We All Need a Third Place – Here’s Why You Should Find Yours

By Kyra Young

kyrajyoung@gmail.com

With years of customer service under my belt, I’m terribly familiar with the concept of a “regular” – a customer I’ve built a sense of familiarity with who comes in on a consistent basis. I might just know their order by heart or the names of their three kids and six-year-old chihuahua-pitbull mix. We wouldn’t consider each other friends, but a familiar, friendly face in a big city is something to appreciate.

Now enrolled in another semester of classes, I’ve adopted the label myself, buckling down to do work at a nearby cafe as I struggle to focus in my apartment. The baristas recognize me – it turns out we have a mutual friend. Beside me sits a group of older gentlemen I’ve come to know as regulars, who always gather with their coffees and crosswords. On the outside parklet sits a number of friends and strangers enjoying the warm afternoon sun. Someone plucks their guitar while chatting with a couple and their dog. A few friends grab a post-skate beer. Several students from the nearby high school come in to grab a bite to eat, backpacks slung over their shoulders. 

This cafe would be considered a “third place.” Where do you go when you want to get out of the house (the first place) but don’t need to go to work or class (the second place)? The answer for some may be “nowhere,” which is indicative of a number of influences we face today, like the rising costs of living,  social media in our back pockets and lingering anxieties associated with the pandemic.  

Third places aim to answer this question. The term was coined by Professor Ray Oldenburg, an American urban sociologist who studied and wrote about the importance of these informal gathering spaces in the overall functioning of a civil society, democracy and civic engagement. They present themselves like the community’s living room, a place of refuge for people to develop a sense of belonging there. 

Simply put, third places are informal spaces that offer a retreat from domestic and professional responsibilities and present opportunities for connection, socialization, and self-expression. Parks, bars, coffee shops, malls, libraries, churches, a city’s “Main Street”, and even bookstores are common examples.

They play a critical role in a community’s well being and support the neighborhood’s vitality and local economy. Third places exist as cornerstones where we build the community’s social capital – a sort of generalized trust that strengthens our willingness to collaborate with one another and expands our access to resources, while also supporting our ability to withstand hardship and crisis. 

But when the world exists in your back pocket via social media, it may be easier to stay home and check in with technology instead. Society’s fundamental shift to the internet with on-demand services and online-only commerce, as well as social media’s replacement of face-to-face interaction, is actively taking quality time away from the irreplaceable human-to-human experience. 

When I first moved to San Francisco, I was finishing my degree via online, asynchronous classes. Being new to the city and knowing no one my age, I longed for collaboration with the world around me and away from the screen, anxiously ready to attempt making new friends. With a flakey attention span at my bedroom desk, I regularly dragged myself out of the house to study in new places – not only for a change in scenery, but to put myself out there and see what could happen. 

 The park culture was one of the first things that enamored me about San Francisco, but the abundance of cafes, libraries, bars and other community-centered places within walking range was a novelty for someone from a car-reliant suburbia. The simple abundance of people out and about, free to congregate within such spaces on their own two feet, was something I not only felt happy to observe from afar, but wanted for myself. I began to understand why regulars became regulars – be it a park bench or a worn cafe couch, it’s nice to have a reliable spot where you’re treated well. We’re all a bit lonely sometimes in this big world. A sense of belonging can be hard to find, but feels considerably special when you do. 

Whether there’s a semester ahead or not, these local haunts play a crucial role in our work-life balance and we deserve to have one. Students today balance a dizzying array of responsibilities – atop a newfound sense of independence comes work, homework, relationships, finances and a generally heightened awareness of trends to squeeze into. To have a leveled space separate from it all where you can simply exist with and amongst others, where you identify a sense of belonging despite a divisive time for society, reminds us that we are each a thread in the fabric. 

As I’ve expanded my community ever so slowly in this “big small town,” I’ve come to appreciate having familiar faces in the neighborhood. My beloved third places have introduced me to other artists like myself, different minds, backgrounds and livelihoods I may have never met had we not both been sitting at a table to share an outlet for our computer. Simultaneously, the “six degrees of separation” theory is very, very real.

I sit in this cafe, both a free agent and a strand in an intricate web. There are pictures on the wall of this cafe being a community hub to many in years past and I wonder what their conversations sounded like, what it felt like to live in San Francisco before the pandemic and the behemoth of the tech industry. Covid temporarily took these places away from us and now they’re back in declining numbers, but their value remains untouched – if anything, they only gained importance. 

If you haven’t found your third place yet, I implore you to do so.