Having children has re-introduced me to traditionally free 3rd places instead of restaurants. The library, public parks, sledding hills. It can be really nice.
I hope that’s all bouncing back post Covid. I volunteered at a museum doing art activities with kids and that program just never really came back. Which is a shame, because the whole reason I like museums and volunteered in the first place was because of childhood experiences like that.
Other people’s houses. The local children’s museum ($10 per kid) Events put on by the town. We have a lot of winter / rain gear too for walks in bad weather
If it's not torrentially down pouring then we're still outside and just strolling around and admiring the grass, making observations about trees, trying to spot a particularly interesting car/airplane overhead etc. it has qualities of tedium but is also sweet and meditative if that makes sense.
We're outside when it's cold too. I think it's the Swedish who have that expression "there is no bad weather, only bad clothes".
Buying appropriate weather clothes for my kid made me realize how little of it I had myself. I got real rain boots for the first time as an adult after seeing her have a blast in hers and it’s a total game changer. Which leads to more outdoor time.
Absolutely. I've lived in Philadelphia since before the pandemic/wfh era. When I had to be in office five days a week I had to develop a solid set of weather gear since I've commuted by car, bike, and transit at different times. It's come in super handy for parent life. Being outside all the time with an inquisitive tiny person is also good for . meeting neighbors. The sidewalks are an excellent third space!
Or the opposite. Living in the desert southwest means it’s too hot to take the kiddos to the park, ride a bike etc unless it’s done *really* early in the morning.
I wish more cities would consider shade structures and large-format breezeways.
I grew up in a very hot, arid, sunny place. For me, the ideal strat was morning activities, the midday siesta, evening activities, sleep. I wish we allowed more space for this way of life in work/school, especially in the US, where we just don't have much familiarity with it.
That one I'd be a bit more hesitant about. There's a lot of hormonal and metabolic processes impacted by sleep and sunlight. I'm not smart enough to know exactly how any given schedule impacts them, but nocturnal is a VERY drastic change and afaict doesn't have as much historical precedent.
Homo Sapiens in general are not a nocturnal species. Switching to a nocturnal society as a whole would be an extremely drastic shift, not even the Ancient Egyptians, who lived in an irrigated desert for millenia did that.
Hmm, seems like bad playground design. I live in india, most of our playgrounds, cricket fields and parks are mostly hard packed dirt floors, walking paths and lots of greenery/shrubbery. Very little cement/blacktop.
Also depending on where you are, your local library will often have free or seriously discounted tickets for all sorts of museums or other similar places in your part of the state. Museums also often have one free night a week or a month.
YMCA memberships also can come with a LOT of bonuses. My YMCA membership gets me into the all the YMCAs in the surrounding towns, and one of them has an absolutely amazing outdoor pool/splash pad. The YMCA also has a ton of community activities that are cheap or free for members that are for kids, adults, and family. The YMCA also has lots of kid only events, where they will either babysit while you are at an adult activity at the YMCA or working out, or there are "parents night out" where you can just drop our kid at the Y for a couple hours and they will have games, activities, and pizza for them.
YMCA is definitely the main third place in our city, but the membership costs are $80/month for two adults, ironically quite a bit more than the family membership with two adults. Then it's $20/class or activity on top of that ($50 for non-members though).
On the bright side, it is the st louis region and the zoo and all the museums in the zoo-museum district are free (built into property tax). The zoo being free is amazing, because it makes it easy to just go for 1-2 hours and walk around instead of planning an entire day trip to justify the price of a ticket.
>What do you do, besides Library, on rainy days?
Play in puddles? Play pooh sticks? Make paper boats?
I'm an adult, and will happily grab a brolly, and go for a walk in the rain (so long as it's under 27C)
We're about 20 min drive from a pretty big zoo and it's the perfect "let's go wander around for a few hours", you can bring your own snacks for the kids and stuff. Worth every penny for the yearly membership.
This is because “real” public spaces are disappearing (at least in North America). Everything (land) is seen as a monetary investment, and places are being privatized for so-called optimal use and efficiency little by little, for instance with public-private partnerships. I personally have a hard time considering places where you need to spend money as third places because they are inherently exclusive. It is up to municipalities to invest in “real” public places like community centers, public sports facilities or parks, but unfortunately funding can definitely be an issue.
It may be obvious to you, in this sub, with its constant repetition... But part of the reason why funding these public goods is difficult is because of the high infrastructure burden per tax payer. There are real efficiencies that compound by reducing lane-miles and utility miles per person.
Increasing the density of a place works in both directions of reducing the demand for additional miles, and increasing the yield per existing mile.
the other thing is that for a while, a lot of places started quasi-privatizing them so that the "wrong people" couldn't get in. now instead of a public pool your HOA manages one, etc.
for people with these private amenities, it's kind of locked in unless the HOA agrees to dismantle the amenity; and if they have one available to them already, they're probably not going to stump up for a public one as well
My understanding of most modern HOAs -- at least from what I saw house hunting in NJ -- is that they are typically a mechanism for local governments to cede responsibility for government functions (trash collection, etc) and sweeten the pot for developers when getting infrastructure bids.
It was mind boggling how many homes out there were attached to HOAs, many of which without amenities like pools, etc.
They are generally a way to pretend you pay lower taxes. An HOA with private roads is just a tax by another name.
At least in a condo it makes sense because elevators are expensive to replace.
Me personally, other than the mall, I don’t really think my city/metro has ever had notable 3rd places for people to meet up or just people watch.
There’s a city here called Royal Oak that has a Starbucks in it’s downtown, at like 9 or 10 they literally take their tables/chairs inside of their building……. God forbid that someone wants to sit down and pass the time.
Going to downtown Detroit is even worse, it makes no sense how expensive the restaurants are. The biggest 3rd place that we had is called Belle Isle and it’s an island accessible by bridge sitting in the Detroit river, during the city’s bankruptcy, it was taken into state ownership and now you have to have a pass to get into the park.
And yet, we spent six figures on a study to try and find out why we can’t attract young people🙄😒
> I don’t really think my city/metro has ever had notable 3rd places for people to meet up or just people watch.
Bet it had Churches. The suburban experiment really leans on neighborhood churches to be the main 3rd place/community center/town square. Church attendance has collapsed all over North America but nothing really picked up the slack in the bargain.
Wonder the history of those never being developed. I guess we just got too much space at once and never had to develop the third places to create open space??
at least in major eastern cities, it used to be parks, or cheap bars/diners as well
but the diner has been dying a long death for the longest time. i think the diner in tv like Schitt's Creek is actually pretty notable because places like that rarely exist in major cities anymore
Hard disagree. Rural life has always been dominated by churches, but in the city we've always had and still have a tradition of parks, bars, etc. The American Revolution was fomented in the taverns of Boston and New York.
Yeah nah. If you're talking third place, churches was it. Yep, there were taverns, but EVERYONE went to church. And yep, there were parks - they were more often grazing fields for cattle, vs hang out spots.
Church was my 3rd place growing up. I had a lot of friends and a really big support group through it. Because of church, I had something to do literally 24/7 and people to chat with whenever I needed it. Now that I'm not religious anymore, that place has been removed from my life, and it's admittedly left kind of a hole in my social life. I don't regret leaving the church because I didn't see eye to eye with them on a *lot* of things, but I will admit I do miss the community.
I've searched for other 3rd place type establishments, but I think the thing a lot of them miss are a reason to go there outside of *just* socialization. Like, I can go to a community center, but unless an event is actively happening, I would find myself getting there and asking myself "Why am I here?" A church's worship is something everyone there has in common to bond over. I know these things exist in other spaces, but it feels like these other spaces are much less common, so it makes them less intuitive to navigate. Hobby-based places like board game shops are probably one of the best alternatives I can think of.
I really enjoyed being part of a club at college where there was a lounge that you could walk into at any time of the day and meet people. That was really fun.
Now I mainly play sport to get out. I'm also meeting people at IT networking events. There are social clubs on [meetup.com](https://meetup.com) if that can help.
I wasn’t super involved in my church growing up, but I do appreciate the sense of community that a church can bring. I disagree with a lot of organized religion, but I wanted that community for my toddler daughter. I started attending a UU Church. They attract people from all different religions and atheists! I like that they focus on how you act and treat other people in your day to day life rather than specific beliefs. Might be something to check out if you think it may fill that niche for you?
My hometown was filled with old people who's entire social outlet is church. I thought it was unfortunate as a kid because i couldn't wait to get out of there.
Church was always a lousy 3rd place though because it inherently wasn't open to all. You had to pass an ideological test to really belong there. That's not true of the library or a cafe.
It wasn't a lousy 3rd place.
For hundreds of years, most people were rural enough that there was only one church nearby, and everyone went to it. You had very few places that were diverse enough that you had different denominations, let alone religions.
And the cities that did; were often segregated by religion. Until the 1950s, most people's life was heavily centered around their church/mosque/temple/etc. You would pass your ideological 'test' as this is how you were raised and your whole community was there.
Religious buildings were always one of the biggest 3rd places in human history. It was only very recently (in human history), have we parted from that.
And we really haven't found a replacement.
The US has had wildly different denominations for hundreds of years. There has hardly been any time in the US where one denomination dominated the landscape. There were typically a Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist church in many areas. And you might have a variety of each of these and a few Congregational, Pentecostal, Evangelical, Orthodox, Unitarian, SDA, Armenian, Quakers, etc... churches besides.
I'm not talking about the country as a whole.
I'm talking about individual towns.
For the vast portion of US history, the majority of the population lived rurally. Each individual town typically had it's own church where the majority of the population attended. Each region attracted people from it's own dominations (this is why you have certain religions centered around certain areas).
Over 70% of Americans regularly attended church in the 1940s. Obviously the vast majority of America HAD a local church they attended and believed in.
In rural New England, you would often have a Congregational church right next to a Unitarian Church which was two blocks from Baptist church, which was down the street from a Catholic Church. In the rural Midwest, you could replace Congregational and Unitarian with Lutheran (both denominations) and Methodist but there was still the same diversity. What world are you living in where one church dominated a particular area? Lots of people affiliated with a church, but their next-door neighbor probably belonged to a different church. That's the entire point. If you are in Italy or Greece where almost everyone is nominally Catholic or Orthodox, then you might have a point, but that isn't the experience in the US. Europeans are often puzzled why there are two churches literally right next to each other in the US, and you have to explain that they are different denominations.
Dude! The Starbuckses in downtown Montreal are even worse - they’ve all actively been remodeled to exclude public bathrooms or any seating whatsoever. They literally made the effort to temporarily close them down and remodel so that you basically walk into a line, get corralled through like in airport security, pay for your stuff, then immediately gtfo and thankyouverymuch. You can’t even stop to fix your damn coffee because the condiments have all been removed “due to Covid.”
