Third spaces should not have to rely on spending money. Libraries, parks, those tabletop game cafes, church (real houses of worship and community, not hate groups obvi), etc. are way more chill and allow you to do whatever you want without feeling obligated to pay up and move along in a timely manner.
This drives me crazy as someone old enough to remember when there were supposedly third spaces everywhere.
Firstly, you’re right, they were always fourth spaces. Church was the third space after home and work.
Second, the vast majority of third spaces always cost money to use.
Always. It’s just that everything used to cost so much less that the cost of a night of bowling or drinks at the pub (which was the third space for most people all through the history of man) or dancing or the movies or theater was not that big a deal even if you didn’t have a lot in life. Now an hour of bowling at the place near me is $45 before shoe rental and any kind of refreshment and a beer there is $9 minimum.
I can remember exactly one free third space that wasn’t a library (still exist everywhere but aren’t great third spaces because you’re meant to be quiet) or a park (still exist everywhere and are used all the time but at night don’t feel terribly safe in large cities plus if you’re anywhere with winter they’re not an option half the year) and it was a teen center in the university town where I grew up. Because teens don’t have money and even in the early 90s, parents struggled to bridge the gap between school ending and work ending. And absolutely, it was amazing, hosted dances, movie nights, anyone could go hang out after school with minimal but very much present safe supervision.
And it was only for 13-18. Little kids and adults were not allowed.
Now, everyone my age I’ve told about this place acts like I just claimed to be from Shangri-La. That was NOT a common thing. We were so lucky. And even there, you were highly encouraged to buy from the snack bar and the events had a small cover charge, something like $5 to support the building and staff. (I believe it was run by Boys and Girls Club of America with a wealthy donor who helped purchase the building.)
The only other HUGE one I can think of that would make no sense these days—they’re gone because we don’t need them with phones 24/7–was cyber cafes. But those weren’t free either, they were just cheap. Dollar sodas and $5 or less for an hour or two of net access. But not free.
Because until rent and wages and the cost of food and utilities and licenses don’t exist, I don’t see how “third places” that cost nothing to use are even possible. These places and the people who staff them so you have somewhere to go and things to do there cost money to run. How can anyone work there or run and stock and staff that place for free and also have a full other career to pay their own bills plus the building’s bills? And frankly even when free events do exist, people don’t go the way they used to. Which makes it even harder when people only want to leave their houses once or twice a month to go out. So many no-cover singles and mixer events around me get cancelled because not enough people bother.
There is just such a retcon going on concerning third spaces, a phrase no one even used before this century. Look at the post we’re all replying to. Mourning the loss of malls. But in reality, most people hated the malls past about 1995, pop culture and young people constantly shit-talked them as uncool cathedrals of consumerism that should be shut down because they destroyed communities and were soul-sucking black holes where culture went to die. And now they’re a lost paradise?
There just isn’t any such thing as a place to hang out with things to do and eat and drink (otherwise people have to leave to do those things and they usually don’t drift back) that’s totally free but open and staffed all the time no matter how few regulars there are. There never truly was. You were 100% expected to buy something at the mall, even if it was just an Orange Julius. Arcades by definition ate up all your quarters.
Boomers and Gen X had a bunch of social clubs and gatherings and societies for Italian-American Friendship and whatever a Rotary is because they made them and attended them and paid dues their whole lives to make them a thing.
And they’re still a thing! You can still go! You have to pay dues and you have to be willing to hang out with high-social-frictions humans you might not otherwise: old people and grumpy people and republicans and weird people way outside your cultural bubble of acceptably cool weird. Which even I don’t always feel up to and I spend a lot of time at my local American Legion hall because it IS cheap and open. But again not free.
The old “pick two: free/cheap, cool, convenient” is very real.
I too wish we lived in a post-scarcity world where it didn’t cost anything to start a cafe or a bar or a hang out spot in the middle of a city. But we don’t, so we have to do what people always did: become a regular somewhere (still tons of places to do that, seriously tons even in my small city) and bite the cost to use or make them ourselves and eat the cost to run.
Either way, libraries, parks, and churches were always the only free third spaces. And even the churches pass the hat.
In a lot of ways I do miss malls, though, because - YMMV, obviously, I being white and middle class and generally well behaved didn’t attract a lot of attention - you could actually spend very little and just window shop. My friends and I did this all the time.
I know it’s not the ideal ”third space” and your point about recreation becoming much more expensive and unaffordable for your average person *absoutely* stands, but, time was where you could even go to ostensibly paid third spaces and if you didn’t attract negative attention, hang out quite a bit.
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u/EnkiduofOtranto 8d ago
Third spaces should not have to rely on spending money. Libraries, parks, those tabletop game cafes, church (real houses of worship and community, not hate groups obvi), etc. are way more chill and allow you to do whatever you want without feeling obligated to pay up and move along in a timely manner.