When you move to a new city, you never want to sound like a tourist. Superficial, uninformed takes don’t usually sit well with the locals. Especially when you begin working for a magazine that prides itself on fluency in that place.

So I was more than a little nervous when I moved across the country to write for Seattle Met a few years ago. I knew some of what not to say. Don’t pitch any stories about grunge, rain, or tossed fish, I told myself. Don’t state the obvious. Still, I was acutely aware that I couldn’t know what I didn’t know about this city.

In the short term, my only remedy for this angst was reading as much of my colleagues’ work as possible and interviewing as many Seattleites as I could. But little did I know there was also a guide to navigating the city’s idiosyncrasies right around the corner from the magazine’s downtown offices. With apologies to the many talented scribes in this town, I submit that few writings in Seattle have ever captured its zeitgeist more succinctly than the directions menu at Monorail Espresso.

I can’t remember when I first came across the sign on the glass near the corner of Fifth and Pike. But once I saw its snarky pricing for typical tourist queries, I couldn’t unsee its cultural currency.

Asking “Where is Nordstrom?” will run you $1.25, the sign says, perhaps tacking on a quarter for those who can afford a leather bomber jacket from our city’s one ritzy fashion institution. For “Pike Place?” That’ll be a dollar. The more egregious “Pike’s Place” incurs a fine double that amount; inquiring about the oft-Instagrammed Gum Wall is only slightly cheaper, at $1.75. And if you wonder where you can find the Amazon Spheres colloquially known as “Bezos’ Balls,” you’ll have to pony up $5, the costliest question on the list.

The menu begins with a much more acceptable query: “Where is the Monorail?” In 1980, Chuck and Susie Beek opened an espresso cart beneath the elevated track that was constructed for the 1962 World’s Fair. Their mobile business inspired many imitations across the city as Seattle bolstered its coffee bona fides. Eventually Monorail Espresso moved under the marquee at the old Coliseum Theater before assuming its current window down the block. It has since expanded to four locations around the city (a fifth is set to open later this summer at the new wing of the Seattle Convention Center).

About 20 years ago, Chuck Beek recalls, a longtime employee named David Narazaki advocated for adding the directions menu to needle the many visitors in their midst. Even in a city with a renowned social freeze, locals here, like everywhere, share common irritations and collective disdain, often for those who are just passing through. Tourists can carry false assumptions and a general lack of awareness. Posted up on a corridor between a convention center and Pike Place Market, Monorail Espresso baristas have often been on the frontlines of fielding their clueless questions. “Especially during the summer,” says Gemma Quarry, a barista and communications manager at Monorail Espresso. “That’s kind of the peak with cruises and conventions.”

But Quarry stresses the menu is all tongue-in-cheek. “It’s never like, do you see the sign? We’re charging you.” Instead, the company has merely wanted to keep its sense of humor front and center—to show that, amid a changing city, everyone can still have a laugh.

And like any good piece of humorous writing, the menu builds toward a classic kicker, the most oblivious question one could ever ask at a local coffee shop: “Where is Starbucks?”

That one, as the sign says, is “priceless.”