Excellent question, Chris.

Is the fact that you haven't been writing for a while a sign that you answer "no"? (Actually, I know you've been sitting in that corner table, listening in, so that must not be it).

My biggest problem with third places in France is that it's almost impossible, for the time being, to find one without cigarette smoke. To me, that has always made the pleasure of going out difficult to enjoy, and I do tend to stay at home (or visit friends) more. But my wife is more social than I am and she has introduced me to our neighborood - and to our local brasserie...

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

I think it is not coincidence that the more isolated American suburban life became, the more the lure of churches grew.  I know several people who attend church expressly for the sense of community it offers.


Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire

Who'd want to go to the loud café and watch that little TV with all the neighbors (assuming there was such a place)? Socializing in America's suburbs involves visiting each other's homes, for dinner, for a party, or to watch TV.

How about sports bars? People do go to those to watch sports events on a big screen and share a few beers.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman

I spent 25+ years in San Francisco, which has a ton of "3rd places", where I hung out or met friends at. I instinctually love 3rd places, and have spent a lot of my life seeking them out. And I associate 3rd places with friends a lot. I'm still checking it out here in Switzerland...one problem for me, like Jerome, I don't like cigarettes or smelling like one, so that's a deterant. So ET has been a virtual 3rd place for me, at least for now...

Good article, Chris!

"Once in awhile we get shown the light, in the strangest of places, if we look at it right" - Hunter/Garcia

The idealized home is the castle, the manor house in the country, the little house on the prairie; a place one rarely must leave. It is certainly not an apartment in a vibrant city, not even a grand old townhouse overlooking the park. This is a defining conservative Anglo-Saxon view.

This might be the bias of an American who other than childhood has always lived in cities, currently in NYC but I am not so sure about your statement about what Americans idealize. I live in a city where one bedroom apartments go for the price of a McMansion in the Atlanta or Dallas suburbs, where townhouses in gentrifying (but not gentrified) economically and racially diverse neighbourhoods sell for solid seven figure sums, where the really wealthy put down eight figure sums for the very high end apartments. True, it isn't a particularly Anglo-Saxon city (white protestants were about 4% of the population in 2000) but still. I also notice that vibrant cities such as SF and Boston are about as expensive as it gets in America.  I believe that it wouldn't be unreasonable to suggest that this has a lot to do with a high demand for life with lots of 'third places' and little car usage.  Problem is, if you have kids there is no way to afford a middle class life style in such neighbourhoods unless you are wealthy.

For further thoughts look at the recent NYT article Goodbye Suburbs

FOR many New York City families, January is the cruelest month. It is a time to get seriously claustrophobic in an apartment stocked with young children and the vast plastic undergrowth in which they thrive. It also a time for many to ponder the absurdity (or impossibility) of paying thousands upon thousands of dollars for private-school tuition, soon due for the coming semester.

But those plotting a hasty exit to the suburbs (the space! the schools! the space!) may want to consider the experience of others who went before them, only to double back within a year.

"I'm never leaving the city again; I'm terrified of leaving the city," said Anna Hillen, 42, summing up the prevailing sentiment among the repatriates interviewed for this article.

Ms. Hillen, her husband, Gerry McConnell, 42, and their son, Duncan, who was 1 at the time, vacated their TriBeCa loft in December 2001, shortly after 9/11. They bought a 6,000-square-foot newly built McMansion on three acres in the upscale, semirural Westchester enclave of Pound Ridge, N.Y., not far from the country homes they had rented before.

"It was just a giant, echoing space," Ms. Hillen said, adding, "It was great to have all that room, but we never used it," except to put up extended family on holidays.

Once settled, Ms. Hillen, a stay-at-home mother, embarked on a fruitless hunt for companionship. "Out there, you have to work at being with people," she said. "In a year, I got one play date for my kid. We joined the Newcomers Club, and the day we put our house on the market, they finally called. You'd go to the library for a reading and there would be no one there." She added, "You're a lonely, desperate housewife with nothing to do."