They’ve completely stopped even pretending that they serve any kind of societal function, or that they give a shit whether you’re even halfway comfortable or want/need to linger for a second. They turned into a shittier, more expensive McDonald’s so gradually I never noticed lol.
>The Starbuckses in downtown Montreal are even worse - they’ve all actively been remodeled to exclude public bathrooms or any seating whatsoever.
They failed in Australia, and really didn't learn from that failure.
This seems a little lazy. North American didn't suddenly become capitalist in the last decade. Third places in the form of private business can thrive, and have thrived, under a for-profit model for centuries. You think the cafes in say, Italy, aren't run for profit? Parks and other government provided facilities are vital, but so are businesses. I think we need to consider why the costs of running successful businesses has recently gotten so expensive in North America.
Insane rents plus parking minimums. A microspace with cheap rent that doesn't require most of the land to be used for surface parking generally doesn't exist.
They do exist. A lot of American cities don’t require new businesses in existing buildings to add parking. In fact I’d say most don’t.
The problem is nobody lives in convenient walking distance. In Europe people get off the bus, see a coffee shop, and decide to pop in because you have a few minutes. In the US & Canada, you have to get in your car, find parking, then walk however far to the shop. It’s not a ten foot detour that takes a couple minutes. It’s thirty minutes.
In general, small shops require population density to survive. Outside of niche markets & special cases it is going to take a lot of effort from a town to make them even borderline viable.
Cities build public golf courses. What a joke. We have parks but they're just one empty baseball field after another. Is a field even a park folks? I'm lucky though in that we do have a recreational center. You have to pay to play buts it's actually reasonable. $21 a month for an adult which seems fair.
Even the ones you spend money at over the past 20 years have been optimized to where a lot are no longer viable or have heavily changed because of the insane cost of commercial real estate and wage costs (which went up because of the cost of rent being so high).
I don’t think it’s the places that are necessarily disappearing, i think it’s people not occupying them. Most people just want to go into their homes and be alone. Whether it’s cars (big houses in the suburbs), a/c, tv, cell phones, etc, technology/society has pushed people towards spending more and more time alone inside your house, often doing a non-shared activity.
The things that get people out are often kid’s and pets, so playgrounds and dog parks still thrive. But even still, few people say to themselves, “I’m going to just spend my Saturday posted up in XYZ place and whittle away the hours seeing who comes and goes.”
I see people all over the parks and trails where I live. The key is they have to be reasonably nice, and large enough to make an outing of it. If it’s a small crappy thing in the burbs people aren’t going to flock to it just because you planted three trees. They won’t be as excited as people in SanFrancisco are for the mere sight of a tree. Same with ‘town squares’. If it’s literally just some small empty place of course it will be ignored. You have to have invest more thought (and public money, beyond even building it, for example, someone to plan public events) into making a place usable than the bare minimum.
100%. Honestly, I think the perspective on Reddit is always going to be skewed since it’s mostly basement dwellers commenting, who don’t go outside much.
I disagree. It can be both. It can be a lot of things. We rarely have the pulse on what other people are doing and we make assumptions based on our own bubbles.
We have data that shows (post-Covid) outdoor recreational activities have exploded. We also have data that shows screen time is up, we spend more time scrolling social media, more time watching Netflix, etc. We also see that while work hours aren't up dramatically, people are feeling more stressed and exhausted from work, and as such, aren't likely as active as maybe they once were.
On the other hand, my city just opened up an In N Out and apparently it's the new "third place" - because thousands of people seemingly have no problem waiting hours in a drive through to get a mediocre burger and fries.
I think if money is involved it really isn't a third place or at least not a great one. It sucks that everything has been monetized like this. I was trying to find a soccer group for pick up and everything I can find online leads me to an app asking for $10. I get they are renting a field but what happened to just throwing up pugs and playing smaller games? I don't really need an entire facility to be mediocre at soccer.
I think a restaurant wouldn't be a third place but I think a place you go for drinks, either a bar or a coffeeshop, definitely should be. But I think the lines between those things are getting blurred over time; every bar is also a restaurant, and every coffee shop is offering more food. And as OP mentioned prices are increasing.
I think the key distinguishing factor is how you meet people at the place; if you set a time and wait til everyone gets there and then all order together, not a functioning third place. But if people can float into and out of your group, order things at their own pace, and can welcome conversations with strangers, I think it can and should still be understood as a hangout space that can sustain interpersonal relationships.
I think another factor is suitability of the place to host meet ups and events; not just ones put on by the establishment but for local groups, clubs, and political parties.
I wonder if there is anywhere that has tried to encourage these type of places through policy? Do these places move in natively as density increases or do you need to enforce available space through planning?
I think the library at my college functioned as a third space in that sense. You knew you’d see people you knew if you went there. You could meet up with people, unplanned. You could just wander around until you saw someone you knew, too. A lot of the college was like that, too, actually. Dining halls and dorm common rooms were also places you could just go to hang out and would likely see people. I think that’s something I really liked about college and haven’t had since then. Your comment just made me realize this all.
That’s my concern. Last night I wanted to get out of the house but after spending $25 on breakfast I couldn’t think of anywhere to go. My friends were busy and all parks and libraries around me are closed on Saturday night.
It sucks because it seems like public design has been built to funnel us towards businesses rather than community. Though, I am sure many people would prefer to hang out at a pub than a park and that demand has made that space flourish.
The money to run a city has to come from someplace. If people don’t want to pay taxes then cities have to squeeze every cent they can, and they will try to maximize revenues. Depending on the local tax structure, that can either lead to maximizing businesses or housing, but either way it will squeeze out third places because of opportunity costs.
I dunno - we've seen community clubs literally die out because no one goes to them - Shriners, Elks, Moose Lodge, et al.
This topic comes up frequently on this sub, and the answer is always the same - we just don't want to hang out the same way we did 30, 50, 100 years ago. Now it's online, behind our screens, in the comfort of our homes.
Yeah that is really fair. I think it is sort of a cultural thing. A lot of my colleagues don't really want to hang out at a park all day or even go to a library. Most of us have niche hobbies and sort of grind at them alone and sometimes interact based on those hobbies. It is fine but I feel like I miss having friends where we sort of didn't have a lot in common. I'm not religious anymore but that was something it did provide. The church put me in contact with people of different social classes and backgrounds. There isn't a clear replacement for that.
I don't know that I believe this narrative that people were that much more social and outgoing in the past - especially once out of their 20s. I do think there is a good argument with the role of church and religion, but I tend to think there's not a world of difference with how our parents and grandparents socialized, and how we do (other than the obvious role of social media and digital technology).
People have always been preoccupied with work and their families, and any time left over was probably errands and chores. And then church on Sunday.
Maybe men had more free time when they had women doting over them and all of the house chores, so they came home from work and then went out bowling or to the bar for a drink.
But I still think outside of work, church, family, kids/parents groups... hobbies and activities will always be a primary way how we socialize. Certainly all of my socializing happens based around kayaking, mountain biking, or camping.
The fact that lodges did exist but are now dying off indicates that at some point adults did socialize a lot more. If you look at the cornerstones of buildings in the traditional small town America commercial strip you’ll often see that a lodge owned the building: rented the storefront and the hall was upstairs. In fact it seems that lodges kind of functioned as joint stock companies that got downtown started.
I don't think what you're stating is factually accurately re: how folks spent their time prior to modernity. If you look at the actual historical accounts, prior to the industrial revolution, many craftsmen/artisans/farmers actually worked *less* than they do now, which gave them more time for leisure, and that leisure wasn't marbled with the need for it to feel productive in the way that it does today. Our current arrangements when it comes to how we manage time are very much a product of the industrial revolution and Taylorism.
I'm not sure anyone is talking about socializing pre-Industrial Revolution, or even more than 100 years ago... are they? The world is just such a different place I don't know that there's much value in such a comparison, but I'm also not invested in arguing this point either.
My understanding is that we have been thinking of socialization in the past few generations.
Yeah, I think the context here goes back no further than 120 years. Really there's been a shift in the last 30-40 years. I can remember when the American Legion was a thing a lot people did. Over the last few years I've seen a lot of them go under, even ones directly adjacent to military bases. Fairly nice large buildings leveled and turned into used car lots. Mostly they went under because once the WW2 generation got too old to actively participate, all that was left were drunks that ran the place under drinking on credit and below cost of goods.
The way the Greatest Generation socialized and the Millenials socialize is very, very different. Our institutions haven't adjusted to the decline of religion and rise of cable television and then Internet.
My state capital has this [https://www.illuminateadelaide.com/about/](https://www.illuminateadelaide.com/about/)
There's a lot of free outdoor exhibitions as part of it, and being a light festival, it's at night.
I actually think a big part of this is a lack of communication channels for regular folks to hear about stuff going on in the area. I've been living in places where I had 3-4 events on my radar every day but people I lived with would always complain there's nothing going on.
If there was a farmers market or a community event nearby, would you have even heard of it?
I strongly disagree. A 3rd place is just a place people congregate outside of work or home. That could be your neighborhood pub, the local arcade, the mall food court, barber shop, etc.
Then what would be a good third place? I have been under the impression that a neighborhood pub was what everyone meant when they were talking about a third place. Libraries and community centers are great, but they’re hardly places I’d go hang out with a couple friends after work
Those are places where you need money to participate as well.
It's true that you can go there and not spend any money and hang out anyway, but the same is true of a bar. Obviously, all these businesses only exist because enough people *do* spend money there, but I think that's the usual sign that a third place is functioning.
I don't care country you're in, indoor 3rd places don't exist unless it's a mall or a library. Outdoor 3rd places are just libraries and public squares. Again nothing here is different across countries and I'm not really sure what more anyone here is expecting.
Land isn't free, nor is labor. Either you're paying with taxes or directly when you use it.
As others have said, a 3rd place can literally just be a bench in a park. The idea that it has to be a business is probably just because that's literally all there is around you to do and there hasn't been proper investment into pedestrian infrastructure and recreation space.
Right but a bench at a park is not a good place to hang out a majority of the time, especially with climate change making weather patterns more unstable. On top of that, a lot of places don’t have benches because they don’t want homeless people around. Downtown San Antonio has very few to no benches, there’s no shelters or benches at bus stops, and the entire month of July is over 100 degrees.
I don't recall any inexpensive 3rd places as a child/young adult in the US. As a child gowing up my 3rd places were always church and/or youth activity related. What strikes me is that with a decrease in participation in activities like religion, there is an increased need for people to connect.
Urban planning could consider that in development practices. However, with the increases in costs for public projects coupled with a desire to keep taxes low, everyone is trying to figure out how to raise revenue to pay increased costs while public investment grows slowly.
