Alone, Suburban & Sorted: Part 8, Where Everybody Knows Your Name

Making your way in the world today takes everything you've got.
Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot.

Wouldn't you like to get away?

Sometimes you want to go

Where everybody knows your name,
and they're always glad you came.
You wanna be where you can see,
our troubles are all the same
You wanna be where everybody knows
Your name.

You wanna go where people know,
people are all the same,
You wanna go where everybody knows
your name.
--Theme song from Cheers

After arguing for the importance for the third place in our lives in his book The Great Good Place, Oldenburg surveys the characteristics shared by third places.

According to Oldenburg, the characteristics of third places are:

1. On Neutral Ground
Third places are not hosted places. No one is guest, no one is host. The place is shared or neutral. This allows for independence and freedom. As Oldenburg summarizes, "There must be places where individuals may come and go as they please, in which none are required to play host, and in which all feel at home and comfortable."

According to Oldenburg, the reason third places need to be neutral is that they help resolve a paradox of social mixing. Specifically, we need a degree of distance and autonomy from the very people we might seek to associate with. Our interactions need to be voluntarily initiated and dropped if we are to agree to participate in them. Anyone who has ever been forced into social mixing knows exactly what Oldenburg is talking about. Churches make this mistake all the time. Compulsory mixing is forced and effortful and we quickly avoid or distance ourselves from it. Oldenburg cites Richard Sennett's assessment: "People can be sociable only when they have some protection from each other." The protection offered by the third place is that one can come and go and interact with others as one pleases.

2. The Third Place is a Leveler
Third places welcome everyone, no membership is needed. Also, Oldenburg writes, "a transformation must occur as one passes through the portals of the third place. Worldly status claims must be checked at the door in order that all within may be equals. The surrender of outward status, or leveling, that transforms those who own delivery trucks and those who drive them into equals, is rewarded by acceptance on more humane and less transitory grounds. Leveling is a joy and relief to those of higher and lower status in the mundane world."

3. Conversation is the Main Activity
This doesn't mean that games (darts, pool, cards, dominoes) can't be a critical feature of third places. My family's favorite stop in Brooklyn, NY when we visit my wife's sister is Floyd's which has an indoor bocce court.

4. Accessibility and Accommodation
As for timing, third places need to be open during those hours when we are released from work or home. Typically, early in the morning, after work, and after dinner. Also, third places need to be close to where people live or work.

5. The Regulars
A core group of regular clientele, often different at different hours of the day, gives a third place its heart and soul. Regulars create the sense of welcome and community. This is what separates a typical Starbucks from a true third place coffeehouse. Without a regular clientele a Starbucks just has a group of isolated customers, most of whom have headphones on. If conversation is the central activity of the third place a group of regulars is the embodiment of that conversation.

6. A Low Profile
Third places are plain and casual. You come as you are. And if you come in with a tie on you loosen it or take it off.

7. The Mood is Playful
Oldenburg writes, "joy and acceptance reign over anxiety and alienation."

8. Home Away from Home
In the words of the song, a third place is a place where everybody knows your name. And they're always glad you came.