Article should be titled 'The Lost Civic Life of Mom and Pop Stores'- no kid making $4.50 an hour is cultivating a third space atmosphere at Blockbuster, whereas any Mom and Pop place can do that, no matter what they sell.
One thing I think is that theres just never enough time. Everyone is so over-scheduled. The white collar work day really has expanded vs what I remember my dad doing 30-40 years ago. There's more two income households than in the past. Parenting is far more active for both parents than it's ever been, and kids are being shuttled between events all weekend.
Most local shops are not open past 5pm or at best 6pm, and often closed Sunday. Who is off work by then to stop by?
Easier to click buy on amazon, and stop by the big box store after dinner Saturday open til 9pm for anything you need sooner.
This applies to adjacent industries as well. I semi-regularly get email from firms (in the same time zone as mine) in the 11PM–2AM range.
Again, I'm not purporting to have any more experience than you do, but you can't assert that this is a tech-industry-only phenomenon when I am sure applicable examples other than my own could be found. I wish I could go without, but spending the first billable hour catching up on email is not really acceptable.
Sample size of six jobs total, three per person.
when i get off work i would absolutely (and do) shop at stores that are open.
i stopped 90% of online shopping a couple years ago so once i regained the lay of the land of where to get what, shopping at mom and pop stores is tough since they seem to close right when everyone gets off work.
larger chain stores seem to keep longer hours so they get more of my business than i’d like. even then i’m still happier than when i bought everything online, no question about it.
Obvious anecdata, but within an easy walk or bike radius of me (a couple miles) there are 3 public libraries, something like half a square mile of parks, a few public basketball courts, a few public tennis courts, a public baseball field, a bar over the baseball field that welcomes children (it’s one of the veterans things and has board games and what not), at least a dozen other businesses that don’t care if you buy anything, and your usual litany of Walmart kind of places that can’t be bothered to track who is buying and who isn’t.
I don’t have any issues finding places to hang out for free, and I use them, but they’re pretty sparsely used so it’s not as 3rd space as it used to be.
Eg I walk my dogs most mornings, and I rarely see more than 1 other person at the park or dog park at 7 or 8am.
It feels to me like 3rd spaces are disappearing because people don’t use them, rather than people don’t use them because they don’t exist.
This place IS the supposed '3rd world shithole' that Republicans say. That the libraries, the legacy from the early Carnegie 1900's billionaires, are now the climate refuge and place to try to succeed for the homeless.
We (royal) fail so many humans, prey on the absolute conquest of 'make more money at all costs'.
Great job, Gen-X parents.
For most of my 13 year old kid's friends, I only know their grandparents. Never see the actual parents.
There are families out there still with 18-20 year cycles and could pretty much tick off every generation.
And families like mine that more or less skip every other: Silent -> X -> Z -> ???.
It's like how Twister is super fun to play with your friends casually but how you'd never want to play in an organized Twister league.
Presumably because people spend less money there than they used to.
> I'd bet in most communities their funding/availability has decreased in that time period.
It's one of the tragedies of our age. The inability to fund anything for the common good.
People voted with their wallets.
> public libraries are under constant attack by republicans
Voters get the services they vote for.
All of us are to blame.
I think we mostly all agree that we as a society caused the problem, but we can't go back and undo that. Constructive would be coming up with ways we can, given the past did take place, improve things going forward.
We can vote for politicians that fund projects and facilities for general use and welfare. We can congregate more in the malls and community centers and bowling alleys (and churches too, if that's your style), that we still have. The loss of community isn't irreversible. Yet.
Putting aside the increasing efforts to limit our ability to vote for change, we have to fight against very well funded campaigns trying to convince people that we shouldn't fund projects and facilities for general use and welfare. There's a lot money and power being used to encourage people to be more isolated as well. The public is growing less educated and more fearful. People have fewer friends, fewer social skills, and historically high levels of anxiety and depression.
While there may still be places to go, the ones that don't cost money are going away or at risk, and the problem goes deeper than access to physical spaces. Some things will have to change before we can expect people to really take advantage of what spaces we have left.
It's hard to feel bad about a small backwoods town of idiots who vote to shut down their public libraries (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/book-ban-lgbtq-jamestown-michig...) but there are efforts on the federal level too (https://www.ala.org/faq-executive-order-targeting-imls). Right wing nutjobs all over the country have been threatening library staff and calling in bomb threats and we can't vote them out
I guess California is pretty nice and I don't appreciate this all enough lol
The way things are going maybe we'll get back to those wonderful days. ;)
In theory, the adults were hunting or fishing (although not with pointy sticks). In reality they were smoking, drinking, playing cards, screwing around on the little boat and atvs that were there (three wheelers!), and telling lies around a campfire. Us kids were pretty much on our own the entire time. We too were smoking, drinking, and screwing around on the boat and atvs.
So I agree with you- pointy stick hunting is a great weekend activity.
So many bug bites.
But that is certainly not the norm, im not sure if I could find another hardware store like it within 100 miles. The social atmosphere probably barely manages to bring in the extra business needed to maintain it and it took 3 consecutive generations working well enough together and towards their customers to never break the strong community bond.
Any place you have to physically go to provides a chance for social interaction. To debate your friends over what movie to pick, to comment on your neighbor's selections, to ask a clerk for a recommendation. Are these pretty slight? Sure, but life is made fuller by these minor brushes, and you never know which ones will unexpectedly bloom into something more.