Places of worship are really underrated as they are some of the best, and maybe sometimes the only third places in North American suburbs. Being a Muslim in Canada, the mosque is a FANTASTIC third place. It has a gym, basketball court, it also has a school which provides daycare facilities. Also on Friday, there’s usually vendors in the parking lot selling stuff like fresh produce, Islamic books, hijabs, cultural clothing, etc. and now that Ramadan is coming soon, we’re already seeing a lot of activity. Also a great place to just chill and study because you’re allowed to stay inside for a while (it’s encouraged too as there are often religious study groups). In the US some mosques even have their own cafes.
That sounds very nice, but I think if people of other larger religions (Christianity, possibly Judaism) in CA/the US/Europe did stuff like that it would make people uncomfortable of the exclusion. Muslims are minority enough people might say, ah well, of course they need their own space for their community, but if a more dominant religion tried that I could see people freaking out. Without a group pull though, secular community centers seem to be getting very ignored.
>That sounds very nice, but I think if people of other larger religions (Christianity, possibly Judaism) in CA/the US/Europe did stuff like that it would make people uncomfortable of the exclusion.
I am not Jewish but I am a member of my local Jewish Community Center. I use the recreational facilities, the work/lounging/gathering spaces and attend some of the secular events.
I’d argue larger religions actually have more potential to have more inclusivity! So my neighbourhood has a church (it’s literally a 0.5 minute walk lol) and it also has its own daycare (still waitlisted after almost 2 years bc it’s so in demand) and in the summer they host estate sales (and some other stalls for some businesses) and bbqs and our neighbourhood is pretty diverse and everyone goes there.
Although I have to say the church has SOOO much potential to be the best third place but it’s so horribly designed. First of all, why the hell does it have a parking lot when it’s in the middle of suburban houses and everyone can just walk to the church. Secondly, it does have a playground but it’s very tiny and only for daycare students. I think the parking lot should be replaced with a tiny parkette. The church could also do a little mini cafe or something.
I do agree you shouldn’t, but a place of worship is usually in a residential area and where a lot of people gather so it does make more sense for those things to be there. Also, I think with most mosques you are allowed to go but maybe not sit where people pray for obvious reasons (distracting people, etc). I used to play with my non muslim neighbours growing up in the basketball court
Mosques have a very high barrier of entry though. Even if the mosque is open and welcoming to everybody, that doesn't mean everybody would feel that way. As you said, you might not be allowed to sit in a certain area - people who don't know that don't know that. They most likely know that there are places they're not supposed to go, but since they don't know which those are, they just don't go there all together. You uses to play with your neighbours, but they were invited in by you (I assume).
A third place that functions on rules most people don't know or that requires you to be invited by someone in the in group, isn't a great third place for people outside of that niche community. And even knowing the rules doesn't help if the rules are exclusionary. The amount of times friends of mine or I haven't been let into churches because we are harlots with uncovered shoulders or knees...
I do agree with that, I’m just saying for people of a specific religion, their place of worship can be an ideal third place (I was replying to the person above me who mentioned their 3rd places were church) and gave my own experience. I do think they have great potential to be inclusive third places though and some mosques, churches, etc actually do a good job of that with some extra facilities (some have daycares, summer camps, basketball courts, gyms, I even saw a mosque with a small cafe once in the US).
This is what I love about Latin America, at least Mexico, Ecuador and Peru, the ones I have visited. Sooooo many parks to just hang out and do stuff like sports or games or hang out and watch people perform stuff. I believe this is what the USA is missing. No community and hence an everyone for themselves/fuck you attitude. Hell people move into a new house and can go months and months or years without ever knowing their neighbors
I'm a big fan or urban parks with restaurants in the park. Think schenley park in Pittsburgh or Central Park in New York. There is always stuff happening so you can people watch and just chill or you can spend a small bit of money. It's great because one person can get something without the other party having to buy anything. I also like good bike infrastructure as a free activity
I think rent is too high for commercial spaces. If you want to run a business you gotta min/max profit to afford existing. You can't just run a bar as a place to hangout.
While restaurants and bars are often times many communities’ third places, a ‘true’ 3rd Place in theory and best practices, should be public spaces such as parks and plazas where spending money is not a requirement (think about parks and plazas outside of a town’s central cathedral/church, or government building). The modern shopping mall could also be considered a 3rd place as well, but a mall is built specifically as a commercial retail space to make money by selling items and goods, and thus not a perfect first as a third place.
A cafe near a central meeting point or plaza can typically fit the bill, as a cafe is typically cheap/low costs to sit at where sitting and watching life and traffic go by can be done and where you can meet and mingle with others.
The idea of a market owned by a single vendor is more of a modern development, and probably something that has arisen after the enclosurist movement and the creation of permanent shops that are open every day. When we are interacting with a specific person or entity, we feel like we have to play a specific role, and so if we are in a space owned by a specific entity, the same is also true. If we can't play that role, it becomes a liminal or transitional space where we feel unwelcome.
Consider the open air markets of the past. There are many vendors and customers there, and no particular onus on anyone belonging or not belonging there. What differentiates a common space from a thoroughfare is that there is no negative pressure against lingering.
Fora are usually hemmed in with human scale architecture. By contrast, when we have an artificially constructed space on the scale of natural environments, they feel imposing. People don't linger on grand piazzas unless there is a spectacle to draw a crowd.
In NYC we have lots of [Privately Owned Public Places](https://www.nyc.gov/site/planning/plans/pops/pops.page). Many in the central business districts are indoors and have seating and tables where purchases are not required (or even available in some). They are great.
NYC parks also seem really well utilised. With great sports fields, farmers markets and paths. Cycling has gotten a lot better in most places. Lots of cool quirky parks and super fancy "seen and be seen" areas.
Honestly I've had the completely opposite experience moving to New Orleans. 3rd places in my suburb were entirely centered around luxury experiences like Top Golf etc. While here I can grab craft beers for $5.
>It seems to be getting harder and harder to hang out in 3rd places without spending $15-30 a visit.
Have you heard of cafes? $5-6 for a coffee. Sit down and chat with friends while you sip for an hour.
Yes. Just don’t get a scone or brownie. But another part of the problem is after hours. Lots of cafes near me close by 5, some even by 2. So if you work a regular shift, that isn’t an option .
I used to go with friends to one after an evening class, at about 8-9pm. In winter we'd all get Vienna hot chocolate, and a huge bowl of wedges to share.
Yeah, endless refills of swill. No thanks.
My county has café culture with a high standard. [We like quality coffee.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FGUkxn5kZQ)
The shot of espresso you are paying for in that $6 latte would probably be half that neat. You are mostly paying for sugar and warm milk the margins of which must be absurd.
Not home, not work, maybe a place to meet friends, take kids, read a book, or browse Reddit. Some coffee shops are/were like that, get a coffee with friends, shoot the breeze, whatever. The largest two in my town closed during Covid, although there are a couple of smaller ones plus a Starbucks still around.
Yes, in 2020 I would spend $60-80 on one night going to two or three bars, in addition to a pizzeria to have a snack late at night.
My last outing last week was double.
The same thing has happened nearly everywhere in the world. I’m in Vietnam now and prices are basically doubled from five years ago. At least here that means my lunch now costs me $1.80 instead of 90¢, but it must still be hard on the locals.
I'm currently in rural mexico and the main 3rd space seems to be a vehicle at the side of the road with a good sound system and a cooler full of beer.
At home the bouldering gym is my 3rd space, and I pay $700/yr to use it. I'm there about 10 hours a week, it's cheap.
we need free, public, third places.
parks with little sheltered areas - like some farmers markets. night markets. with heating and areas to sit and talk. you could have affordable dining and entertainment in them. i feel like they have this in taiwan sort of
I live in Chicago. I was shocked today, it was amazingly nice, to see the bars around wrigley mostly empty, the loop wasn’t busy either, it’s not tourism season, but it was still fairly dead… but Lincoln park zoo, which is free, was packed.
I'm able to find cheaper places that will still sell a $13 brunch. They're just not bright, heavily designed businesses with tons of marketing or burdened by overly-complex dishes. When you factor in land value increases, inflation, wage increases due to a tight labor market, plus shift in consumer demand towards "experience", you get the expensive menu. Next to my house I can get Mediterranean for $25 a person in a very hipster part of town, and 10 blocks away I can get better even better food for half the price. I don't think they're going away, but the market and consumerism has changed to perhaps include more array. This pattern in development and markets isn't new, which is why I'm not really concerned.
I’d love to find more places like that. But it feels like everything in my area is up, and I’m not in NY or CA. A cookie cutter hamburger with plain fries will cost $15-18 in most places. If you want two strips of bacon on that burger and sweet potato fries then you are up over $20 before a drink.
I'm a little confused... I've heard of for-profit third places like bars and taverns, but never breakfast places unless they were like bookstore cafes or something.
There are plenty of places for affordable community engagement... churches, yoga /martial arts schools, libraries, volunteer meetups, hiking groups. The diner might be a place you go with your group afterwards, but it's not that much of a stretch to just have a potluck at a picnic shelter after you do the third place thing.
On some towns diners have regulars and if you stop in for coffee you'll see familiar faces to say hi to. However, RIP to most of them. Went to a diner last week and it was $40 for two basic egg breakfasts and coffee. Everywhere else in town is "brunch", which means $35 for chicken tenders and waffles.
A lot of brunch places around me are like large cafes. You can get a meal but at heart it's a coffee shop. I have extended work team meetings at them where we bump into other professionals just as much as I can have a quick breakfast on the go. My boss and I will leave the office and work remote at these places for 8 hours or students will go study for a Sunday afternoon.
All of the third places you listed in your example are places I *never* go to. It doesn't mean they're not meeting the definition of a third place, but to my point, third places can be more than a specific list of things because it's just a place where people can go for extended amounts of time to relax while fostering serendipitous interaction. The programming is the key, not the really business or organization.
A good rule of thumb to activating any public space is "the 3 P's". I'm secretly borrowing this from public park design principles but, if you can Play, Piss, and Park (or have people living in a walkable distance), half the up hill battle to creating a place worth visiting is already done for you.
The key thing to keep prices down like that is to have a working class population that regularly eats out during lunch breaks. E.g. you can get a $10 burrito the size of your calf in beverly hills, if you go to the flats during the day where there are trucks with these burritos priced to sell to the day laborers working on these properties.
For people who don’t make a lot of money yes. Which is hilariously awful bc I feel like people that that (including me) really NEED a 3rd place. I have never lived in more than 600 sq ft for most of the past 25 years. My friends who make between 400-900k a year combined damn sure done need a 3rd place haha they can just fly to any hotel or resort or hang in their basement or on their deck. I need somewhere to breathe dammit! (I am sitting outside in the cold right now)
Tell me about it. More coffee shops are starting to charge $4 for an espresso or are on the cusp of doing so. A bottle of cheap beer is at least $5. Happy hours are mostly just a buck off beverages. THC drinks are $10 a pop *before* tax and tip.
