Do you have a third place? And why do you need one?

Examples from around the world, a couple of lists, and a favorite London pub

From Gossip Pandas on Instagram.

"Everyone's spirits would soar, especially those with troubles of one kind or another. . . . Not even paradise on earth could hold a candle to their home away from home!"¹

That description of a third place comes from a Chinese short story, but look how it echoes the theme song of Cheers:

Sometimes you wanna 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 can picture it, can’t you? It might be a diner, or a little bistro, or some steps at the corner of a park. A couple of familiar faces, a smile or greeting when you arrive. No schedule, no need to text that you’re coming, or to stay for a particular length of time.

This sounds idyllic to most of us but in truth such places are universal. They’ve existed everywhere, and they exist today in many parts of the world.  (My pal Alex Marshall described this beautifully in a recent newsletter about beer and conversation in Prague, and you’ll see one of his photographs below.)

We all seem to know what they are, even if we’ve never really had a third place of our own. The need for one - a place to hang out, relax, get away from it all for a little while - seems to be part of our DNA.

This is a preview of what I’ll be adding and emphasizing in the new version of The Great Good Place. Your examples and ideas are most welcome.

I remember looking out an apartment window in Beijing early on a smoggy winter morning. The rising sun brightened the low gray clouds just enough that I could see half a dozen people doing tai chi on a narrow strip of grass across the road. Under a scrawny tree, some of them were doing the poses and other were simply standing there talking. They all looked comfortable, relaxed, familiar and happy. They probably met there every morning. That scrap of faded grass, I thought, is their third place.

Third places can be as simple as that. It’s what happens there that matters. Likely candidates are cafes, coffee shops, barber shops, hair salons, general stores, bookshops, pubs, diners, bistros, taquerias, and bars. Streets are important, and sometimes public buildings like post offices and libraries.

Third places are special, and unique. They aren’t just public spaces or public buildings. Not every coffee shop or pub is a third place (in fact, most of them aren’t).

Sure, lots of things are called third places now - farmers markets and housing developments, co-working buildings and drive-through Starbucks. But a third place is different. You leave your troubles behind when you walk into a third place. You might end up talking about them, or listening to someone else’s, but only if you want to. In a third place, you can relax and be yourself. You have no responsibilities, except passing the peanuts and some courtesy and good humor.

But don’t think third places are just cozy gathering of close friends. In fact, they’re quite different from friend groups. In a third place, people are diverse, and often feisty. Joking and teasing are the order of the day.

What makes a third place?

Some people confuse public spaces with third places. Public spaces (parks, street markets, village greens, town squares) are important. But going to a farmers market or street fair is different from dropping into your favorite third place. It’s the quality of what goes on there - the human interaction - that makes  it a third place. Here is a list of characteristics:

1.        It’s neutral ground. You don’t need an invitation, and anyone can enter. When a stranger walks in, they get a glance of curiosity, not hostility. It’s okay to sit and watch, too. No one’s rushing you in a third place.

2.       It’s convenient. Ideally, you can walk to your third place, but even if you have to drive or take a bus, it’s close enough that you can turn up often.

3.       It has regulars. As you get to know them, you become a regular yourself.

4.       It’s unstructured. You can come and go as you please.

5.       It’s free or inexpensive. There’s no admission charge or membership fee. If there’s food and drink available, you don’t have to spend a lot.

6.       It’s a place to talk. Conversation is the main activity, though playing games like chess and mahjong is also common (and spectators are welcome).

7.       It’s a place to laugh. Laughter is probably the single best measure of a third place. This includes banter, joking, and teasing. If there’s serious conversation, people still keep it friendly.

8.       It is a place that lifts your spirit when you walk in the door. And when you walk out, you feel uplifted and renewed.²

How can you find a third place?

Ray Oldenburg wrote The Great Good Place after moving to the suburbs to take a job at the University of West Florida. He realized what he was missing - and what most of his fellow citizens were missing, too - and he began to look for what he came to call “third places.” The book generated great excitement, but in the years since then things have, on the whole, got worse. And the pandemic was a drastic lesson in how much we need face-to-face connections. Third places are now on the agenda in a big way. This is our chance to start again.

So how do you find one, that special place that you know will be there, whether you’re feeling low or upbeat, quiet and moody or ready to talk?

First, you’ll check out convenient cafes and pubs and bookshops nearby. You may strike it lucky. You’ll know it’s a third place by the way you feel there, and the way you feel when you leave. Your spirits will soar. As Ray Oldenburg said, third places are fun. We smile, we laugh, we joke and tease.

This doesn’t happen all at once. At first you may just watch and listen. Even that will lift your spirits.

You’ll encourage people in a position to create or nurture third places - town managers, shopkeepers, bookstore owners, and librarians - to take action, and you’ll be ready to join in. Below you’ll find some ideas to share.

How can you make a third place?

