lesson 26: even basements with no natural light can be cozy

"I guess it all depends on what kind of basement, like, it could be a dank, smelly, basement with mold growing on the walls and loud drainage pipes. I'd challenge you to make that cozy."

"That really wasn't what I had in mi..."

"Or they could have large cages and skulls and stuff. That would be pretty hard to make cozy too."

"What I meant to say was..."

"Or they could have super low ceilings and sludgy water on the floor, with rats and stuff swimming around in ..."

"Excuse me!"

"Well. That was rude."

"Yes well, you were kind of evoking more extreme mental images than I had in mind."

"Well, if you don't want my input..."

"I'll ask for it. Sorry. I totally appreciate your contribution here. You are making me take myself a lot less seriously, but sometimes..."

"I take it a little too far..."

"Yes."

"And I interrupt."

"!"

"Go on. I'm waiting. Tell us your important life lesson."

"Now my story will sound boring."

"See, you need me."

"OK, well I'll just get this over with. For a little while I managed a university cafe. It was in the basement of a building on campus. Despite the dubious purple and yellow walled paint job, bad coffee and cheap furniture, we had a real community there. I loved my staff, we had a lot of customers, and well... it was homey. We bought a bunch of lumpy couches from the salvation army and we all kind of lived down there: studying, commiserating, laughing a lot, drinking bad coffee. It was an important place. Everyone could play their own music so it was pretty eclectic, but it was a really central place. I think for a lot of us. Plus we had the most amazing muffin guy... those muffins were really delicious."

"And this was in a damp, moldy, rat infested basement."

"Nooo... none of those things. It was just... a basement though. It was a really huge room. Not interesting in terms of the place or space itself. It was really about the community."

"So, from this I gather that you were responsible for the bad coffee and lack of atmosphere."

"Not directly."

"But you did purchase and distribute said coffee. Maybe people really came there for the muffins."

"It was about community."

"I'm just sayin'."