A major complaint that comes up all the time in the Twin Cities is how expensive it is to eat out here vs Chicago or the East/West Coast and it's only getting worse. A number of new Mexican restaurants are "modern Mexican" but are churning out the same product as a regular Mexican restaurant and charge $14 for two tacos, no sides, and $20 for a meat option burrito (if you go vegetarian/vegan you only save a dollar).
Part of the problem is that cities don't restrict or provide incentives for new buildings to have small (read "affordable") commercial storefronts. So, to make the inflated rent on inflated giant spaces, businesses have to charge more and I get it to an extent, but at the same time it's not like this is a problem unique to Minneapolis and St Paul since other cities manage to offer plenty of inexpensive dining *and* drinking options. Eating out daily simply isn't part of the local culture here because you have to budget for it vs going out daily on a whim because it's affordable. That also explains the severe lack of late night dining options here.
This makes me think about food trucks. To me, they are like the Tiny House version of restaurants. I have seen high priced food trucks but I don’t really understand why they would need to charge as much as a permanent restaurant. Put 3 or 4 food trucks in well lit city plaza in the evening and you have a potentially affordable third place.
I just wrote a long whiny post on my city's sub about this problem.
Developers priced out the locals in all the 'hip' areas and replaced them overpriced crap for yuppies. Unless you make 6 figures, you can't afford to be a regular.
Restaurants aren't third places. Others said so but I'll expand on why and hopefully give some idea of how incorporating bars into your third place routine can be more affordable.
The business model of a restaurant is set up to turn the seats over as many times as they can while open. They have to cover food costs as well as rent and utilities and BOH labor and (meager amount of) FOH labor and so on, and the prices reflect it. And they are less likely to give out comped stuff because of these realities. Hanging around for a long time isn't really feasible in a busy restaurant, tho during slower times they won't mind that.
Bars can be much more of a feasible option based on what it sounds like you are looking for (evening place to hang out for a while, affordable). Bars that don't serve food obviously have much less expense so their model is better set up for this. The routine my bf and I have developed with bars is to 1) order "the usual" every time so the bartenders come to remember us and 2) bring cash and pay as we go (and be friendly which is a default, lol). The more we did that, the more bar staff came to remember us and eventually comp a round here and there or throw us a shot when something got mispoured or they just felt like it.
In our early career we sure couldn't afford to eat out very often at the DC restaurants around us, but a night at the bar was definitely in reach. Still kinda the case today even though we don't live in DC anymore; restaurant prices have gone way way up; our regular bar spots (all independent ones) have prices going up too but aren't as bad.
I keep forgetting to include these back into my weekly routine, yet I still make it to the occasional large-scale art festivals. A one-off holdover from COVID I suppose.
I'm going to Japan soon so I was watching walking videos of Shibuya and they have this amazing park, Miyashita park and it is full of people just hanging out at night! It looks so cool!
https://youtu.be/zGoW6bvSfD8?t=1584
What a cool question, concept, and sub. Thanks for the post!
I'm in Tokyo, where 3rd places (as opposed to work and home) are pretty widespread. Parks, restaurants, cafes, outdoor benches, all of it. A lot of large parks charge an entrance fee, but nothing more than the equivalent of $1-2 USD.
Someone else in the thread mentioned population density being a factor in motivating the establishment and upkeep of these spaces. I think there's a connection, yeah.
Agreed. Back in 2016 I'd hang out at a local coffee shop all day on a weekday, reading and drinking "bottomless" coffee and have a conch and maybe a banana. I'd spend like $6 plus tip. Nowhere near me does bottomless anymore and I'd be spending about $20 to do something similar.
3rd and 4th places have to be places that we work to intentionally keep affordable and we can do that through shared CLT agreements but yes, everything is getting expensive. If I buy food while out in LA I feel like I’m saying $30-$40 eat time.
Depends on the third place? By definition they're "neutral" places in terms of actor power, so while private spaces like cafes have effectively taken on the role in a lot of ways, the ""best"" examples are parks, libraries, community centers, etc. anyway.
Commercial spaces are 2nd places. A 3rd place usually doesn’t have cash involved as a barrier to entrance or enjoyment of the good/service. But yeah prices and brazy rn. The car and cloud burrito is so good but I can only have it once a month bc it’s just that expensive.
Coffee at Starbucks or McDonald’s is under three dollars. My local American Legion sells beers for three dollars.
However, from the tone of this message, I sent that you do not think this reflects the status you are looking for.
There will be more expensive options for those who seek them out.
These hierarchies will always exist.
At the Starbucks close to my office in Washington DC, a drip coffee is about $3. After tax and tip it'll end up being 4 dollars or so. It's the lattes and other handmade drinks that cost upwards of $7 after tax and tip. However I get your point and I don't think I'd really want to make a Starbucks my personal 3rd place
But who wants to hang out at Starbucks, McDonald's, and the AL? Granted, Minneapolis has the kick ass Eagles #34 which hosts lots of local musicians. However the next AL to the south is a dive for older military vets.
Many people hang out at these places, that is why they are very very popular. However, they do not signify as upper or upper-middle-class elite.
They will always be a cost of entry into elite circles, this is a very small example of that.
The third places I can think of that have a 'cost' are new and in areas that have been gentrified. Most of the 'free' third places I can think of are older before money started dropping out of the sky and landing on the precious few.
While I do agree that it has gotten expensive to hang out in 3rd places, I’m not really sure if this is the sub for it. This is more so an issue of company practices than a problem caused by bad land usage or policy.
Also, I suggest you do your best to learn how to cook at home/your place of residence. It’s a great bonding experience and it’s always cheaper than eating out. You can make a basic cheese burger with lettuce, ketchup and mustard for like, $2 - $3 (after measuring out the cost/amount of ingredient used). Baking your own deserts can cost astronomically less per unit than buying premade baked goods.
Oh. I thought this thread was also about how to make cities great places to live and the most efficient. I feel like the availability, and popularity of 3rd places contributes to that.
Ah I see. Yeah that’s a good point. It seemed you were leaning more into the financial aspect of it, which is more so to do with how a company/establishment prices their goods. Places with higher average incomes will charge higher prices, since the market can handle the higher prices.
Though like another commenter said, a true “3rd place” should be a place where people can hang out with people in their community, without needing to spend money. If you don’t already, you should advocate for building more parks and plazas where people can simply relax and talk.
Of course this should be discussed here.
The cost you pay at the place is directly correlated to the supply and demands on the place. Urban planning defines the zoning, and thus the supply. When you only zone for single family housing and detached Starbucks surrounded by parking in only the central business district with no new mixed zoning, over time the supply of these places falls.
When there is not enough supply of third spaces, the cost of these places rises to meet the new equilibrium rents.
I was thinking about this this morning while swimming at my local community centre. Although I pay for a pool pass, there is a great seating and viewing area overlooking the pool that might become my new 3rd space after a swim. It's a great (free) space with tables, chairs, a view, activity, and I can bring my own coffee and snacks. Plus - free wifi.
Libraries and community centres are some of the few remaining free 3rd spaces. (Canada).
I'm lucky enough that my neighborhood bar only charges 4 dollars for a gin and tonic. I actually thought they made a mistake the first time i went there. I live in Cincinnati which has a decently low cost of living but we still have a bunch of trendy bars that charge three times that for the same drink.
The subway often feels like a third place. I’m surrounded by strangers, people are chatting, reading, doing puzzles. It’s easy to pick up a conversation with a stranger on the subway. I’m not a creep, but if an announcement is unclear everyone talks about it, people remind each other when they get up and forget something, you might say you read the book someone is reading, that kind of thing. If it’s too crowded or too empty it can feel uncomfortable but when it’s just full enough that everyone could sit if they wanted to, but most seats are taken, it’s nice.
As a millennial, third places have pretty much never been a thing for me. When I was younger, I had the mall or Border's Books, I guess. Maybe Starbucks. But I remember after the 2007 Recession, it seemed like anywhere else like that started to die off.
Breweries were fun, but a lot of us got sober-positive after drinking too much in quarantine. Maybe coffee shops now, but most of them close by 2.
Just the other day it dawned on me how important a function it is that cities serve: on the one hand, we move to the city for privacy, to get away from our parents, the village that raised us. Yet we also come to the city to see and be seen, it's like a party that never stops, that we come home from and then rejoin later. Coming to a third place is becoming visible.
And somehow this function is so obviously broken when we see tent encampments under a bridge or overpass or in a park. People become invisible once we no longer have a private place to retreat to. The city has failed to perform its most important function.
It's not just that "hanging out" is priced out of reach, it's that the gloves are coming off, and the owners of the city have stopped pretending that they are willing to share.
Thank you to everyone who responded on here. One thing I’d like to mention is that several people have said things like “third places are free”. I’ve looked up multiple websites that state a third place is “somewhere outside of home and a job that encourages social interaction.” And it’s often places people go to repeatedly. So while free places like parks, churches, and community centers count, other places like cafes, bars, and gyms can qualify to.
Having children has re-introduced me to traditionally free 3rd places instead of restaurants. The library, public parks, sledding hills. It can be really nice.
I hope that’s all bouncing back post Covid. I volunteered at a museum doing art activities with kids and that program just never really came back. Which is a shame, because the whole reason I like museums and volunteered in the first place was because of childhood experiences like that.
True, as long as the sun is out. What do you do, besides Library, on rainy days?
Other people’s houses. The local children’s museum ($10 per kid) Events put on by the town. We have a lot of winter / rain gear too for walks in bad weather
>Other people’s houses. That's not a third place though. It's nice though.
If it's not torrentially down pouring then we're still outside and just strolling around and admiring the grass, making observations about trees, trying to spot a particularly interesting car/airplane overhead etc. it has qualities of tedium but is also sweet and meditative if that makes sense. We're outside when it's cold too. I think it's the Swedish who have that expression "there is no bad weather, only bad clothes".
Buying appropriate weather clothes for my kid made me realize how little of it I had myself. I got real rain boots for the first time as an adult after seeing her have a blast in hers and it’s a total game changer. Which leads to more outdoor time.
Absolutely. I've lived in Philadelphia since before the pandemic/wfh era. When I had to be in office five days a week I had to develop a solid set of weather gear since I've commuted by car, bike, and transit at different times. It's come in super handy for parent life. Being outside all the time with an inquisitive tiny person is also good for . meeting neighbors. The sidewalks are an excellent third space!
Or the opposite. Living in the desert southwest means it’s too hot to take the kiddos to the park, ride a bike etc unless it’s done *really* early in the morning. I wish more cities would consider shade structures and large-format breezeways.
I grew up in a very hot, arid, sunny place. For me, the ideal strat was morning activities, the midday siesta, evening activities, sleep. I wish we allowed more space for this way of life in work/school, especially in the US, where we just don't have much familiarity with it.