In one sense, a third place makes itself. There’s no formula, no required structure or design. But there are ways to create fertile ground. It’s bit like making a garden, or a sourdough starter from wild yeasts.³

While the classic image of a third place is a coffee shop or tavern, they also exist in parks and on streets (especially in warmer climates, and in warmer seasons). Here is a list of physical patterns that tend to make third places come alive:

1. The first is simple: people can walk to it. It’s possible to have a third place where everyone has to drive, but that reduces the variety of people you’ll find there.

2. It has actual or imagined boundaries. Even outside, we’re likely to find people using a stoop or a spot in a park that has a shape of sorts.

   

3. It’s easy to move around and to enter and leave unobtrusively.

4. It almost always has a table, but its tables or booths don’t lock you in and can accommodate groups of different sizes. It’s not just an army of tables for two.

5. There is a view worth looking at. Sometimes this is restricted to interesting things on the wall, but an outside view of something beautiful or lively helps people relax and gives them something to talk about.

6. There are variations in ceiling height. This is important in a large open room, creating a sense of smaller, cozier spaces where people can get comfortable.

7. There are seats of different sizes and heights. People come in different sizes, so it makes sense to have chairs and benches to choose from.

8. There is often a front door bench and/or outdoor seating, creating a bridge between inside and out of doors.

   

   One of Alex Marshall’s photos from his newsletter “Beer and Conversation in Prague.”

9. There are warm colors as well as warm lighting.

10. It’s easy to hear other people. If there is music, it’s turned low. Carpet, curtains, and other materials improve the acoustics.

11. It’s clean and well-lighted. Pools of light make for a convivial setting.

12. The space makes both old people and children feel comfortable, and safe. The same applies to bars, where women should feel safe and comfortable.

The list above is a first attempt to identify design patterns for third places and suggestions are welcome. I am drawing from Ray Oldenburg’s writing, various books and articles, and also from the classic design guides A Pattern Language and A Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander and colleagues at UC Berkeley.

Yes, it’s hard to explain just what happens in a third place. Alexander and his colleagues called it the “quality without a name” - “aliveness” and “wholeness” come close. That eternal quality is exactly what we find in a third place.

A third place with Terry Jones

I’ve been looking for stories about third places and happened to come across this piece from 2014 about Terry Jones’s favorite pub. It brought back the memory of meeting Terry and his Python friend Michael Palin there the previous September. We drank a toast to T S Eliot because it was his 125th birthday that 26th of September (and my birthday, too). That evening was one of the last times I really had a chance to talk to Terry. By the next time I visited, he was still cooking and being a good host, but he’d stopped talking - an extraordinary thing to happen to Terry Jones whose volubility was legend. (“Terry Jones: ‘I’ve got dementia. My frontal lobe has absconded’.”) But this piece came earlier:

The Prince of Wales is a typical old-fashioned boozer and hasn't changed in years. It's a wood-panelled pub, with benches under the window-sills and a few tables, just as it would have been 30 years ago: a gem. It has photographs on the walls of former inhabitants of Highgate, such as John Betjeman.

The pub's beer-keeping is questionable. [Terry had very high standards for real ale!] They have four taps and vary three of them; Butcombe Bitter seems to be their regular ale. (They also serve Thai food, which is rather good.) This is apparently Clive Owen's favourite haunt. And Ray Davies goes there a lot. So the pub has quite a star-studded history, though that's not why I go there.

The good thing is that Terry Gilliam lives just around the corner and Michael Palin is not far away, so we can get together from time to time. The regulars are not impressed at all, which means we can just be ourselves. Not that we've done any work there, it's not that kind of place. We usually end up talking about John (Cleese) and how he never keeps in touch.

Apart from the beer, I usually go to read. I am reading David Copperfield at the moment. It's quite a brainy place. There is a pub quiz every Tuesday night, with the reputation of being the hardest in Britain; it is one of the few in which questions are compiled by the regulars. It is fiendishly difficult. Marcus Berkmann runs it and published The Prince of Wales (Highgate) Quiz Book a few years ago, and as far as I know, it is the only pub quiz immortalised in this way.

Having a four-year-old daughter, Siri, doesn't do anything for relaxation at home, so this is my alternative home from home. I usually sit under the television, which is silent except when the football is on. Best of all, I can take my Jack Russell, Nancy, with me. The pub likes dogs.

I always lift a glass to Terry when I get a chance to go to a pub, and wonder what he would have to say about the beer. I am certain he would have plenty to say about what makes a third place, too.

1. "Looking for Fun" by Chen Lianggong in the story collection Spring Bamboo, translated and edited by Jeanne Tai.

2. Unlike so-called social media: “New report on social media’s impact on mental health highlights the concerning results. The key finding was that people in their most vulnerable emotional state, when going on platforms such as Facebook, demonstrated an increase in anxiety and sadness of 45% and 31% respectively - significantly worse than prior research shared by Facebook.” (Read the press release.) Trust the tech bros to develop an app to test emotion.

3. It’s true: https://robdunnlab.com/projects/wildsourdough/.