Just weeks after the COVID-19 shutdown here in Massachusetts, at the end of March 2020, Ray Oldenburg and I were interviewed for a Boston radio segment about the loss of third places. Journalists would find Ray via his publisher or the university, and he’d been passing them along to me. That was, to my knowledge, the last time a journalist was able to interview Ray, and you can hear him in this brief clip.
At that point, it seemed like we’d been locked down forever, with schools and shops and businesses closed. We were worrying about toilet paper and washing down grocery items with bleach. But it had actually been less than 3 weeks! We had no idea what was ahead and were hoping it was all a bad dream. But it was a full year until vaccines were being rolled out and things started, slowly, to move again.
The questions asked during that interview were a sign of the times and of the shock that we’d all experienced. There was some discussion of whether third places, as businesses, could survive the lockdown – this was before the various stimulus packages were launched – but the focus of the discussion was whether we would ever feel safe again going into a third place. Would we avoid other people, never again shake hands or hug? Would we just stay at home where we could be safe and do everything by screen?
Ray and I, no surprise, said that we all need face to face socializing and of course we’d return to our third places (assuming they were still there). We talked about how important they were. What didn’t get into the recording is one question I answered quite vehemently. The reporter, Paul Singer of WGBH, asked, “Will this pandemic change our lives forever?” “Not as much as climate change,” I retorted.
A week later, I called Ray on his birthday. It wasn’t the last time we talked - we had a couple of Zoom cocktail hours with other friends - but it is the last time I recorded a conversation.
I discovered then (and wrote about it here) that people do forget pandemics, though I found it hard to believe when we were in the midst of the crisis. It’s true, though: at a certain point, each of us decided to pack up our masks and step out into the world. To shake proferred hands, to accept hugs, and to huddle up at a bar. In fact, one of the first signs of change was when bars reopened and were packed with people. When, with help from Ray’s friend Dugan, we had a Zoom cocktail hour, we joked that of course convivial spots like bars were the very first place people went back to.
Now it is September 2024, and I’m reflecting on how the pandemic has made people so very much interested in the idea of a third place. But it’s complicated. The term is being used so widely, and so loosely, that my first task has been to parse this out. I’m always asked, as Ray was, to define the third place, and my definition is exactly the same as his was.
But a lot of people think that “third place” means any public space at all - maybe because just being in proximity with other people was such a tremendous change after the lockdown.
Other people - Americans in particular - say that there are no more third places so we have to turn to government or nonprofits to create hubs and clubs and community centers. Admittedly, Starbucks and the fast food companies haven’t helped by removing chairs and tables, and everyone everywhere has seen small businesses that traditionally also served as third places close.
And there’s something really worrying that happened, not just during the COVID-19 lockdowns: a lot of people, especially young people, became used to looking at a screen and not at real people. Real life, real people, made them anxious. But at the same time, I hear over and over again, people are lonely and sad and desperately longing for true friendship, longing to be truly seen.
This is why I’d like to see other terms used for other spaces, so we can see and cherish the very special, unique, and yet ubiquitous - common everywhere - places that Ray was able to identify as third places.
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