Hobbits. Coffee.

[resonant]

Our apartment has a kitchen that's efficient but pretty small, with very little storage space. I've got pretty stuff on top of most of the cabinets, but the one cabinet that you can't see from the living room is where I'm storing canisters of flour and cornmeal, so that if I want to bake anything, I have to get out a stepladder.

So I like to pretend I'm a hobbit. Because you just know that hobbit storage (especially storage of food and ingredients) extends into all three dimensions.

One of the questions I saw on someone else's December Daily was: Which fandom's coffee shop AU would you want to live in? And for me there's no question. A hobbit coffee shop would be the best coffee shop ever.

They'd have the greatest food ever, and a great deal of it. There'd be sociable rooms and quiet rooms, sunny rooms and dim rooms, rooms with game boards, rooms with comfortable couches, rooms with musical instruments. There'd be rooms where you could go and shut the door and take a nap.

Comments

[liviapenn]

This is the best thing I've ever read. Also, it would probably be open 24 hours, because what if it's like time for like Third Nightsnack and you feel like a chocolate chip muffin? HOBBIT COFFEE SHOP.

[resonant]

what if it's like time for like Third Nightsnack

Hee! "We'll miss Midnight Pastries!"

Also, I can't imagine hobbits having you go up to a counter and buy a slice of lemon poppyseed cake. You'd order lemon poppyseed cake and they'd bring you a loaf, on a small wooden cutting board with a knife and a little crock of honey butter and another of cream cheese.

And every table would have a bowl of nuts and a nutcracker.

[liviapenn]

There is this one bakery in downtown PDX that I've never actually been in... but their kitchen must be in the basement, because there's this grate in the sidewalk like, the size of a surfboard, and when you're walking down that block it's just like... OMG ENCHANTINGLY DELICIOUS BLAST OF PASTRY/BAKING SCENT completely enveloping you and luring you down there. That's what Hobbit Coffee Shop is probably like.

[resonant]

Perfect!

[metaphortunate]

AAAAH I MUST GO THERE NOW

[myalexandria]

...I want to live in your brain's coffeeshop AU.

[majoline]

Now I need said coffee shop :(

[resonant]

I'd never leave it! The only things I would want to add from non-hobbit life would be a laptop and a coffee shop cat.

[majoline]

Yes, I can't leave my laptop!

[malnpudl]

Add wi-fi, and I could blissfully live there. *wistful*

[resonant]

I don't know how the hobbits would handle wifi. Might require either dwarfs or wizards.

[sapote]

I feel like they probably have some sort of chain letter system, like a Yahoo Groups newsletter in analog, where everyone appends things to the bottom in different-colored ink and sends it on. I have no idea if a printing press is too industrial for Middle Earth, too, but I am 100% sure that if hobbits have fandoms they run like early Lovecraft fandom, with many many fights across small home-printed newsletters, and it takes months of waiting for the mail to see how the wank ended.

[resonant]

I love this idea!

[mific]

The menu board would have a sign: "All Day Second Breakfast!"

[resonant]

I'll bet the traditional foods for second breakfast are different from those for first breakfast. Like maybe one of them is for eggs and bacon and sausages and fried potatoes and the other is for muffins and fruit salads and soft spreadable cheeses.

[mific]

Damn, now I'm hungry! But luckily it's afternoon tea time here. :)

[springwoof]

oh, you've totally developed a *thing* now, The Hobbit Coffeeshop.

And of course a Wizard installed wifi (he hangs out in the Smoking room, puffing on his pipe, and is the resident Tech Support Wizard. oh, and also he's the DM for the ongoing D&D games in the game room).

Elves run the Nap Rooms (what a great idea!), providing just the lightest touch of soothing incense and someone delicately and gently strumming a harp (or else a touch of magic to provide soothing waterfall sounds) for white noise to drown out the rest of the establishment.

Dwarves maintain all the equipment, obviously, from the coffee roasters out back (because Hobbits always roast their own coffee), to the sound system in the music room. The Mythrill-clad expresso machine can get a bit cranky, despite being elven-made, so it's handy to have a Dwarf around to tinker with it.

[resonant]

Ha! A perfect breakdown. Trade with humans accounts for battered paperback books and the occasional pub puzzle.

[princessofgeeks]

I wish to subscribe to this newsletter.

[resonant]

I'm picturing a little chalkboard on the door with "Today's Cheap Because Almost Stale" item.

[panisdead]

As long as they have modern bathrooms, I'm in.

[resonant]

You could argue that hobbits would have the best bathrooms possible; after all, "it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort." I don't see the bathrooms at the hobbit cafe as hospital-white - more softly lit and comforting, with a well-worn box of matches in each stall as a natural air freshener, and the soap at the sinks handmade with some sort of scratchy seeds in it for scrubbiness.

I find it surprisingly easy to imagine hobbit-style comfort, for someone whose own chairs hurt everyone's backs.

[aerye]

Oh, my—yes, yes, yes. Absolutely.

[resonant]

I'll meet you there at ten-thirty. I'll bring my Dominion deck.

[minnaway]

This is the best idea.

[resonant]

In my experience, the comfiest, cushiest human coffee shops are always just a little bit grubby, but I imagine a hobbit coffee shop would get dusted twice a day.

[giglet]

Yes! Please!

[resonant]

And of course there'd be musicians dropping by at all hours.

[out_there]

There'd be rooms where you could go and shut the door and take a nap.

Oh my god. That would be the BEST COFFEE SHOP EVER.

And I thought Hobbits were brilliant just for the idea of second breakfast.

[resonant]

Hobbits know comfort!

[astolat]

Wow, I would like to will this into existence right away. :O

[resonant]

Oh, me too. Though probably I would still be retreating, room by room, trying to get away from that one guy who's always in every coffee shop trying to impress his date by talking about his Deep Ideas in a really loud voice ...

[giglet]

Oddly, I had an experience somewhat like this recently. Oddly, because it was at the National Gallery of Art. I love the Smithsonion, but I don't tend to think of it as a comfortable place. But this time, it was.

There were rooms full of beautiful things, and atriums (atria?) with lots of plants and chairs, near the bathrooms, and the underground waterfall and starscape in the tunnel to the East Wing were fabulous, and there are All the colored pencils and sketchbooks and cards you can imagine, and then there's the cafeteria... oh, and the free coat check. It was not at all crowded and tremendously comfortable.

[resonant]

That sounds lovely!

the underground waterfall and starscape in the tunnel to the East Wing

Especially that. And colored pencils!

[azurelunatic]

In lieu of a poetry slam, there is a guest cook night, where random patrons come into the kitchen. Occasionally one is ejected for crimes against hearth and home.

[resonant]

This? Is genius.