Even the playgrounds were desolate. "And on the rare occasions there was somebody there and you struck up a conversation," she said, "they would literally move away. And they didn't encourage the kids to play together. We were so shocked."

She spent every Wednesday in the city. At home, she busied herself with gardening. Still, she said, "you could only garden so many hours a day. And Duncan - I mean, you wouldn't think at one and three-quarters they're set in their ways but they are. He wouldn't go outside. In the summer I would stand outside with a Popsicle and go, 'Come on, honey, you can have a Popsicle if you come outside.' But he would just stand at the door."

After nine months, she persuaded her husband - who was enjoying his truncated commute to his financial services job in Greenwich, Conn. - to sell the house. "Summer had come and gone and I was looking at another winter of being completely alone," she said, citing frequent power failures as another concern, along with the so-so restaurants and lack of food delivery. "He was very supportive, the poor man."

By December 2002, the house was sold at a loss and the furniture stowed away, and the family was tucked back into their old 1,800-square-foot, two-bedroom, three-bathroom apartment in TriBeCa, which they had never got around to selling.

[...]

much more at the link.

Well, my experiences and observations are that there are plenty of third places in the US, with the exception of upper-middle class suburbs around major cities.

From what I've seen in Los Angeles -- the wealthy have tons of third places and a vast social network.  The not-wealthy in LA also have thriving arts, culture, and activist communities.  I imagine it's sort of the same in most cities.

I've also lived in many rural places and had no trouble finding third places -- from community theatre to book clubs, there was no shortage of gatherings.  

The exception has been in the upscale suburbs around LA, specifically in Orange County.  My experience in those places pretty much mirrors the article Marek quotes.  But given the wide variety of places I've lived in the US, I'd say those places are more the exception.

Of course, I'm a really social person, so perhaps I seek stuff out more than some people.  I've gotten less physically active in recent years, and indeed ET and other blogs are like third places to me.

Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding. -Hobbes

But that's New York (or the Bay area or Boston or...) it's not real America. That's what you hear all the time. I never quite understand that. Twenty million people live in greater New York. Many millions in the Bay Area, Greater Boston, Greater DC... All places centered on fun cites - what I guess is the un-America. As opposed to Kansas, Nebraska, Arkansas...?  Maybe someday somebody will explain to me why Wyoming with about one fifth the population of Brooklyn is 'real America' while we're not. Anybody feel like saying that Paris isn't 'real France' or London isn't 'real Britain'.  I realize that for the Repub base we're not, but please, does this meme really have to be internalized by lefties?

at least in the OECD, and certainly in the top 3 globally, with 90% of our population living in cities / towns.

Overall, Australia's cities are very poorly planned, with crap public transport, inherent car-worship and crap facilities for walking and cycling outside the very central CBD. The unbelievable suburban sprawl of Melbourne is like a 'how-not-to' guide for planners.

However, there is a strong cafe/bar/pub culture in Australia, and the latter two are only growing, while pubs are seeing a rennaissance, particularly associated with live music.

In small regional towns, it's not uncommon for them to have no other amenity than a pub, or to have very few amenities and three pubs! (This partly points to Australia's underlying & serious drinking, particularly binge drinking problem culture, but we won't go there for now).

So in regional areas, pubs are the heart of the community; in our cities we have an odd mix of European cafe-style and uber-hype biz American style. Overall I'd say that if Australians didn't work so damn hard, we'd be spending more time in cafes. Going out is a big part of the culture, as much as having friends round for a bbq.

Large Australian cities have also seen a rapid growth recently in street parties and other community-urban renewal ideas; but it would be fair to say that in the big capital cities of Australia, the dreary urban anonymity remains a big problem, and too many people are isolated and lonely.

One of the most positive things to happen in my home state is that smoking is now outright banned in all public venues, clubs, cafes, pubs, bars, you name it. This has been welcomed in the cities, but has caused an immediate decline in the patronage of country pubs, because a much higher proportion of rural people smoke than urban. However, I predict that the rural decline will reverse pretty rapidly, as pubs will always be the heart of regional Australia, and lord knows, you can still drink there; - there's now a larger hitherto unexplored opportunity to take children and design new activities for pubs.

