Yoga classes, coffee shops, CrossFit, meetups, hiking groups, rock climbing, dance parties, marathons, evening painting classes where they serve wine, improv comedy shows, improv comedy classes, cooking classes, language classes, indie band shows of every type. Meditation, Buddhism, any kind of spirituality you might be into. Literally everything just a few clicks away on Google. You don't need to "know somebody", you can just go. Go a few times in a row and make conversation with people, and suddenly you've got community and new friends.
Modern culture is an incredible smorgasboard where you can connect with every type of person through pretty much every type of activity known to man, whether athletic or artistic or spiritual or educational or all four.
The bar was a kind of lowest-common-denominator location that often came with a drinking problem. Bars still exist, but today's alternatives are almost infinitely more varied and vibrant.
Think of the Prancing Pony in the Lord of the Rings...a place where locals and travellers can mix and mingle and converse as much or as little as they please.
I love the idea of a hot yoga session before heading to the pub for a couple of pints and some darts.
Your white upper-middle class is showing
Many meditation and Buddhist activities are free or donation only. It's a common attribute that Buddhist retreats are completely free before and during the event, and only after you receive a piece of mail soliciting a donation.
There _are_ more commercial meditation based activities but those are more lifestyle than spiritual.
Also, due to movements like the Hare Krishnas advertising free events (often without specifying that it was the Hare Krishnas or whatever other sect organizing it) for the sake of bait-and-switch recruitment, people are understandably suspicious of any vague "spirituality" or "meditation" event where free entrance is advertised.
Central Europe is losing the vibrant cafe culture it used to have, where people could sit together for hours and chat. Cafes today often blast loud pop music and send staff around more frequently to pester clients who seem to have finished their drinks, as owners believe this will prevent people from loitering. Instead, customers will quickly drink what they ordered and then get out, freeing the table for other customers.
Perhaps in the USA the situation is different, but I live in a city with a tradition of quiet, intellectual cafes that goes back centuries, and was still like that a decade ago, but now I am hard pressed to find a single place that would be pleasant to socialize even with my friends in, let alone mingle with other regulars and strike up conversations with strangers.
I'm much more likely to be pushed out the door at my local brewery or bar than I am at a coffee shop. If I had to guess it's because coffee tends to be a grab-and-go whereas beer cannot be served in a to-go cup so it has to be served and consumed inside the building with few alternatives if the seats are all full.
Unfortunately, it comes with some dangers...nicotine.
The days of hookah bars in many locations are probably numbered, since public health is focusing on gradually reducing tobacco use to zero. For the time being hookah tobacco might still be sold for someone to use in the privacy of their own home, but forbidding smoking hookahs in public spaces is a simple and effective step that the authorities can take.
To acquire friends one has to get to know people, and also people have to know one. It takes time to open up.
I'm not saying bars were this magical place. No. Bars were the place people who for some reason spent enough time together to get to a bar went to.
I don’t drink anymore but when I lived in NYC I went to the neighborhood bar and was part of a loose knit group of people who went there too. Classes, schedules and fees don’t point to the same thing.
I do miss the mid 90s indie coffeeshop scene.
I think some of these things may die off when people our age have kids. I didn’t have a kid when I did these things before. Maybe schedules and fees facilitate third place activities when you’re negotiating time with your co-parent. Now my kid is mid-teens and I have my free nights for third place things. But I’m not likely to attend a thing at a time and pay a fee. I’ll go for a trail run, with my partner or by myself.
Churchgoers are moving from mainline Christian denominations to more extreme evangelical or fundamentalist denominations. Evangelicals have become a majority of all Protestants [1]. Generalizing, these churches are stridently political in character, and often have social beliefs unacceptable to most of us.
What we are seeing is many churches having reoriented themselves with respect to society: while before they were community meeting places in areas with nearly identical backgrounds and beliefs, now they define themselves in opposition to a diverse community and the changes it brings.
In other words, it's not just that people have abandoned churches (secularization); it's also that many churches have self-consciously abandoned their roles as third places.
[1] https://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/chapter-1-the-changing-r...
In America at least, the trend has had the effect of minimizing the positive effects of religion on society, while maximizing the irrational, corrosive, and divisive effects. It's like the worst of all possible worlds. I blame politicians for catering to the worst instincts of religiously-motivated voters, and I blame religious voters for allowing their politics to corrupt their own spirituality. As a result, you see these Evangelical megachurch pastors preaching beliefs that are in blatant, obvious, direct opposition to the clearest and least ambiguous words of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, for example. His observations on the Pharisees have never been more relevant.
Yes, I'm definitely including megachurches (esp. nondenominational megachurches) as evangelicals, and I totally agree with the friendly small church vs dystopian megachurch experiences. Just about any TV pastor is an evangelical as well. For someone who's not a believer, I'm surprised at how sad this state of affairs can make me. Joel Osteen/Jim Bakker/Jerry Falwell Jr./Pat Robertson/etc. are just the worst.
