This past Wednesday, October 5th, Netflix sponsored a promotion for the upcoming and much anticipated Gilmore Girls revival and in honor of the 16th anniversary of the show’s premiere. Coffee shops throughout the nation were transformed into Luke’s Diner, a Gilmore staple that fans have been dreaming about visiting for years. I had the great pleasure of visiting one in Columbus, OH.
I’ve been a fan of Gilmore Girls since I was in junior high. I’ve spent over ten years dreaming about what it would be like to visit Stars Hollow, attend a Friday night dinner with Richard and Emily, or have coffee at Luke’s. You cannot imagine my joy when I found out I’d finally be able to make one of those dreams come true (sort of).
As a very adamant non-morning person, I got myself out of bed at 5:45 in the morning and got ready to head downtown for a much-needed coffee fix. As Lorelai would have stated, I needed coffee in an IV. I walked into a small, typically hipster coffee shop in the Short North to find Gilmore Girls playing on the TV, workers dressed in flannel shirts and backward baseball caps, and some of my junior high dreams finally coming true. The line for free coffee went from the counter to the door, and back again.
Eventually, my friends and I made it to the front of the line, ordered our free coffee, and grabbed a table to have breakfast at Luke’s in the true Gilmore fashion. As we sat with our coffee, we got to see first-hand how much this show has touched lives. There were people from small children to aging adults standing in a line that stretched the length of a city block. So many people have been affected by this show, we saw the fire department, two police officers, and the local news. To say it was an interesting experience is quite the understatement.
Shortly after finishing our coffee, I took off to class, and my friends to work, leaving the Gilmore world and returning to our less quirky and infinitely slower-speaking real world. While at its core, it was just a visit to a local coffee shop, it felt like so much more. It felt like long-awaited wishes coming true and massive amounts of people coming together to celebrate not only a show but a world that we’ve all come to love.