The renaissance of many pubs in the hands of enightened owners is showing the way; many are aiming to be just that, the third place for community-building. those that focus on this fast get a reputation and become the most popular. They are even lowering the music volume, hoorah!

In cafes, there's a growing number of independent  (rather than Borders!) music/bnookstore -cafes, which are very popular, and encourage people to linger.

To the other part of your post  - is ET and other community-based blogs a third place? Yes, very much so, even if we are all relatively like-minded individuals; in fact I'd argue that from my Australian experience anyway, pubs and cafes that have focussed on providing that third place inevitably end up attracting like minded individuals in various combinations and sub-sets as their regulars.

We are the regulars of a virtual third place. I have participated on other boards and sites, from boards dedicated to a television show, to political blogs, that all have ended up being valued principally for their community, and thus became a credible third place. Our self-consciousness that this is a large part of the aim of ET and BT doesn't alter the success we've had.

And finally  - "The Third Place" - one day I'm going to open a music-bookstore cafe called that.

Great post Chris, really enjoy your writing.

"This can't possibly get more disturbing!" - Willow

In my country, Bulgaria, no one really would ever use the notion "third place", although I guess this is the right term to describe all the places the people here are used to meeting at and socializing. The problem here is, however, that those places (cafes or bars most of the time) have become for many somewhere where they would spend most of their time,often doing nothing but smoking, drinking coffee, gossiping and complaining about the political system, the high taxes and the low salaries. Those people would rather sit there instead of go to work and try to do something useful for themselves. Note that I'm not saying that this is relevant for all the people in my country, but it is definetely a trend. And this is a problem. One cannot expect to make a good living out of sitting in a cafe. It is not that I consider those "third places" a waste of time, but what they are really meant for is socializing after hard days, for sharing feelings and impressions of the day. I assume blogging could also become a "third place", although I am still a bit skeptical about it, since I started reading blogs just less than a week ago.

I can resist anything but temptation.- Oscar Wilde

Very thought-provoking post for me, Chris. ET is my main (almost only) third place at the moment. That's due to some complexities of my life. However, I do think the general status of third places has something to say about the relative development of the blogosphere in the US vs Europe.

hmmm....

Nothing like the analyis of Manuel Delgado on Public space : "the public animal"... he defines humans not as the intelligent animal but as the animal that has a symbol of the public-share places..

He makes a more clear distinction between public space and semi-public space...

On another note, we should recall the ideas put forward by Levi-Strauss showing how a change in the public distribution of space can destroy a whole culture and tradition (he gives the example of amazonian cultures being destroy by forcing them to change the town strcuture.. have a read or re-read of tristes tropiques). So, public space and semi-public spaces (you call it third places) define, create and destroy cultures. From there on, politics.

A pleasure

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude

I really liked this article, and the concept of "third places".  I've never thought of it that way, but it's a great way of thinking about another way people socialize and spend time.

But I think Chris has fallen into the trap of identifying a group of people and some of their behaviors, and then generalizing to the broader group--in this case American's who build their castles with the home theaters, which is popular among the wealthy, but then generalizing to Americans don't go to third places.  They do,,,and it's not just New York and San Francisco, etc.  It's also small and medium towns--and I've made these points above in response to some comments.  Frankly I wouldn't be surprised if there is heavier use of third places in small town America--it's just their third places may not excite many on ET.  But they would be bars, bowling alleys, churches--there are tons of these third places.  

I'd say some statistics are going to be needed to straighten this out. In my town of Colorado Springs, which is beyond question a Red area, there are so many coffee shops you can't turn around without seeing one. And you pay a premium for a house in the city compared to the suburbs, so it's not the case that people pay more to live away from downtown; for a comparable space they pay less. So there are some stereotypes here that may be distorting the perceptions.

Perhaps the difficulty is that Europeans have a hard time recognizing the physical characteristics of American third places...