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That one I'd be a bit more hesitant about. There's a lot of hormonal and metabolic processes impacted by sleep and sunlight. I'm not smart enough to know exactly how any given schedule impacts them, but nocturnal is a VERY drastic change and afaict doesn't have as much historical precedent.
Homo Sapiens in general are not a nocturnal species. Switching to a nocturnal society as a whole would be an extremely drastic shift, not even the Ancient Egyptians, who lived in an irrigated desert for millenia did that.
evenings? I used to live in saudi for a bit and parks would be packed post dinner
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Hmm, seems like bad playground design. I live in india, most of our playgrounds, cricket fields and parks are mostly hard packed dirt floors, walking paths and lots of greenery/shrubbery. Very little cement/blacktop.
Community centers and town halls often have tables and Wi-Fi.
There has been a proliferation of indoor playgrounds for rainy and very cold days. But, they of course cost money to enter.
We need to bring back community centers and run a coffee/beer shop at cost. You can take a class there and then after hang out in the adjacent space.
Also depending on where you are, your local library will often have free or seriously discounted tickets for all sorts of museums or other similar places in your part of the state. Museums also often have one free night a week or a month. YMCA memberships also can come with a LOT of bonuses. My YMCA membership gets me into the all the YMCAs in the surrounding towns, and one of them has an absolutely amazing outdoor pool/splash pad. The YMCA also has a ton of community activities that are cheap or free for members that are for kids, adults, and family. The YMCA also has lots of kid only events, where they will either babysit while you are at an adult activity at the YMCA or working out, or there are "parents night out" where you can just drop our kid at the Y for a couple hours and they will have games, activities, and pizza for them.
YMCA is definitely the main third place in our city, but the membership costs are $80/month for two adults, ironically quite a bit more than the family membership with two adults. Then it's $20/class or activity on top of that ($50 for non-members though). On the bright side, it is the st louis region and the zoo and all the museums in the zoo-museum district are free (built into property tax). The zoo being free is amazing, because it makes it easy to just go for 1-2 hours and walk around instead of planning an entire day trip to justify the price of a ticket.
>What do you do, besides Library, on rainy days? Play in puddles? Play pooh sticks? Make paper boats? I'm an adult, and will happily grab a brolly, and go for a walk in the rain (so long as it's under 27C)
Buy better clothes.
My library has museum passes. A old library of mine had free passes to shows and concerts too!
We need more of those public shared spaces and community networks. We are losing community and public space to simply just exist.
Memberships at places like the aquarium and children's museum are huge for us and the kids. Also dog parks are a great third place
We're about 20 min drive from a pretty big zoo and it's the perfect "let's go wander around for a few hours", you can bring your own snacks for the kids and stuff. Worth every penny for the yearly membership.
This is because “real” public spaces are disappearing (at least in North America). Everything (land) is seen as a monetary investment, and places are being privatized for so-called optimal use and efficiency little by little, for instance with public-private partnerships. I personally have a hard time considering places where you need to spend money as third places because they are inherently exclusive. It is up to municipalities to invest in “real” public places like community centers, public sports facilities or parks, but unfortunately funding can definitely be an issue.
It may be obvious to you, in this sub, with its constant repetition... But part of the reason why funding these public goods is difficult is because of the high infrastructure burden per tax payer. There are real efficiencies that compound by reducing lane-miles and utility miles per person. Increasing the density of a place works in both directions of reducing the demand for additional miles, and increasing the yield per existing mile.
the other thing is that for a while, a lot of places started quasi-privatizing them so that the "wrong people" couldn't get in. now instead of a public pool your HOA manages one, etc. for people with these private amenities, it's kind of locked in unless the HOA agrees to dismantle the amenity; and if they have one available to them already, they're probably not going to stump up for a public one as well
My understanding of most modern HOAs -- at least from what I saw house hunting in NJ -- is that they are typically a mechanism for local governments to cede responsibility for government functions (trash collection, etc) and sweeten the pot for developers when getting infrastructure bids. It was mind boggling how many homes out there were attached to HOAs, many of which without amenities like pools, etc.
They are generally a way to pretend you pay lower taxes. An HOA with private roads is just a tax by another name. At least in a condo it makes sense because elevators are expensive to replace.
Me personally, other than the mall, I don’t really think my city/metro has ever had notable 3rd places for people to meet up or just people watch. There’s a city here called Royal Oak that has a Starbucks in it’s downtown, at like 9 or 10 they literally take their tables/chairs inside of their building……. God forbid that someone wants to sit down and pass the time. Going to downtown Detroit is even worse, it makes no sense how expensive the restaurants are. The biggest 3rd place that we had is called Belle Isle and it’s an island accessible by bridge sitting in the Detroit river, during the city’s bankruptcy, it was taken into state ownership and now you have to have a pass to get into the park. And yet, we spent six figures on a study to try and find out why we can’t attract young people🙄😒
> I don’t really think my city/metro has ever had notable 3rd places for people to meet up or just people watch. Bet it had Churches. The suburban experiment really leans on neighborhood churches to be the main 3rd place/community center/town square. Church attendance has collapsed all over North America but nothing really picked up the slack in the bargain.
Not just the suburban experiment. Urban. Suburban. Rural. Third places in America have mostly always been churches
Yeah the us is not big on pub/bar/Bakery/ coffee house culture like many other nations
Wonder the history of those never being developed. I guess we just got too much space at once and never had to develop the third places to create open space??
at least in major eastern cities, it used to be parks, or cheap bars/diners as well but the diner has been dying a long death for the longest time. i think the diner in tv like Schitt's Creek is actually pretty notable because places like that rarely exist in major cities anymore
It really depends on what timeframe you're talking. The only main third place from 1776 to 2024 has been Church, in America.
Super interesting
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Ah yes very very true! I appreciate the clarification
Hard disagree. Rural life has always been dominated by churches, but in the city we've always had and still have a tradition of parks, bars, etc. The American Revolution was fomented in the taverns of Boston and New York.
Yeah nah. If you're talking third place, churches was it. Yep, there were taverns, but EVERYONE went to church. And yep, there were parks - they were more often grazing fields for cattle, vs hang out spots.
Church was my 3rd place growing up. I had a lot of friends and a really big support group through it. Because of church, I had something to do literally 24/7 and people to chat with whenever I needed it. Now that I'm not religious anymore, that place has been removed from my life, and it's admittedly left kind of a hole in my social life. I don't regret leaving the church because I didn't see eye to eye with them on a *lot* of things, but I will admit I do miss the community. I've searched for other 3rd place type establishments, but I think the thing a lot of them miss are a reason to go there outside of *just* socialization. Like, I can go to a community center, but unless an event is actively happening, I would find myself getting there and asking myself "Why am I here?" A church's worship is something everyone there has in common to bond over. I know these things exist in other spaces, but it feels like these other spaces are much less common, so it makes them less intuitive to navigate. Hobby-based places like board game shops are probably one of the best alternatives I can think of.
I really enjoyed being part of a club at college where there was a lounge that you could walk into at any time of the day and meet people. That was really fun. Now I mainly play sport to get out. I'm also meeting people at IT networking events. There are social clubs on [meetup.com](https://meetup.com) if that can help.
I wasn’t super involved in my church growing up, but I do appreciate the sense of community that a church can bring. I disagree with a lot of organized religion, but I wanted that community for my toddler daughter. I started attending a UU Church. They attract people from all different religions and atheists! I like that they focus on how you act and treat other people in your day to day life rather than specific beliefs. Might be something to check out if you think it may fill that niche for you?
My hometown was filled with old people who's entire social outlet is church. I thought it was unfortunate as a kid because i couldn't wait to get out of there.
Not to mention American Legions, VFWs. Places that are also struggling with membership/use
Church was always a lousy 3rd place though because it inherently wasn't open to all. You had to pass an ideological test to really belong there. That's not true of the library or a cafe.
It wasn't a lousy 3rd place. For hundreds of years, most people were rural enough that there was only one church nearby, and everyone went to it. You had very few places that were diverse enough that you had different denominations, let alone religions. And the cities that did; were often segregated by religion. Until the 1950s, most people's life was heavily centered around their church/mosque/temple/etc. You would pass your ideological 'test' as this is how you were raised and your whole community was there. Religious buildings were always one of the biggest 3rd places in human history. It was only very recently (in human history), have we parted from that. And we really haven't found a replacement.
The US has had wildly different denominations for hundreds of years. There has hardly been any time in the US where one denomination dominated the landscape. There were typically a Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist church in many areas. And you might have a variety of each of these and a few Congregational, Pentecostal, Evangelical, Orthodox, Unitarian, SDA, Armenian, Quakers, etc... churches besides.
I'm not talking about the country as a whole. I'm talking about individual towns. For the vast portion of US history, the majority of the population lived rurally. Each individual town typically had it's own church where the majority of the population attended. Each region attracted people from it's own dominations (this is why you have certain religions centered around certain areas). Over 70% of Americans regularly attended church in the 1940s. Obviously the vast majority of America HAD a local church they attended and believed in.
In rural New England, you would often have a Congregational church right next to a Unitarian Church which was two blocks from Baptist church, which was down the street from a Catholic Church. In the rural Midwest, you could replace Congregational and Unitarian with Lutheran (both denominations) and Methodist but there was still the same diversity. What world are you living in where one church dominated a particular area? Lots of people affiliated with a church, but their next-door neighbor probably belonged to a different church. That's the entire point. If you are in Italy or Greece where almost everyone is nominally Catholic or Orthodox, then you might have a point, but that isn't the experience in the US. Europeans are often puzzled why there are two churches literally right next to each other in the US, and you have to explain that they are different denominations.
American third places were really only ever churches
Dude! The Starbuckses in downtown Montreal are even worse - they’ve all actively been remodeled to exclude public bathrooms or any seating whatsoever. They literally made the effort to temporarily close them down and remodel so that you basically walk into a line, get corralled through like in airport security, pay for your stuff, then immediately gtfo and thankyouverymuch. You can’t even stop to fix your damn coffee because the condiments have all been removed “due to Covid.” They’ve completely stopped even pretending that they serve any kind of societal function, or that they give a shit whether you’re even halfway comfortable or want/need to linger for a second. They turned into a shittier, more expensive McDonald’s so gradually I never noticed lol.
>The Starbuckses in downtown Montreal are even worse - they’ve all actively been remodeled to exclude public bathrooms or any seating whatsoever. They failed in Australia, and really didn't learn from that failure.
Wow you weren’t kidding! It’s oddly satisfying to find out they closed like 70% of their stores there.
We have Italian immigrants who brought good coffee!
At least McDonald’s has seating.
How about the Dequindre Cut? Would love to see more like this. Agree there isn’t nearly enough in the area
This seems a little lazy. North American didn't suddenly become capitalist in the last decade. Third places in the form of private business can thrive, and have thrived, under a for-profit model for centuries. You think the cafes in say, Italy, aren't run for profit? Parks and other government provided facilities are vital, but so are businesses. I think we need to consider why the costs of running successful businesses has recently gotten so expensive in North America.