If I could point at any one evangelical belief that for whatever reason offends this atheist, it's Prosperity Gospel. The idea that you should follow Christ so that material wealth will be drawn towards you, in correlation to how hardcore you are about Jesus. Of course this conveniently explains why the Joel Osteens of the world have mansions and private jets and so on- it's not a pyramid scheme, it's Christ's blessing magically seeping into their bank accounts on account of their innate holiness. But what's more depressing by far is that they've gotten so many people to actually believe that that's what's in the Bible.
Surely there is nothing worse than the prosperity gospel. I didn’t think there could be something worse than the glorification of suffering until I understood the prosperity gospel.
I honestly wish we could found a church based on teaching and practicing meditation and communication techniques. I think it would be a good place to raise a kid since churches are largely about raising kids.
I left Catholicism 20-odd years ago when I got married. Started going to a Southern Baptist (evangelical) church, and have gone ever since.
If you agree that everyone has a right to think as they please, you'll have nothing against evangelicals. Say you want to support abortions. You will surely get passionate arguments in return. You won't be given a position of leadership. You will not be in sycn with the rest of the congregation, and probably won't feel good about hanging around (as long as you keep vocalizing these ideas. That's not what the church is there for.) But nobody will be treated disrespectfully, and nobody will be subjected to anything unlawful.
On the flip side, evengilical churches do a great job of feeding the hungry, digging wells where they are needed, helping with disaster relief, etc. These are really important works, and given without care for the beliefs of the recipient.
You say I wouldn't feel comfortable hanging around should I be the sort of person who says what I think about these issues. If that were because churches were non-political spaces (like some neighborhood bars), that might be fine. But the point of my comment was that evangelical (and some other) churches have become heavily politicized spaces. The rules are, in fact, that you can say whatever you want, as long it agrees with extreme right-wing conservative dogma. In many (especially smaller) evangelical churches, you'll even hear it from the pulpit on Sunday. As it happens, I just visited the "Bible Belt" and got to hear evangelical Christians trash my so-called "environmentalism" (I tried to recycle plastic).
> On the flip side, evengilical churches do a great job of feeding the hungry, digging wells where they are needed, helping with disaster relief, etc. These are really important works, and given without care for the beliefs of the recipient.
Here again I must say my experience (I grew up in an evangelical church) doesn't match this. In my experience, churches treat these like mission opportunities. Any charity given is closely tied to the recipient's willingness to listen to the Gospel. And that's even putting aside the extremely questionable organizations that often run these programs, like groups tied to Franklin Graham.
Sorry about that. Please seek out a better church-- they are out there!
the mission of the church is not to feel you warm and fuzzy, and appeal to the latest social trends and what's deemed politically correct these days.
No doubt this isn't the only cause of pubs / bars closing, but it is a real measurable effect.
This is something that is continually being eroded unfortunately, especially as we continually descend into more and more hyphenated subgroups of Americans, rather than just focusing on what makes us simply Americans, but something we should still strive for.
(And I know you will get downvoted for posting about Robert Putnam research here because it appears to come off as a knock against diversity, even though Putnam himself said his research actually affirms the benefits of diversity)
https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/robert-putnam-say...
The point about the army is a particularly interesting one because they certainly are experts in integration and conformity, which hits back to my point in my previous comment as well.
African Americans weren’t just “hyphenated subgroups” earlier. They weren’t even allowed to be in the same places as white male americans. Similarly, Chinese Americans formthe most part lived a separate life, and Japanese Americans were considered so different they were placed in internment camps during WW2.
Even the Irish and Italians were treated differently when they arrived, and had entire sub cultures.
The idea that the US is more hyphenated today just doesn’t seem to follow from what was actually happening in the 20th century.
Early America was so hyphenated that people only occupied regions with people of the same original nationality. We still see places with lots of French street names, or a place with lots of German street names. To some degree this might have been self-selecting, but there are documented cases of people being denied mortgages in particular areas based on their ethnicity into the twentieth century.
We are in a place in American history where ethnicity has the least amount of impact on someone's life. It's illegal to discriminate on job applications, mortgage applications, or school applications based on ethnicity.
We have a lot further to go, and sometimes we take a step backwards. I think we'll continue to see an increase in diversity in all public spaces.
And thus people can't seem to find their place, can't seem to find friends, and the default fallback of going back to your people is no more.
This is just a very wild hypothesis of course.
Just about the only diversity pertinent to local pubs is gender diversity - it is more appropriate for girls to be in too.
In addition to churches I'd add the death of social organizations like elks, shriners, etc. Most of the good things these groups worked on are now seen by most as the responsibility of the government, which changes a lot of the dynamics.
They are certainly not for everyone but I have yet to have found another type of social dancing venue that balances being a hangout spot and a place to dance.
Line dancing in particular brings something to the table outside of couples dancing that gives those not interested in the potentially-unfamiliar social situation of dancing with someone else a reason to go. I think that especially helps to keep these communities going.
Quick plug: I've been trying to catalog country venues (and their dances and songs) at https://dancedocket.com
in contrast, i absolutely enjoy drinking tasty beer and cocktails with people i don't know