I spotted this sign in a food court near Battery Park in Lower Manhattan. I lurked for a while, hoping to see what sort of customers or services were associated with it. But it was a holiday weekend, when most New Yorkers were anywhere-but-here, so I was left alone with my speculations.

All I wanted was coffee.

First, I concentrated on “ritual.” This is a city with its own unit of time — a “New York minute,”  which lasts only a couple of nanoseconds and which a comedian once defined as “the interval between the traffic light turning green and the guy behind you honking his horn.” To save time, New Yorkers will do almost anything. So, I reasoned, if you’re too busy to plan, say, a wedding ceremony, a baptism, or a bar mitzvah, you can pick one up here. And if the timing is right, your next life event may even be on sale.

Then I shifted my attention to “pick-up.” Perhaps, I thought,  this is where you meet when you’ve donned your sexiest outfit, artfully mussed your hair, and practiced lines like “Come here often?” or “What’s your sign?” or “Has anyone ever told you that you have beautiful eyes/great abs?” Nice to know that the hackneyed has an official spot in NYC, I thought.

A quick Internet search revealed that an app called “Ritual” allows you to order and pay for food online, which you then pick up at this location. Efficient and useful, true, but much less fun than my interpretations.