Outside on the pavement, they had plentiful supplies of broccoli, potatoes and other vegetables and a supermarket trolley piled high with rucksacks, a couple of guitars and a dog named Zeus.
"When I'm out on a bike and I see someone doing something stupid I will absolutely have a word with them at the next set of lights," he said, adding: "There was a guy who was riding like an idiot, jumping lights, cutting up the pavement, and I just said: 'You're not helping matters here.
The atmosphere of the whole place is pleasantly informal and conducive to rest and relaxation; but there's a busy pedestrianised shopping street just five minutes' walk away, where you can buy excellent local produce very cheaply, and cafés, where you can sit and watch authentic Italian pavement life.
The tense atmosphere was broken by passersby who gave protesters fruit and cakes, and a friendly police officer who corrected a spelling mistake in chalking on the pavement: "Trying to help homeless evicted on Christmas Eve".
Walking home after seeing the Blair Witch Project at the local lido multiplex, a thing ran across the pavement in front of me and maybe it was a massive cat or maybe it was a deathly monster.
Up and down the main street of Lampedusa's town centre, a pleasant promenade dotted with pavement cafes and tourist shops, the stories of those deaths – and people who survived – are everywhere.
Or, should I say, one was standing outside it and the other was rolling around on the pavement like a fat barrel, laughing.
He sells fruit on the pavement in Dadar, one of the most expensive areas of the city for hawkers.
"I've literally had to scrape people up off the pavement and carry them to the hossy doors".
Wells, 20, described the moment her attacker pounced on her in a darkened street, clasping his hand around her mouth and smashed her head against the pavement as she screamed for help.
As well as being one of the world's most densely populated areas, Mumbai has very little public space: there are virtually no open parks and no riverside, pavements are often full of market stalls, parked cars and potholes (if there is a pavement at all) and scary traffic means running at the side of the road really isn't a sensible option.
