We tend to see them out in the street, offering impromptu verdicts on recent events, or in television studios, responding to interviewers, or chatting on cosy couches.
In the basement classic rock'n'roll is played, and on the first floor there are cosy couches and a bar with a retro vibe and an interesting mix of arty and media types.
Inside, the cosy, couch-filled bar and lounge houses more than 400 different blends and malts from South Africa, Ireland, Scotland, United States, Wales, Australia and Japan, making Bascule Bar home to the most whisky in one spot in all of South Africa, a country that is the fifth largest consumer of whisky in the world. .
I think there must be some books that leave a mark without me even noticing: I hadn't read The Box of Delights for a while, but returning to it this year, cosy on the couch as the snow whirled outside last week, I almost felt as if I was reading something I'd learned by heart.
"An ex-partner can put a photo online that would out someone, even if it's not sexually explicit and police might say 'What's the problem with that, it just shows a nice cosy picture of two people snuggling on a couch.' But that threat is part of a coercive situation.
(The iPad is a great couch-surfing machine, which counts as cosy in my book).
We stayed in its integral hotel, where Modernism is almost cosy, with parquet, plate-glass and black leather couches.
Housed in a giant inflatable igloo, Syncself 2 is a cosy set-up: there's a widescreen TV and a comfy couch.
The dash took me past a cosy rug in front of a woodburner, past a huge swallow-you-whole couch, and past a Bose sound system piped into the walls, next to a 50-inch plasma TV.
