The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community

1. You need shared contexts and shared interests. The reason why it’s difficult to make friends as an adult is because where there's shared context (seeing the same people over many months daily i.e. workplaces), there's a lack of shared interests. Where there's shared interest (hobby groups, bookclubs, etc), there's a lack of shared context. A place

... See more

After all, cities are where people are supposed to have serendipitous encounters—as the writer and critic Jane Jacobs said, “The metropolis provides what otherwise could be given only by traveling; namely, the strange.” By comparison, the cliché goes, people become more atomized the farther they move from urban environments into the clinical, safe,... See more

Everyone is always posting about how third spaces are dead, and that we’re living in an era of unprecedented social isolation and anomie. Well, in SF we have a third space, and it’s called Dolores Park. If you live in a city with at least one bookstore and one music venue, they probably host these things called events? Where you can meet people? An... See more

Ray Oldenberg introduced the idea of the third place in his 1989 book, "The Great Good Place". He writes that, "Third places thrive best in locales where community life is casual, where walking takes people to more destinations than cars, and where there's an interesting diversity of people in the neighborhood." He says, "I

... See more