Idk how common it was but it’s a good example of a “third place”. A spot that isn’t work or home where you can meet and socialize
I wish we could have third places that don’t involve fucking up your body.
Even with NA (low/non-alcoholic) beverages, it’d be nice to have third places that don’t come with an obligation to spend money.
To be clear, I’m not asking for places that ban spending money, but there are third places like parks (eg NYC Central Park) that are destinations in their own right, but one can also spend money there, such as buying stuff and having a picnic on the grass, or bringing board games and meeting up with friends. Or strolling the grounds astride rental e-bikes. Or free yoga.
Where there’s an open space, people make use of it. But we don’t really have much of that in the USA, that isn’t tied up as a parking lot, an open-space preserve (where people shouldn’t tred upon to protect wildlife), or are beyond reasonable distances (eg BLM land in the middle of Nevada).
Parks and libraries are really nice. Most other third places seem to want you to spend money, that’s my experience here in northern Europe anyway.
Also, in places with significant winters (including Northern Europe) parks aren’t an option in winter.
Northern Europe seems like the kind of place that would realize this is a problem and invent some kind of community building which was open in the winter and had a shared kitchen, a stock of board games, a court for indoor sports, etc. That’s certainly not going to happen in the US.
You mean like the YMCA?
Well, definitely not a Christian association.
Nothing religious about the Y anymore. For many years
In Northern Europe, that’s called a library.
The one in Helsinki has board games, media stations for watching films or listening to music, gaming consoles, PCs with design and CAD software, VR rooms, 3D printers and other fabrication machines, conference rooms, study rooms, workshops for fixing things, recording and photo studios, a shared kitchen, a cinema, a playground…Oh, and books.
Wow. My local library mostly has books. No board games. No media stations – there are some (old) computers you can use to browse the web, so I suppose you could watch media there, but it’s set up as a desk, not a couch or something. You can borrow some games, but not game consoles, and there’s definitely not a spot to play the games on-site. Definitely no VR rooms. There’s one branch of the library in the city that has 3d printers. One branch that has a “music editing station” with a music keyboard attached to a computer. One branch has a high quality, large format scanner for scanning historic docs. Definitely no kitchen or playground.
The idea still seems to be that libraries are supposed to be quiet places where you can read books or study. Any media is meant to be consumed with headphones on, so obviously no shared listening of any kind. They do loan music, video games and movies, but they’re meant to be brought home. You can borrow a lot of musical instruments, but again, there’s no place to play them on-site because the library is a quiet place for reading or studying.
I think it would take a major mental shift for people here to consider libraries as places where you might do something non-quiet, and/or non-serious. And something like cooking on-site would be seen as completely non-librarylike.
The one in Helsinki is separated into 3 floors, 1 of them is for quiet reading.
Everywhere I’ve lived in the US has had plenty of public parks. As a teenager I’d hang out with my friends in them. Hell I’ve been to big community picnics at a park.
The thing is it’s easier to hang out online all the time and people aren’t looking to socialize at parks when there aren’t events.
I’d say the qualities of the average American park leaves much to be desired, when compared to NYC Central Park, San Diego’s Balboa Park, or SF’s Presidio.
In suburban areas, the municipal park tends to be a monoculture of grass plus maybe a playground, a parking lot, and if lucky, a usable bathroom. Regional parks are often nicer, with amenities like pickleball courts or a BMX park, though asking for benches (not rocks or concrete verges, but actually bench seats) and shade might be a stretch.
My point is that the USA has fewer parks and public squares than it ought to. I don’t mean just a place to go jogging or to push a stroller along, but a proper third space where people actively spend time and create value at. Where street vendors congregate because that’s also where people congregate. A place that people – voluntarily, not by necessity, eg a train station but not to catch a train – would like to be. A destination in its own right, where even tourists will drop by and take in the air, the sights, and the social interactions.
Meanwhile, some parts of the USA actively sabotage their parks, replacing normal park furniture with versions that are actively hostile to homeless people, while alienating anyone that just wants an armrest as they sit down. Other municipalities spend their Parks & Rec funds on the bare minimum of parks, lots that are impractically tiny. Why? Because a public park can be used to exclude registered sex offenders from a neighborhood, leading to the ludicrous situation where whole cities are an exclusion zone. Regardless of one’s position on how to punish sex offenses, the denial of housing and basic existence is, at best, counterproductive.
So I reiterate: the USA might have a good quantity of parks, but not exactly good quality of parks. People will socialize online unless they are given actual options to socialize elsewhere. And IRL options would build value locally, whereas online communities only accrue to the benefit of the platforms (eg Facebook, WhatsApp) they run on.
The problem is in parks everyone is too spread out to talk to strangers. There needs to be a park with a bar to bring everyone together.
Honestly I’m cool with fucking up my body to have a good time, I just wish it didn’t cost me $200 for the privelege.
