why third spaces are sacred

Many people on Twitter/X shared images from local parks with “no ball throwing” and other no-loitering-esque signs actively deterring children and teens from enjoying the space. People have every right to be angry about these cases, that there are few places to simply be. But even these situations can be traced in part to our phone-centric culture.... See more

There are indeed few places for teenagers to hang out outside of the home. Skate parks are being turned into pickleball courts with “no loitering” signs, malls are shuttering and you can no longer spend $1 on a McChicken to justify hanging out in the McDonald’s dining area for hours. But as the Atlantic piece explains, the dwindling of places to be... See more

"Phones mean that solitude is more crowded than it used to be, and crowds are more solitary.“Bright lines once separated being alone and being in a crowd,” Nicholas Carr, the author of the new book Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart, told me. “Boundaries helped us. You could be present with your friends and reflective in your... See more

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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“To inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person one cup and one neighborhood at a time.” Schultz vowed to “transform the Starbucks experience” with main goals that included improving the current state of the US business, reigniting the brand’s emotional attachment with customers, and planning for the future while expanding its presence around

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Even prior to the pandemic, these institutions were shuttering, according to research. As Americans spend more time alone and practice individualized forms of leisure, like marathoning television series on streaming services and passively scrolling on social platforms, they aren’t gathering communally as often as they were in decades past — a shift... See more

We’ve lost gradients of intimacy, a concept from architecture, the ability to loiter and meander through a space, engaging when we want in varying levels of expression. We don’t have any peripheral vision on the internet. We have to be in one place or the other. Simultaneously, we’re never really in any place—we can always blame connection issues... See more