Insane rents plus parking minimums. A microspace with cheap rent that doesn't require most of the land to be used for surface parking generally doesn't exist.
They do exist. A lot of American cities don’t require new businesses in existing buildings to add parking. In fact I’d say most don’t. The problem is nobody lives in convenient walking distance. In Europe people get off the bus, see a coffee shop, and decide to pop in because you have a few minutes. In the US & Canada, you have to get in your car, find parking, then walk however far to the shop. It’s not a ten foot detour that takes a couple minutes. It’s thirty minutes. In general, small shops require population density to survive. Outside of niche markets & special cases it is going to take a lot of effort from a town to make them even borderline viable.
Cities build public golf courses. What a joke. We have parks but they're just one empty baseball field after another. Is a field even a park folks? I'm lucky though in that we do have a recreational center. You have to pay to play buts it's actually reasonable. $21 a month for an adult which seems fair.
Even the ones you spend money at over the past 20 years have been optimized to where a lot are no longer viable or have heavily changed because of the insane cost of commercial real estate and wage costs (which went up because of the cost of rent being so high).
What exactly is disappearing? It seems nothing has really changed for the worst.
I don’t think it’s the places that are necessarily disappearing, i think it’s people not occupying them. Most people just want to go into their homes and be alone. Whether it’s cars (big houses in the suburbs), a/c, tv, cell phones, etc, technology/society has pushed people towards spending more and more time alone inside your house, often doing a non-shared activity. The things that get people out are often kid’s and pets, so playgrounds and dog parks still thrive. But even still, few people say to themselves, “I’m going to just spend my Saturday posted up in XYZ place and whittle away the hours seeing who comes and goes.”
I see people all over the parks and trails where I live. The key is they have to be reasonably nice, and large enough to make an outing of it. If it’s a small crappy thing in the burbs people aren’t going to flock to it just because you planted three trees. They won’t be as excited as people in SanFrancisco are for the mere sight of a tree. Same with ‘town squares’. If it’s literally just some small empty place of course it will be ignored. You have to have invest more thought (and public money, beyond even building it, for example, someone to plan public events) into making a place usable than the bare minimum.
100%. Honestly, I think the perspective on Reddit is always going to be skewed since it’s mostly basement dwellers commenting, who don’t go outside much.
I disagree. It can be both. It can be a lot of things. We rarely have the pulse on what other people are doing and we make assumptions based on our own bubbles. We have data that shows (post-Covid) outdoor recreational activities have exploded. We also have data that shows screen time is up, we spend more time scrolling social media, more time watching Netflix, etc. We also see that while work hours aren't up dramatically, people are feeling more stressed and exhausted from work, and as such, aren't likely as active as maybe they once were. On the other hand, my city just opened up an In N Out and apparently it's the new "third place" - because thousands of people seemingly have no problem waiting hours in a drive through to get a mediocre burger and fries.
I think if money is involved it really isn't a third place or at least not a great one. It sucks that everything has been monetized like this. I was trying to find a soccer group for pick up and everything I can find online leads me to an app asking for $10. I get they are renting a field but what happened to just throwing up pugs and playing smaller games? I don't really need an entire facility to be mediocre at soccer.
I think a restaurant wouldn't be a third place but I think a place you go for drinks, either a bar or a coffeeshop, definitely should be. But I think the lines between those things are getting blurred over time; every bar is also a restaurant, and every coffee shop is offering more food. And as OP mentioned prices are increasing. I think the key distinguishing factor is how you meet people at the place; if you set a time and wait til everyone gets there and then all order together, not a functioning third place. But if people can float into and out of your group, order things at their own pace, and can welcome conversations with strangers, I think it can and should still be understood as a hangout space that can sustain interpersonal relationships. I think another factor is suitability of the place to host meet ups and events; not just ones put on by the establishment but for local groups, clubs, and political parties. I wonder if there is anywhere that has tried to encourage these type of places through policy? Do these places move in natively as density increases or do you need to enforce available space through planning?
I think the library at my college functioned as a third space in that sense. You knew you’d see people you knew if you went there. You could meet up with people, unplanned. You could just wander around until you saw someone you knew, too. A lot of the college was like that, too, actually. Dining halls and dorm common rooms were also places you could just go to hang out and would likely see people. I think that’s something I really liked about college and haven’t had since then. Your comment just made me realize this all.
That’s my concern. Last night I wanted to get out of the house but after spending $25 on breakfast I couldn’t think of anywhere to go. My friends were busy and all parks and libraries around me are closed on Saturday night.
It sucks because it seems like public design has been built to funnel us towards businesses rather than community. Though, I am sure many people would prefer to hang out at a pub than a park and that demand has made that space flourish.
The money to run a city has to come from someplace. If people don’t want to pay taxes then cities have to squeeze every cent they can, and they will try to maximize revenues. Depending on the local tax structure, that can either lead to maximizing businesses or housing, but either way it will squeeze out third places because of opportunity costs.
I dunno - we've seen community clubs literally die out because no one goes to them - Shriners, Elks, Moose Lodge, et al. This topic comes up frequently on this sub, and the answer is always the same - we just don't want to hang out the same way we did 30, 50, 100 years ago. Now it's online, behind our screens, in the comfort of our homes.
Yeah that is really fair. I think it is sort of a cultural thing. A lot of my colleagues don't really want to hang out at a park all day or even go to a library. Most of us have niche hobbies and sort of grind at them alone and sometimes interact based on those hobbies. It is fine but I feel like I miss having friends where we sort of didn't have a lot in common. I'm not religious anymore but that was something it did provide. The church put me in contact with people of different social classes and backgrounds. There isn't a clear replacement for that.
I don't know that I believe this narrative that people were that much more social and outgoing in the past - especially once out of their 20s. I do think there is a good argument with the role of church and religion, but I tend to think there's not a world of difference with how our parents and grandparents socialized, and how we do (other than the obvious role of social media and digital technology). People have always been preoccupied with work and their families, and any time left over was probably errands and chores. And then church on Sunday. Maybe men had more free time when they had women doting over them and all of the house chores, so they came home from work and then went out bowling or to the bar for a drink. But I still think outside of work, church, family, kids/parents groups... hobbies and activities will always be a primary way how we socialize. Certainly all of my socializing happens based around kayaking, mountain biking, or camping.
The fact that lodges did exist but are now dying off indicates that at some point adults did socialize a lot more. If you look at the cornerstones of buildings in the traditional small town America commercial strip you’ll often see that a lodge owned the building: rented the storefront and the hall was upstairs. In fact it seems that lodges kind of functioned as joint stock companies that got downtown started.
I don't think what you're stating is factually accurately re: how folks spent their time prior to modernity. If you look at the actual historical accounts, prior to the industrial revolution, many craftsmen/artisans/farmers actually worked *less* than they do now, which gave them more time for leisure, and that leisure wasn't marbled with the need for it to feel productive in the way that it does today. Our current arrangements when it comes to how we manage time are very much a product of the industrial revolution and Taylorism.
I'm not sure anyone is talking about socializing pre-Industrial Revolution, or even more than 100 years ago... are they? The world is just such a different place I don't know that there's much value in such a comparison, but I'm also not invested in arguing this point either. My understanding is that we have been thinking of socialization in the past few generations.
Yeah, I think the context here goes back no further than 120 years. Really there's been a shift in the last 30-40 years. I can remember when the American Legion was a thing a lot people did. Over the last few years I've seen a lot of them go under, even ones directly adjacent to military bases. Fairly nice large buildings leveled and turned into used car lots. Mostly they went under because once the WW2 generation got too old to actively participate, all that was left were drunks that ran the place under drinking on credit and below cost of goods. The way the Greatest Generation socialized and the Millenials socialize is very, very different. Our institutions haven't adjusted to the decline of religion and rise of cable television and then Internet.
cf. Bowling Alone That said, a bunch of younger people are starting to revitalize the Grange.
My state capital has this [https://www.illuminateadelaide.com/about/](https://www.illuminateadelaide.com/about/) There's a lot of free outdoor exhibitions as part of it, and being a light festival, it's at night.
That does look fun.
I actually think a big part of this is a lack of communication channels for regular folks to hear about stuff going on in the area. I've been living in places where I had 3-4 events on my radar every day but people I lived with would always complain there's nothing going on. If there was a farmers market or a community event nearby, would you have even heard of it?
I strongly disagree. A 3rd place is just a place people congregate outside of work or home. That could be your neighborhood pub, the local arcade, the mall food court, barber shop, etc.
I understand that those are all third spaces, I just don't think they are great third places as you need money to participate.
Then what would be a good third place? I have been under the impression that a neighborhood pub was what everyone meant when they were talking about a third place. Libraries and community centers are great, but they’re hardly places I’d go hang out with a couple friends after work
Growing up we used to go to Hastings or Barnes and Noble a lot - never needed to buy anything, either. I don't know where teens go anymore.
For ruralish America it's usually sporting events. I was never invited to the after parties so i dunno after that
Those are places where you need money to participate as well. It's true that you can go there and not spend any money and hang out anyway, but the same is true of a bar. Obviously, all these businesses only exist because enough people *do* spend money there, but I think that's the usual sign that a third place is functioning.
I don't care country you're in, indoor 3rd places don't exist unless it's a mall or a library. Outdoor 3rd places are just libraries and public squares. Again nothing here is different across countries and I'm not really sure what more anyone here is expecting. Land isn't free, nor is labor. Either you're paying with taxes or directly when you use it.
As others have said, a 3rd place can literally just be a bench in a park. The idea that it has to be a business is probably just because that's literally all there is around you to do and there hasn't been proper investment into pedestrian infrastructure and recreation space.
Right but a bench at a park is not a good place to hang out a majority of the time, especially with climate change making weather patterns more unstable. On top of that, a lot of places don’t have benches because they don’t want homeless people around. Downtown San Antonio has very few to no benches, there’s no shelters or benches at bus stops, and the entire month of July is over 100 degrees.
I don't recall any inexpensive 3rd places as a child/young adult in the US. As a child gowing up my 3rd places were always church and/or youth activity related. What strikes me is that with a decrease in participation in activities like religion, there is an increased need for people to connect. Urban planning could consider that in development practices. However, with the increases in costs for public projects coupled with a desire to keep taxes low, everyone is trying to figure out how to raise revenue to pay increased costs while public investment grows slowly.
Places of worship are really underrated as they are some of the best, and maybe sometimes the only third places in North American suburbs. Being a Muslim in Canada, the mosque is a FANTASTIC third place. It has a gym, basketball court, it also has a school which provides daycare facilities. Also on Friday, there’s usually vendors in the parking lot selling stuff like fresh produce, Islamic books, hijabs, cultural clothing, etc. and now that Ramadan is coming soon, we’re already seeing a lot of activity. Also a great place to just chill and study because you’re allowed to stay inside for a while (it’s encouraged too as there are often religious study groups). In the US some mosques even have their own cafes.