Check your library. They do all kinds of activities.
I should tbh
I regularly do. They are 95% for parents to dump their kids for a few hours, and the the rest manage to suck even more.
Your local gym? CrossFit box? Football/soccer club? Community centre? Library? Outdoor? Scouts?
Community center and library sure, I wouldn’t really consider the rest a third space.
Depending on the gym, some are a lot more third-spacey than others. I’ve been to a smaller gym where people just hang around after their workouts to socialize, with occasional impromptu dinner outings when the gym closed for the night. I miss that place. You still meet people at bigger commercial gyms, but it’s not the same.
Hacker/makerspace.Coffee/tea shops. Library. Community Center.
Public libraries are great third places. Larger ones often have classes, groups, and social clubs. And you’ll meet like-minded people just by becoming a regular.
For the non religious, that’s where clubs like the Shriners, or Lions come in. Social clubs that don’t revolve entirely around alcohol
It used to be the Mall. It was always a place to hang out, meet friends, window shop, eat, see a movie, etc.
When I was a kid, the local mall even included the local library. I thought that was a great idea, but I never saw another mall with a library.
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Yes, my dad was one of them. I haven’t gone to a bar for years but it used to be most smaller bars had at least a few regulars that basically lived there. I remember one old vet that used to show up every day as soon as the bar would open for his daily fix… It got to the point the bar refused to serve him, so he would try and get unsuspecting customers to buy them for him. (This was in the 70’s and 80’s, there were (or at least seemed to be) a lot more alcoholics back then.)
Also booze used to be a LOT cheaper, so it wasn’t nearly as expensive as it would be now.
I remember stories from my dad about a guy he knew where the bar maid would have to help him with the first drink in the morning because his hands would shake so much.
The romantic history of the happy drunk is almost entirely fictional. I say almost because I know a few people who are able to take it or leave it, but for the most part the people I know/knew who were drinking either in bunches or daily end up complete and unabridged alcoholics, whether they are active and in serious trouble or have sought help and straightened up, but cannot touch it.
Yeah, I wouldn’t want to spend that much everyday, I’ll just have some beers at home for 1/5th the price
The extra price was so they weren’t drinking alone, or to avoid going home.
I remember one old vet that used to show up every day as soon as the bar would open for his daily fix… It got to the point the bar refused to serve him
So he’d go to this bar during business hours to drink. And this went on to the point where they stopped serving him? Something is missing from the middle of this story…
Sorry If I didn’t explain that right… the guy was drinking non-stop every single day, to the point you could physically see his liver was shutting down because of his yellowish color. So the bar didn’t have much choice and had to cut him off. He was an awesome old guy so no-one wanted to boot him, but if he drinks himself to death the bar would be potentially liable for still serving him so they chose to stop.
Dude managed to get a parenthetical inside a parenthetical, respect
Did this (Mon-Sat) together with a few friends and colleagues in my late 20s. We were regulars to the point of the cook always making something off menu more fitting for regular dinner, as well as no need to settle the bill every night. Once a month everything was tallied up.
Good times. Had to stop though since I found myself going through the fridge on a Sunday once looking for some alcohol.
edit: This was the tail end of the 90s btw, small town in Sweden
Had to stop though since I found myself going through the fridge on a Sunday once looking for some alcohol.
I had a similar experience except I’d open the fridge before work and instinctively grab a beer or start to grab one before I realized I was just there for creamer.
Yes, but bear in mind a lot of factory, construction, and industrial jobs are 7-3 or 8-4. So a working class laborer could go catch a happy hour with the coworkers or neighbors and be home by 5.
Also in the age of single income households men were often not expected to pull as much weight at home.
You guys are only working 8hrs? What a life to have. The company I use to work for extended their store hours in 6pm so 8-6 was typical with no overtime pay. Woww saying this out loud really makes me want to unionize.
Found the American.
In case you want real data rather than personal biases, the average us employee works fewer hours than the average new Zealander (or +62hr/yr ~1 hr/week if you use the oecd data). In neither dataset is the US at the top. New Zealand, Australia, and the US are all wayyy above the German/french crowd, though.
Even if the germans are taking two months off they’re still only working 6 hr/day, which explains their pay (american engineers seem to follow the pattern of 1-it sucks here->2-what about europe->3-actually, I will accept getting 3x pay for more work).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_annual_labor_hours
I live in a tiny NE college town where that happens but for breakfast at a dive coffeeshop. It’s loud, packed, the food and coffee are meh, but every single day I can walk in there and see 5-10 locals eating breakfast and shooting the breeze. There’s cliques who always sit together, and social butterflies who pick a different group every morning. A bottomless mug of coffee is $3, so folks will just come and hang out from like 8-11am. It’s great fun.
There’s a brewery next door that’s often busy at night but generally it’s a quiet town so folks are home chilling after dinner.
That sounds awesome.
