Once upon a time, coffee shops without wireless Internet access were seen as hopelessly behind the times, cheapskates or clueless.

Some people may view Virgil’s House that way when they find out the Henry Street cafe doesn’t have Wi-Fi and asks people not to use their cellphones inside.

But for others, the old is new.

“I’m on my cellphone all the time, so any place you can shut that off and just get away from that is nice,” said Steve Abrahamsen of Wilton, a first-timer at the cafe who was meeting his wife there for lunch.

“It’s more personal than a Starbucks,” said his wife, Rita DiCaprio, who stops by Virgil’s every couple of weeks.

That’s what owners Kathleen Quartararo and James Hahn were aiming for when they opened the cafe in June 2007 — a personal shop where people talk to each other, play one of the numerous games in the Victorian-style cafe, eat peanut butter and marshmallow creme sandwiches off vintage plates and read magazines.

“I wanted a lifestyle,” Quartararo said. “I wanted a place where people could hang out and have fun. I don’t think it’s healthy to work all the time.”

Quartararo is a petite woman who isn’t afraid to bellow or scold in mock anger if she sees someone using the phone or hauling out the laptop.

She turns it into a joke, shouting “Code 42!” when someone’s talking on a cellphone.

“They just laugh,” she said. And most people decide they like the rule enough to come back, even if they are still attached to their technology.

She said phones are OK as long as people use them outside the cafe. “You’ll hear a phone ringing and you’ll see the runners — people run to the door,” Quartararo said.

Coffee drinker Nick Pavoldi knew he’d be a regular customer even before the cafe opened, since he lives right around the corner on Lake Avenue. And before he entered and saw the little signs asking people not to use their cellphones, personal data assistants and laptops, he was looking forward to surfing the Web in the cafe.

He wondered how the place could survive without offering wireless internet.

But Quartararo said that hasn’t been a problem.

She’s been satisfied with her sales numbers, which have doubled in her second year with an almost entirely local crowd.

“Our summer was fantastic,” Quartararo said. “We have so much positive feedback about it.”

Customers describe the cafe as a refuge from an otherwise harried life.

“I don’t feel like there’s anyone that needs to call me when I’m out running errands,” said Deborah White of Saratoga Springs. “I like being in an environment where I’m not hearing people’s cellphones going off and they’re not enjoying where they are.”

White, a psychiatric nurse at Four Winds Hospital, comes in on her days off to read the newspaper and drink coffee. On Thursday, she munched a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, one of Virgil’s homey and nostalgic food offerings, along with Lucky Charms and Cheerios.

In addition to coffees and teas, they also serve beer and wine, something that Pavoldi thinks is unique.

“I think it’ll be really nice in the winter,” he said. “It’ll be a great place to have a beer and play Scrabble.”

Tech background

Despite her rule about electronics in the cafe, Quartararo is no technophobe. She worked until this summer for AT&T, selling cellphones in the early 1990s then working up to management level and selling data, Internet connections and wireless service.

Not that she swallowed the whole doctrine.

She remembers sitting in one meeting where a software developer touted a product that would give companies access to their employees 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“He said, ‘Isn’t that great?’ And I wanted to throw up.”

Quartararo has a cellphone now, although people get upset because she rarely answers it.

“I lose it now more than I use it,” she admitted.

In the cafe, she greets customers by name, gives one man her full attention as they discuss music, and later asks a child what he wants to eat even though she’s not working behind the counter.

Children are treated with respect as customers in the cafe just like adults are, Quartararo said. One corner is set up with toys, but youngsters aren’t confined to that, even though the rest of the cafe is decorated with antiques, she said.

“They can go anywhere in the shop. We don’t ever try to corral them.”