Just when nothing seemed capable of emptying them for long - neither sweltering heat nor summer storms - along came Hollywood to sweep clear the pavement cafes of this corner of Budapest.
But only the inveterate cappuccino sippers and chain-smokers seemed annoyed, when a vanguard of buzzing Vespas and vintage Italian cars jostled them from their seats and around the corner to somewhere looking less like a perfect film set in-waiting.
Where local dilettantes usually chew the fat and fine cakes for hours on end, the lifters and shifters of the movie world went into action, and did what was necessary to transform these gently crumbling Habsburgian backstreets into 1970s Rome. The peeling facades and flower-laden balconies needed no attention, but street signs were removed or painted over, shops were given Italian names and stock, and the pavement cafes were cleared to make way for the Alfa Romeos and Lancias.
A couple of streets away, period Peugeots and Citroëns puttered through a mock-up of Paris, while surrounding alleys filled up with trucks, stuffed to the gills with miles of cable, lights and scaffolding.
Buses brought security men to guard them, and to make sure the cafe regulars knew this patch was no longer theirs.
Not even Madonna caused this kind of stir when she filmed Evita in Budapest, locals tut, as they peer down closed streets to try to glimpse the actors at work.
But then cinematic events don't come much bigger - or more secretive - than the making of a Steven Spielberg movie.
"If I tell you I can't talk to you about which movie I'm working on, then you'll know which one it is," was how a local film producer revealed what was keeping him busy.
He said every company involved in the project had accepted a gagging order from their US studio paymasters, preventing them from discussing anything about the movie until it leaves town, sometime in September, after earlier filming in Malta.
Daniel Craig, the British actor who is following up roles in Road to Perdition and as Ted Hughes in Sylvia with a part in the Spielberg film, rebuffed an interviewer recently. "I cannot tell you anything about it," he said. "They will break my legs."
Spielberg has only revealed the scarcest details about his work in progress, which for a while laboured under the suitably inscrutable moniker Untitled Historical Thriller.
We know it is about events following the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, when the Israeli government of Golda Meir unleashed Mossad intelligence agents to track down and assassinate the suspected Palestinian killers.
The revenge missions across Europe and the Middle East - Israel's first "targeted killings" - are still deeply controversial, and the film's reported focus on the ambivalent feelings of the hitmen towards their work has made some Jewish groups nervous.
According to the movie press, Spielberg is so concerned about the film's potential impact - not only on his own standing in the Jewish community but on Arab-Israeli relations - that he has discussed the script with an extraordinary range of advisers.
US reports suggest Spielberg - a double-Oscar winner for Schindler's List, his epic about the Holocaust - has shown the script to everyone from his own rabbi to President Bill Clinton, via his longtime Middle East troubleshooter, Dennis Ross, and ex-White House spokesman Mike McCurry.
But concern is still mounting in Israel over why former Mossad agents involved in the operation have not been consulted, and about the reliability of a book by George Jonas, whose account of the Munich episode is thought to be central to the film.
Spielberg was even said to be considering the title of Jonas's book for his movie - Vengeance - although Munich is now the most likely, and a less loaded, contender.
For now, Spielberg, Craig and co-stars Eric Bana and Geoffrey Rush do their work behind huge screens that divide summer in Budapest from a cinematic Rome or Paris in a spring or autumn of 40 years ago.
Other than the period cars and the Vespa mopeds, only the extras seep out from the film set into real life, like hip young time-travellers newly arrived from the 1970s, eliciting curiosity and the occasional scowl from Budapest's displaced cafe society.
They strike poses on street corners in their swirling fashions, primp bouffant hair-dos and bushy moustaches and polish their tinted Ray-Bans, awaiting the call to return to Spielberg's roped-off world, to keep quiet and look right while his cameras roll.
