Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

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I honestly can't understand that at all. The "third place" has exploded and has never been more vibrant in the history of mankind, at least if you live in a city.

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.

That is true, but those are all interest based activities, things you do at 7pm on a Tuesday night, between getting off work and passing out while watching netflix. They aren't places where one can go to simply 'be', or to mingle with strangers. In Ireland for example, people would do those things and then go to the pub afterwards.

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.

This also sounds like the Ethiopian concept of coffee as a 'social house.' There's a place in the ethiopian neighborhood of DC that really practices this: https://www.kaldissocial.com/#new-page-1-section

> In Ireland for example, people would do those things and then go to the pub afterwards.

I love the idea of a hot yoga session before heading to the pub for a couple of pints and some darts.

Nothing as beautiful as cans with the lads and a couple of smokes too

:)

There is a fair bit of social pressure to drink in a bar though, it isn't exactly a place to just "be" in that regard.

> coffee shops

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.

Speaking here in the US, if you don't have a local coffee shop your neighborhood is probably not very vibrant, and lots of business happens in these local coffee shops. I host meetings at my local coffee shop all the time and see others doing the same thing. Even if all you have is Starbucks, there's still tons of meetings that happen at Starbucks and you're not likely to be hassled to leave.

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.

Huh. My experience in nyc is that most of the coffeeshops tend to have hordes of people on laptops with earbuds on ignoring each other.

I think that New York City may be particularly bad in this regard. I remember when I lived in Saratoga Springs (a small city upstate), I could strike up conversations with strangers on the bus or train, and did all the time. Here in NYC, that's nearly unthinkable—only crazy people do it.

And they are crowded and have loud music and no bathrooms.

There's a hookah bar by my apartment that has just the vibe I crave from a coffee shop. It takes ~1 hour to smoke a whole hookah, and you can go with some friends, socialize, work quietly, and they don't blast music. I believe it's like that because it's next to a university and usually full of students. Other ones around me aren't like that.

Unfortunately, it comes with some dangers...nicotine.

Good points. Pubs, tea houses, hookah bars, cafés, etc. serve a similar function as local gathering places in a number of cultures. It's important that you won't be pressured to leave if you don't order anything for a while.

> 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.

None of these are third places, though; they're more expensive commercial activities, and non-participatory performances. Not the same thing. They don't facilitate the same social or psychological functions as the relaxed, inexpensive, unstimulating and improvisational third-place.

> None of these are third places, though; they're more expensive commercial activities

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.

What if you don’t believe in Buddhism or the particular meditation approach advocated? I agree that these sorts of events are not quite third places as a modern society of people of varied or no religious belief would expect.

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.

You're both a) cherry-picking and b) overlooking the second half of my post.

I agree with the others. While these may be options, they're all activities or events, not just a default place to hangout or be and where you're not there because one specific thing ties you together

True, but ... this explosion and this embarrassment of riches also led to people not engaging with a "community of some interest group" (so a subculture), but just paying for it. In and out in a few hours.

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 work out a lot. I’ve tried taking classes or joining the lifting team. But I don’t like working up out on a schedule. I get to the gym when I get to the gym.

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.

I believe that the activity-based stuff you list is quite orthogonal to the concept of “the third place”.

>> 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.

Your white upper-middle class is showing

Please don't. Even if you're right, it only adds poison to the commons.

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