Recreating the Starbucks Ambiance

Those who know me closely (or those who listened to my recent audio post) realize that I love working in Starbucks. There's just something about the atmosphere that makes it a wonderful place to work.

When I lived in Cleveland Heights, I had a great Starbucks just a mile down the road, with tons of comfy seating. I studied there almost every day. Here in Washington, there are many Starbucks' within a few mile proximity, but since I don't have a car, it takes a long time to get there. Also, most of them lack the comfy seating I have come to love.

So, I am embarking on a project to recreate the Starbucks ambiance in my own room. So far all I have been able to recreate is the music. Starbucks uses XM channel 75 in all their stores, so I have just tuned my XM to 75. That has gotten me partway there, but I am still lacking the energetic background noise of other cafe-goers. I need that white noise. Without it, all I have is music.

I've searched the Web high and low for a long audio stream of coffee house background noise, but the only thing I can find is a few files from a random coffee house in Japan. That might be okay, but the file is no more than a few minutes long. I want a few HOURS.

Time for a checklist.

Things I Have
* Starbucks music

Things I Need
* Starbucks background noise. If I really wanted to be enterprising, I could take my old minidisc recorder to one of the college Starbucks and record about five hours worth of ambiance. But it would be nice if such an audio stream were available somewhere on the Web. God knows I don't like to recreate the wheel.

* Comfy velour chair. A company called Zoe Design actually sells this chair for -- get this -- $1,396!!! Of course, there is no way I am paying that much for a Starbucks chair. But I sure would like to find a less expensive knockoff somewhere. There's only so much lounging I can do in my $70 fake leather desk chair from Staples with the uncomfortable oversized lumbar support.

* Coffee. Unfortunately for me, I have proven myself completely unqualified to make good tasting coffee at home. I don't know what it is about me, or the coffee I use, or my technique, but my coffee always tastes far inferior to any coffee I can purchase at any retail establishment. Anyway, I don't even like coffee that much. What I really like is the Starbucks grande iced toffeenut lattee (with light ice and three pumps of toffeenut), and the only place I can get that is -- well, yeah.

Anyway, I gotta go study now. But if anyone has any suggestions on how to recreate the Starbucks feel in my Own Home, pleeeease please please comment. Thanks!