It really is the dream
I like that in the US, New England (NE) is in the North East (NE).
Could be Nebraska.
It is, but they used to be NB.
New Brunswick?
It used to be a place for the working stiffs to gather and was priced accordingly. Nowadays capitalization has been overused to the point where a lot of businesses are pricing themselves out of customers.
An average draft goes for $7-11 dollars in my city. And the $11 drafts are served in a smaller chalice than the cheaper stuff. I usually buy a 12 pack of beer for $24 from the store and get drunk at home when I can afford it.
Holy fuck! Even today you can get a 30 pack of average beer like bud Budweiser for 25 ish.
Back in the day I paid 3 a point for some cheap ass.
I’m buying IPAs they taste better to me and still feel like a bang for the buck, I grab a pack of Bell’s
I’m an outlier because I live in a walkable neighborhood in a city. But I have 10 breweries within walking distance around my house. I know the owners by name for 2 of these breweries and the bartenders know me for 4 of them. I think they all know my dog.
I usually go with my wife and/or girlfriend about 2-4 days a week, but it’s still very much a hang out.
We’re also Friday regulars to a semi-close bar every Friday because I won a free beer/week for a year in a $25 raffle!
I usually go with my wife and/or girlfriend
Ok, sorry. I just wanted to post that finally. Also, I was remembering that one clip that always gets put in compilations about that guy and his wife and her bf. Anyway, carry on.
Being polyam in Seattle is great. All of my coworkers know I’m poly and just accept it. All the bartenders know too. Makes it easy for them to start the tab.
But does your wife have a bf?
Not yet! I think she thinks I’m already enough to handle 😂
You have a wife and a girlfriend AND you can afford to go to a bar every night? Must be nice to be in the 1%! 😉
Tech jobs in Seattle go crazy! We make ends meet since we all have some kinda job. Not too crazy since we’re still renting. But eventually we want to be permanent in. Seattle!
You want to Settle in Seattle? 😸
With a wife and an and/or-girlfriend I don’t think he’s settling at all…!
😹 It’s such a great city. I love everything about it!
If they all have jobs, they can split fixed costs liking housing or a shared car across 3 people instead of 2. Or more - the OC only mentioned a wide and gf, but there could be more people in the polycule.
My uncle was a factory worker and a daily regular at his favorite local bar for more than 30 years.
My mom wouldn’t allow me to go inside the bar (because drinking alcohol is a sin, you know). But in the '80s and '90s, before cell phones, I knew exactly where to find him after school if I needed anything.
Unfortunately, 30+ years of excessive drinking caused a lot of really serious health problems that caught up to him when he was in his 50s. The owners and staff sent a huge flower arrangement and all came to his funeral.
A sin? Lol what? Jesus turned water into wine, the fucking madlad!
Yeah, I used to finish work, walk down to my local pub, have dinner and a few drinks then go home to bed, good meals, good people to talk to, I kinda miss it but I don’t drink anymore.
I watched a documentary about “bar culture” in the 60es and 70es where i live. Shit was pretty wild. Dudes talked about going to the bar like people talk about video games these days. “Oh yeah, on a good week i’m here 40 to 48 hours” what doesn your wife think about it? “She’s not excited, but you know…”
Still do?
I don’t drink anymore, but yeah. Those people you see in dive bars are often daily customers.
It depends on (sub)culture, but mainly yes.
Bars were often cheap too, so going to the bar multiple times per week was not expensive. The reason these bars were cheap:
- Outside of touristic areas ground is cheap.
- If the local government allows it, the bar can on the owners property.
- The owner and customers were often friends, so friend pricing would be standard.
- Health and safety regulations used to be less strict. Allowing for lower prices.
- The bar was open whenever the owner wanted, instead of on a fixed schedule, making it more easy to combine with a second job.
- Bars rarely had a menu, they just sold whatever they had in stock. Today customers would be upset if an item on the menu was not in stock.
Also,
- Parks used to be less safe and less well maintained, so buying drinks in the supermarket and consuming them in the park wasn’t really an option.
- The internet wasn’t a thing, so people who wanted to spend the evening gaming had to do so in the bar.
- Parks used to be less safe and less well maintained, so buying drinks in the supermarket and consuming them in the park wasn’t really an option.
Found the non-American
Some of the older old dudes I’ve worked with used to. I actually convinced one of the avocado toast whiners he was wrong based on bar cost now and back in his day
Umm, I’m in my 40s and I do… 😬
Granted it isn’t like Cheers, I just need the change of scenery since I work from home 10-20 hours a day.
20 hours a day? Bro…
Trying to get a company off the ground so it’s all hours all the time right now, fortunately/unfortunately.
I work from home 10-20 hours a day.
That’s fair. Drinking at one’s workplace is usually frowned upon.
usually, upper management go for their hour and a half long lunches and come back blitzed is not uncommon, at least in the workplaces I’ve been.
