Essays from West of 98: A Third Place
Where is local culture created? How do you build relationships and strengthen a community?
In 1989, sociologist Ray Oldenburg wrote a book called “The Great Good Place,” theorizing the idea of the “third place.” We spend most of our time in two primary places, home and work. Our interactions there exist only with certain subsets of the population and under certain constraints. At home, we usually interact with our family or people we have invited into the space. At work, we might interact with a larger variety of people, but within the boundaries of employer/employee, co-worker, or business/customer relationships.
Third places are different. They are voluntary and neutral. Participants are not obligated to visit, they choose to visit. Everyone is the same, regardless of economic or social dynamics elsewhere in life. Third place activities are usually conversational or playful. Oldenburg wrote that third places are essential to the health of human relationships, strong communities, and even democracy itself.
Why am I talking about this? In the last few essays, I have shared my thoughts on the importance of local culture to strengthen rural communities. Local culture does not exist without third places. This is where we interact with people on a different level that does not happen otherwise. In much of life, we pass by or near other people without truly interacting. A society with few deep interactions is not much of a society. It is a group of individuals existing like parallel sets of railroad tracks. They are in close proximity. They might even point the same direction. Rarely do they ever cross. True culture and true community is built in third places, through conversations and shared purposes that might not be experienced or discovered otherwise.
So what are third places? Downtown sidewalks, post offices, and park benches have characteristics. In the proverbial “old days,” front porches were important third places. Sure, you might be at a person’s house, but the porch was a communal gathering space for old and young to converse, play, and perhaps share food and drink, or even a smoke. Stories were told, concocted, and passed on. Culture spread from one generation to the next. Churches, libraries, parks, and bookstores serve as important third places. So do bars and coffee shops.
I recently read a fascinating Pittsburgh Post-Gazette column on neighborhood bars. These are not unfriendly places where a new person meets a chorus of questioning scowls from the regulars. Rather, these are reminiscent of the classic English pub which, in case you were unaware, is short for “public house.” Pubs are a classic third place. 17th century English diarist Samuel Pepys described them as the “heart of England.”
Neighborhood bars are often the heart of a community. In many places, coffee shops have similar purpose. The column’s author wrote of a place where the bartender learned the customer’s life story in the process of sharing about the bar. New customers were invited to return with friends. The author described the place with affinity as a “community center with beer taps.” It was a place that encouraged a “culture of connection,” a neighborhood living room of sorts, because the owner wanted it that way. He wrote:
“Unlike a chain restaurant, a townie bar/public house pushes the average person into worlds we don’t know well. We live in small worlds, mostly people like us—family, old friends, people at church and work, maybe a few neighbors, other members of a club. Even places that claim to exist for everyone, like churches, tend to serve a specific group. It’s hard to get away from people like you. In a real townie place, in a real public house, you can’t help it…many of the people I talk to are unlike anyone else I know in my usual circles. I also like them a great deal—more than a lot of people in my usual circles…you see lives different from yours and yet in deeper ways the same.”
It is important to spend time around people unlike ourselves. That does not require us to travel across the ocean or even outside our own city limits. Rural communities are often stereotyped as homogeneous, but we live in communities full of different people with wildly different life experiences and stories. Learning about each other and sharing our experiences and stories creates a richer local culture and a stronger community for everyone who is part of it.
Third places create those interactions. Strong local culture requires healthy third places, whether they’re public spaces, private businesses, or more likely, a mix of both. If your community is lacking third places, maybe you’re the one to help establish them. From a 17th century English pub to a 20th century rural porch to a 21st century coffee shop, our communities need third places. Local culture cannot exist without them.
James Decker is the Mayor of Stamford, Texas and the creator of the West of 98 website and podcast. Contact James and subscribe to these essays at westof98.substack.com and subscribe to West of 98 wherever podcasts are found.