Best Place to Eavesdrop

Maintenance order: Gas leak on second floor of Plaza Barnes & Noble renders coffee-shop patrons unable to determine when they're talking too loud. Received numerous reports of conversations about liberal politics (by old men wearing loafers but no socks), biological principles (by clusters of jokey but not funny premed students) and child rearing (by women taking "day off" from families to meet with other women and discuss their families). Leak is relatively harmless, and some of the conversations are tediously brilliant, so address only when other problems (e.g., Bob "I'm trying to put a down payment on a cheeseburger" Panhandler) have been solved.