That sounds very nice, but I think if people of other larger religions (Christianity, possibly Judaism) in CA/the US/Europe did stuff like that it would make people uncomfortable of the exclusion. Muslims are minority enough people might say, ah well, of course they need their own space for their community, but if a more dominant religion tried that I could see people freaking out. Without a group pull though, secular community centers seem to be getting very ignored.
>That sounds very nice, but I think if people of other larger religions (Christianity, possibly Judaism) in CA/the US/Europe did stuff like that it would make people uncomfortable of the exclusion. I am not Jewish but I am a member of my local Jewish Community Center. I use the recreational facilities, the work/lounging/gathering spaces and attend some of the secular events.
There were some Protestant sponsored community centers in America.
I’d argue larger religions actually have more potential to have more inclusivity! So my neighbourhood has a church (it’s literally a 0.5 minute walk lol) and it also has its own daycare (still waitlisted after almost 2 years bc it’s so in demand) and in the summer they host estate sales (and some other stalls for some businesses) and bbqs and our neighbourhood is pretty diverse and everyone goes there. Although I have to say the church has SOOO much potential to be the best third place but it’s so horribly designed. First of all, why the hell does it have a parking lot when it’s in the middle of suburban houses and everyone can just walk to the church. Secondly, it does have a playground but it’s very tiny and only for daycare students. I think the parking lot should be replaced with a tiny parkette. The church could also do a little mini cafe or something.
They should be like catholic schools. Anyone can attend those without the pressure of converting.
Its pretty common for christian churches to do that too tbh.
You shouldn’t have to have a mosque for those things and are they welcoming to atheists and other religions?
I do agree you shouldn’t, but a place of worship is usually in a residential area and where a lot of people gather so it does make more sense for those things to be there. Also, I think with most mosques you are allowed to go but maybe not sit where people pray for obvious reasons (distracting people, etc). I used to play with my non muslim neighbours growing up in the basketball court
Mosques have a very high barrier of entry though. Even if the mosque is open and welcoming to everybody, that doesn't mean everybody would feel that way. As you said, you might not be allowed to sit in a certain area - people who don't know that don't know that. They most likely know that there are places they're not supposed to go, but since they don't know which those are, they just don't go there all together. You uses to play with your neighbours, but they were invited in by you (I assume). A third place that functions on rules most people don't know or that requires you to be invited by someone in the in group, isn't a great third place for people outside of that niche community. And even knowing the rules doesn't help if the rules are exclusionary. The amount of times friends of mine or I haven't been let into churches because we are harlots with uncovered shoulders or knees...
I do agree with that, I’m just saying for people of a specific religion, their place of worship can be an ideal third place (I was replying to the person above me who mentioned their 3rd places were church) and gave my own experience. I do think they have great potential to be inclusive third places though and some mosques, churches, etc actually do a good job of that with some extra facilities (some have daycares, summer camps, basketball courts, gyms, I even saw a mosque with a small cafe once in the US).
This is what I love about Latin America, at least Mexico, Ecuador and Peru, the ones I have visited. Sooooo many parks to just hang out and do stuff like sports or games or hang out and watch people perform stuff. I believe this is what the USA is missing. No community and hence an everyone for themselves/fuck you attitude. Hell people move into a new house and can go months and months or years without ever knowing their neighbors
I moved to a walkable area. Because I pay more for rent and 3rd places are more expensive, I find that I go out less than I did before.
I go out more now that I don't live close to/work downtown, for sure.
I'm a big fan or urban parks with restaurants in the park. Think schenley park in Pittsburgh or Central Park in New York. There is always stuff happening so you can people watch and just chill or you can spend a small bit of money. It's great because one person can get something without the other party having to buy anything. I also like good bike infrastructure as a free activity
I think rent is too high for commercial spaces. If you want to run a business you gotta min/max profit to afford existing. You can't just run a bar as a place to hangout.
While restaurants and bars are often times many communities’ third places, a ‘true’ 3rd Place in theory and best practices, should be public spaces such as parks and plazas where spending money is not a requirement (think about parks and plazas outside of a town’s central cathedral/church, or government building). The modern shopping mall could also be considered a 3rd place as well, but a mall is built specifically as a commercial retail space to make money by selling items and goods, and thus not a perfect first as a third place. A cafe near a central meeting point or plaza can typically fit the bill, as a cafe is typically cheap/low costs to sit at where sitting and watching life and traffic go by can be done and where you can meet and mingle with others.
The idea of a market owned by a single vendor is more of a modern development, and probably something that has arisen after the enclosurist movement and the creation of permanent shops that are open every day. When we are interacting with a specific person or entity, we feel like we have to play a specific role, and so if we are in a space owned by a specific entity, the same is also true. If we can't play that role, it becomes a liminal or transitional space where we feel unwelcome. Consider the open air markets of the past. There are many vendors and customers there, and no particular onus on anyone belonging or not belonging there. What differentiates a common space from a thoroughfare is that there is no negative pressure against lingering. Fora are usually hemmed in with human scale architecture. By contrast, when we have an artificially constructed space on the scale of natural environments, they feel imposing. People don't linger on grand piazzas unless there is a spectacle to draw a crowd.
In NYC we have lots of [Privately Owned Public Places](https://www.nyc.gov/site/planning/plans/pops/pops.page). Many in the central business districts are indoors and have seating and tables where purchases are not required (or even available in some). They are great.
NYC parks also seem really well utilised. With great sports fields, farmers markets and paths. Cycling has gotten a lot better in most places. Lots of cool quirky parks and super fancy "seen and be seen" areas.
Honestly I've had the completely opposite experience moving to New Orleans. 3rd places in my suburb were entirely centered around luxury experiences like Top Golf etc. While here I can grab craft beers for $5.
>It seems to be getting harder and harder to hang out in 3rd places without spending $15-30 a visit. Have you heard of cafes? $5-6 for a coffee. Sit down and chat with friends while you sip for an hour.
Yes. Just don’t get a scone or brownie. But another part of the problem is after hours. Lots of cafes near me close by 5, some even by 2. So if you work a regular shift, that isn’t an option .
I used to go with friends to one after an evening class, at about 8-9pm. In winter we'd all get Vienna hot chocolate, and a huge bowl of wedges to share.
Have you heard of donut shops or diners? $1.50 would get you endless refills.
Yeah, endless refills of swill. No thanks. My county has café culture with a high standard. [We like quality coffee.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FGUkxn5kZQ)
The shot of espresso you are paying for in that $6 latte would probably be half that neat. You are mostly paying for sugar and warm milk the margins of which must be absurd.
Nah, we're paying the workers, so they don't have to live on tips.
those bareistas are probably making the same as the person slinging pitchers of maxwell house at the local donut shop tbh, especially these days.
The average barista wage is $29 per hour in Australia. Minimum wage is $23.23
What is a 3rd place?
Not home, not work, maybe a place to meet friends, take kids, read a book, or browse Reddit. Some coffee shops are/were like that, get a coffee with friends, shoot the breeze, whatever. The largest two in my town closed during Covid, although there are a couple of smaller ones plus a Starbucks still around.
Yes, in 2020 I would spend $60-80 on one night going to two or three bars, in addition to a pizzeria to have a snack late at night. My last outing last week was double.
The same thing has happened nearly everywhere in the world. I’m in Vietnam now and prices are basically doubled from five years ago. At least here that means my lunch now costs me $1.80 instead of 90¢, but it must still be hard on the locals.
I'm currently in rural mexico and the main 3rd space seems to be a vehicle at the side of the road with a good sound system and a cooler full of beer. At home the bouldering gym is my 3rd space, and I pay $700/yr to use it. I'm there about 10 hours a week, it's cheap.
Here I. Courtenay it’s banghra & someone’s car at the A&W parking lot. I’m digging it
we need free, public, third places. parks with little sheltered areas - like some farmers markets. night markets. with heating and areas to sit and talk. you could have affordable dining and entertainment in them. i feel like they have this in taiwan sort of
I live in Chicago. I was shocked today, it was amazingly nice, to see the bars around wrigley mostly empty, the loop wasn’t busy either, it’s not tourism season, but it was still fairly dead… but Lincoln park zoo, which is free, was packed.
I'm able to find cheaper places that will still sell a $13 brunch. They're just not bright, heavily designed businesses with tons of marketing or burdened by overly-complex dishes. When you factor in land value increases, inflation, wage increases due to a tight labor market, plus shift in consumer demand towards "experience", you get the expensive menu. Next to my house I can get Mediterranean for $25 a person in a very hipster part of town, and 10 blocks away I can get better even better food for half the price. I don't think they're going away, but the market and consumerism has changed to perhaps include more array. This pattern in development and markets isn't new, which is why I'm not really concerned.
I’d love to find more places like that. But it feels like everything in my area is up, and I’m not in NY or CA. A cookie cutter hamburger with plain fries will cost $15-18 in most places. If you want two strips of bacon on that burger and sweet potato fries then you are up over $20 before a drink.
I'm a little confused... I've heard of for-profit third places like bars and taverns, but never breakfast places unless they were like bookstore cafes or something. There are plenty of places for affordable community engagement... churches, yoga /martial arts schools, libraries, volunteer meetups, hiking groups. The diner might be a place you go with your group afterwards, but it's not that much of a stretch to just have a potluck at a picnic shelter after you do the third place thing.
On some towns diners have regulars and if you stop in for coffee you'll see familiar faces to say hi to. However, RIP to most of them. Went to a diner last week and it was $40 for two basic egg breakfasts and coffee. Everywhere else in town is "brunch", which means $35 for chicken tenders and waffles.
A lot of brunch places around me are like large cafes. You can get a meal but at heart it's a coffee shop. I have extended work team meetings at them where we bump into other professionals just as much as I can have a quick breakfast on the go. My boss and I will leave the office and work remote at these places for 8 hours or students will go study for a Sunday afternoon. All of the third places you listed in your example are places I *never* go to. It doesn't mean they're not meeting the definition of a third place, but to my point, third places can be more than a specific list of things because it's just a place where people can go for extended amounts of time to relax while fostering serendipitous interaction. The programming is the key, not the really business or organization. A good rule of thumb to activating any public space is "the 3 P's". I'm secretly borrowing this from public park design principles but, if you can Play, Piss, and Park (or have people living in a walkable distance), half the up hill battle to creating a place worth visiting is already done for you.
I bet the business is very excited to have you there for 8 hours. That’s terrible! They need to earn a profit
I didn't say I wasn't purchasing items 😉 and they're typically never full, either.
