Circus’s roots make it one of a kind.
“It’s just such a cool little story,” he said. “One of those funny little gems that makes Cambridge so unique.”
Camilo Fonseca can be reached at camilo.fonseca@globe.com. Follow him on X @fonseca_esq and on Instagram @camilo_fonseca.reports.