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February 14, 2003
First, Second, Third Place!
Jami and I were recently discussing the notion of Third Place, which is best described by the following quote:
"Social condensers" -- the place where citizens of a community or neighborhood meet to develop friendships, discuss issues, and interact with others -- have always been an important way in which the community developed and retained cohesion and a sense of identity.Ray Oldenburg (1989), in The Great Good Place, calls these locations "third places." (The first being the home and the second being work.) These third places are crucial to a community for a number of reasons, according to Oldenburg. They are distinctive informal gathering places, they make the citizen feel at home, they nourish relationships and a diversity of human contact, they help create a sense of place and community, they invoke a sense of civic pride, they provide numerous opportunities for serendipity, they promote companionship, they allow people to relax and unwind after a long day at work, they are socially binding, they encourage sociability instead of isolation, they make life more colorful, and they enrich public life and democracy. Their disappearance in our culture is unhealthy for our cities because, as Oldenburg points out, they are the bedrock of community life and all the benefits that come from such interaction.
Excerpted from What is a "Third Place" and Why Are They Important?
Having lived in the same (albeit transient-based) neighborhood in Minneapolis for seven years - I was able to develop relationships with folks in then neighborhood - the grocers, the bartenders and the coffee -shop people. It was a college neighborhood, which meant the population changed from season to season, so finding the people that you could connect with over the long term was difficult. But it made it that more important and actually possible to do so. Recognition was welcomed both by the business owners and the long-term residents of the area.
One such place in Dinkytown was Al's Breakfast. It was a small, breakfast place that welcomed locals and others on a daily basis. Behind the counter were breakfast books, we here you could pre-pay for your breakfasts and withdraw whenever you wanted to. The books had first names and last initials on them, and were available, really, to anyone that claimed. The cooks and wait staff were celebrities of sorts, interacting with people, calling out names in recognition as folks came in off the street. The banter and associated feelings of welcome wasn't and isn't the stuff of which long-term, deep relations are made. That said, it was one of the main reasons people gathered there (if I remember, it certainly wasn't the food).
Minneapolis is a small-ish town. You walk done the streets and you recognize people from day to day. Moving to the Bay Area has been a cultural shift that's taken years to ease through. One of the main reasons is that the Third Place is hard to find. There isn't a real community feel, even now that I live in Berkeley. The few places that I have found those types of relationships and community spaces is in the local bars, in certain areas with certain demographics. Alcohol, of course, helps reduce social barriers and can help build that community.. As I'm getting older, I'm looking for more places where I can find a sense of community outside of home and the office.
Another challenge I face is that my hobbies are all over the map, and not necessarily something that I want to focus on so much as to be part of an extended community. I do like Hi-Fidelity Audio Equipment, but do I want to invest so much time and effort to spend time with people who have such a solitary and obsessive focus? I like Macintosh Computers, too. Same deal.
Another way to find community, I woudl guess, is through volunteering, and working with groups that benefit the community. That seems like the ideal to me, and would probably expose me to the greatest band of demographics - people coming form all areas of the community, with a common interest of doing good. To date, all my volunteering activities have been in the form of what I do for a living, so it's probably time to break that mold and work with children, plant native grasses, or monitor oysters in Sausal Creek.
Posted by tdotjay at February 14, 2003 10:40 AM