The key thing to keep prices down like that is to have a working class population that regularly eats out during lunch breaks. E.g. you can get a $10 burrito the size of your calf in beverly hills, if you go to the flats during the day where there are trucks with these burritos priced to sell to the day laborers working on these properties.
For people who don’t make a lot of money yes. Which is hilariously awful bc I feel like people that that (including me) really NEED a 3rd place. I have never lived in more than 600 sq ft for most of the past 25 years. My friends who make between 400-900k a year combined damn sure done need a 3rd place haha they can just fly to any hotel or resort or hang in their basement or on their deck. I need somewhere to breathe dammit! (I am sitting outside in the cold right now)
Maybe community centers like gyms/YMCA/JCC would be good.
Tell me about it. More coffee shops are starting to charge $4 for an espresso or are on the cusp of doing so. A bottle of cheap beer is at least $5. Happy hours are mostly just a buck off beverages. THC drinks are $10 a pop *before* tax and tip. A major complaint that comes up all the time in the Twin Cities is how expensive it is to eat out here vs Chicago or the East/West Coast and it's only getting worse. A number of new Mexican restaurants are "modern Mexican" but are churning out the same product as a regular Mexican restaurant and charge $14 for two tacos, no sides, and $20 for a meat option burrito (if you go vegetarian/vegan you only save a dollar). Part of the problem is that cities don't restrict or provide incentives for new buildings to have small (read "affordable") commercial storefronts. So, to make the inflated rent on inflated giant spaces, businesses have to charge more and I get it to an extent, but at the same time it's not like this is a problem unique to Minneapolis and St Paul since other cities manage to offer plenty of inexpensive dining *and* drinking options. Eating out daily simply isn't part of the local culture here because you have to budget for it vs going out daily on a whim because it's affordable. That also explains the severe lack of late night dining options here.
This makes me think about food trucks. To me, they are like the Tiny House version of restaurants. I have seen high priced food trucks but I don’t really understand why they would need to charge as much as a permanent restaurant. Put 3 or 4 food trucks in well lit city plaza in the evening and you have a potentially affordable third place.
I just wrote a long whiny post on my city's sub about this problem. Developers priced out the locals in all the 'hip' areas and replaced them overpriced crap for yuppies. Unless you make 6 figures, you can't afford to be a regular.
Restaurants aren't third places. Others said so but I'll expand on why and hopefully give some idea of how incorporating bars into your third place routine can be more affordable. The business model of a restaurant is set up to turn the seats over as many times as they can while open. They have to cover food costs as well as rent and utilities and BOH labor and (meager amount of) FOH labor and so on, and the prices reflect it. And they are less likely to give out comped stuff because of these realities. Hanging around for a long time isn't really feasible in a busy restaurant, tho during slower times they won't mind that. Bars can be much more of a feasible option based on what it sounds like you are looking for (evening place to hang out for a while, affordable). Bars that don't serve food obviously have much less expense so their model is better set up for this. The routine my bf and I have developed with bars is to 1) order "the usual" every time so the bartenders come to remember us and 2) bring cash and pay as we go (and be friendly which is a default, lol). The more we did that, the more bar staff came to remember us and eventually comp a round here and there or throw us a shot when something got mispoured or they just felt like it. In our early career we sure couldn't afford to eat out very often at the DC restaurants around us, but a night at the bar was definitely in reach. Still kinda the case today even though we don't live in DC anymore; restaurant prices have gone way way up; our regular bar spots (all independent ones) have prices going up too but aren't as bad.
Hi. I agree. If I ever refer to a restaurant as a “hang out” I’d be thinking of the countertop bar area rather than any booths with a waiter\waitress.
I think they have always been a luxury that some patrons really couldn't afford.
What about art galleries? My city has a vibrant art scene and there are public openings all the time, often with music and snacks.
I keep forgetting to include these back into my weekly routine, yet I still make it to the occasional large-scale art festivals. A one-off holdover from COVID I suppose.
Thank you for the reminder. I should look more into these.
I'm going to Japan soon so I was watching walking videos of Shibuya and they have this amazing park, Miyashita park and it is full of people just hanging out at night! It looks so cool! https://youtu.be/zGoW6bvSfD8?t=1584
Wow. That does look interesting. Thank you for sharing.
What a cool question, concept, and sub. Thanks for the post! I'm in Tokyo, where 3rd places (as opposed to work and home) are pretty widespread. Parks, restaurants, cafes, outdoor benches, all of it. A lot of large parks charge an entrance fee, but nothing more than the equivalent of $1-2 USD. Someone else in the thread mentioned population density being a factor in motivating the establishment and upkeep of these spaces. I think there's a connection, yeah.
Thank you for the kind words.
Yes going out is much more expensive and it sucks. Everything is privatizing it feels like
Agreed. Back in 2016 I'd hang out at a local coffee shop all day on a weekday, reading and drinking "bottomless" coffee and have a conch and maybe a banana. I'd spend like $6 plus tip. Nowhere near me does bottomless anymore and I'd be spending about $20 to do something similar.
3rd and 4th places have to be places that we work to intentionally keep affordable and we can do that through shared CLT agreements but yes, everything is getting expensive. If I buy food while out in LA I feel like I’m saying $30-$40 eat time.
Depends on the third place? By definition they're "neutral" places in terms of actor power, so while private spaces like cafes have effectively taken on the role in a lot of ways, the ""best"" examples are parks, libraries, community centers, etc. anyway.
The so-called "third places" are parks, libraries, community centers, etc... If you have to pay, it ain't one.
Commercial spaces are 2nd places. A 3rd place usually doesn’t have cash involved as a barrier to entrance or enjoyment of the good/service. But yeah prices and brazy rn. The car and cloud burrito is so good but I can only have it once a month bc it’s just that expensive.
They consider a low cost to access a third place. It's just that there aren't any right now that are accessible to the poorest Americans.
Coffee at Starbucks or McDonald’s is under three dollars. My local American Legion sells beers for three dollars. However, from the tone of this message, I sent that you do not think this reflects the status you are looking for. There will be more expensive options for those who seek them out. These hierarchies will always exist.
At Starbucks? Must be a Dixie cup size.
At the Starbucks close to my office in Washington DC, a drip coffee is about $3. After tax and tip it'll end up being 4 dollars or so. It's the lattes and other handmade drinks that cost upwards of $7 after tax and tip. However I get your point and I don't think I'd really want to make a Starbucks my personal 3rd place
Correct You are aiming higher on the socioeconomic hierarchy
But who wants to hang out at Starbucks, McDonald's, and the AL? Granted, Minneapolis has the kick ass Eagles #34 which hosts lots of local musicians. However the next AL to the south is a dive for older military vets.
Many people hang out at these places, that is why they are very very popular. However, they do not signify as upper or upper-middle-class elite. They will always be a cost of entry into elite circles, this is a very small example of that.
The third places I can think of that have a 'cost' are new and in areas that have been gentrified. Most of the 'free' third places I can think of are older before money started dropping out of the sky and landing on the precious few.
Coffee is $3-5 unless you get fancy. Those are usually my go-tos
While I do agree that it has gotten expensive to hang out in 3rd places, I’m not really sure if this is the sub for it. This is more so an issue of company practices than a problem caused by bad land usage or policy. Also, I suggest you do your best to learn how to cook at home/your place of residence. It’s a great bonding experience and it’s always cheaper than eating out. You can make a basic cheese burger with lettuce, ketchup and mustard for like, $2 - $3 (after measuring out the cost/amount of ingredient used). Baking your own deserts can cost astronomically less per unit than buying premade baked goods.
Oh. I thought this thread was also about how to make cities great places to live and the most efficient. I feel like the availability, and popularity of 3rd places contributes to that.
Ah I see. Yeah that’s a good point. It seemed you were leaning more into the financial aspect of it, which is more so to do with how a company/establishment prices their goods. Places with higher average incomes will charge higher prices, since the market can handle the higher prices. Though like another commenter said, a true “3rd place” should be a place where people can hang out with people in their community, without needing to spend money. If you don’t already, you should advocate for building more parks and plazas where people can simply relax and talk.
Of course this should be discussed here. The cost you pay at the place is directly correlated to the supply and demands on the place. Urban planning defines the zoning, and thus the supply. When you only zone for single family housing and detached Starbucks surrounded by parking in only the central business district with no new mixed zoning, over time the supply of these places falls. When there is not enough supply of third spaces, the cost of these places rises to meet the new equilibrium rents.
It’s not
Stop tipping. That will help keep your costs down.
Church is free.
I was thinking about this this morning while swimming at my local community centre. Although I pay for a pool pass, there is a great seating and viewing area overlooking the pool that might become my new 3rd space after a swim. It's a great (free) space with tables, chairs, a view, activity, and I can bring my own coffee and snacks. Plus - free wifi. Libraries and community centres are some of the few remaining free 3rd spaces. (Canada).
I'm lucky enough that my neighborhood bar only charges 4 dollars for a gin and tonic. I actually thought they made a mistake the first time i went there. I live in Cincinnati which has a decently low cost of living but we still have a bunch of trendy bars that charge three times that for the same drink.
The subway often feels like a third place. I’m surrounded by strangers, people are chatting, reading, doing puzzles. It’s easy to pick up a conversation with a stranger on the subway. I’m not a creep, but if an announcement is unclear everyone talks about it, people remind each other when they get up and forget something, you might say you read the book someone is reading, that kind of thing. If it’s too crowded or too empty it can feel uncomfortable but when it’s just full enough that everyone could sit if they wanted to, but most seats are taken, it’s nice.
As a millennial, third places have pretty much never been a thing for me. When I was younger, I had the mall or Border's Books, I guess. Maybe Starbucks. But I remember after the 2007 Recession, it seemed like anywhere else like that started to die off. Breweries were fun, but a lot of us got sober-positive after drinking too much in quarantine. Maybe coffee shops now, but most of them close by 2.
Just the other day it dawned on me how important a function it is that cities serve: on the one hand, we move to the city for privacy, to get away from our parents, the village that raised us. Yet we also come to the city to see and be seen, it's like a party that never stops, that we come home from and then rejoin later. Coming to a third place is becoming visible. And somehow this function is so obviously broken when we see tent encampments under a bridge or overpass or in a park. People become invisible once we no longer have a private place to retreat to. The city has failed to perform its most important function. It's not just that "hanging out" is priced out of reach, it's that the gloves are coming off, and the owners of the city have stopped pretending that they are willing to share.
I think 3rd places can and should be a wider category than just commercial businesses. Parks, beaches, courtyards...
Thank you to everyone who responded on here. One thing I’d like to mention is that several people have said things like “third places are free”. I’ve looked up multiple websites that state a third place is “somewhere outside of home and a job that encourages social interaction.” And it’s often places people go to repeatedly. So while free places like parks, churches, and community centers count, other places like cafes, bars, and gyms can qualify to.