Third Places, Stanley Cup Mania, and the Epidemic of Loneliness

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

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It is his centrally-heated, bright, combined nesting-cage and exercise run. The family-sized television replaces the crowded cinema, the bottle of beer from the off-license, the visit to the pub, the telly discussion, the pub argument. Furnishing and decorating the home have become subjects of absorbing interest to the nation, while public architec

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Third places offer the most reliable forms of friendship. There's this Chinese proverb, "A humble friend in the same village is better than 16 influential brothers in the royal palace." Basically it's saying that one of the most important characteristics that friends can possess is availability. Third places make friendship easy, and when

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Part of the reason for the shift is that over the course of the 20th century, leisure started to become privatized. Rich Heyman, an American studies professor at the University of Texas told "The Atlantic" that, "As living conditions improved, people chose to sit with their nuclear families in front of televisions." But I guess

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Ersatz third places can also be expensive, so think Soho House. So people who can't afford to hang out in one of them have to make do with under maintained, bare minimum public places. Oldenburg notes men drinking beers outside convenience stores in the parking lot because there's no seating actually inside the stores or teens gathering in a local

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Julie Beck wrote about friendship and delineates three different types of friendship, active, dormant, and commemorative. Active friendships are the ones where you keep in touch regularly and can rely on them for emotional support. Dormant friendships are the ones where there's a shared history, so you haven't spoken a while, but you still consider

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If we don't have real third places, what do we have instead? Oldenburg calls what we have as non-places. In real places, a human being is a unique individual person. In non-places, individuality disappears and you're either a customer, a client, an address to be billed, or a car to be parked. Places have now mostly been reduced to consumerism. Alli

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