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I wish we could have third places that don’t involve fucking up your body.
Even with NA (low/non-alcoholic) beverages, it'd be nice to have third places that don't come with an obligation to spend money.
To be clear, I'm not asking for places that ban spending money, but there are third places like parks (eg NYC Central Park) that are destinations in their own right, but one can also spend money there, such as buying stuff and having a picnic on the grass, or bringing board games and meeting up with friends. Or strolling the grounds astride rental e-bikes. Or free yoga.
Where there's an open space, people make use of it. But we don't really have much of that in the USA, that isn't tied up as a parking lot, an open-space preserve (where people shouldn't tred upon to protect wildlife), or are beyond reasonable distances (eg BLM land in the middle of Nevada).
Parks and libraries are really nice. Most other third places seem to want you to spend money, that's my experience here in northern Europe anyway.
Also, in places with significant winters (including Northern Europe) parks aren't an option in winter.
Northern Europe seems like the kind of place that would realize this is a problem and invent some kind of community building which was open in the winter and had a shared kitchen, a stock of board games, a court for indoor sports, etc. That's certainly not going to happen in the US.
You mean like the YMCA?
Well, definitely not a Christian association.
Nothing religious about the Y anymore. For many years
https://www.ymca.org/who-we-are
I get it. I guess you've never been to the Y. Today, the YMCA’s global network recognizes its Christian heritage, but pretty much every national and local branch is secular or interfaith in operation.
It's so non religious now that you can easily find evidence with a quick search..
I've been to the Y, and at the moment it doesn't seem overtly christian. But, as long as that "C" is part of the name, and especially as long as "Christian" is part of the mission statement, it can potentially become a lot more unfriendly to non-Christians.
That document you linked to says that some YMCAs are overtly christian, and talk about the problems that causes:
In Northern Europe, that's called a library.
The one in Helsinki has board games, media stations for watching films or listening to music, gaming consoles, PCs with design and CAD software, VR rooms, 3D printers and other fabrication machines, conference rooms, study rooms, workshops for fixing things, recording and photo studios, a shared kitchen, a cinema, a playground...
Oh, and books.
Wow. My local library mostly has books. No board games. No media stations -- there are some (old) computers you can use to browse the web, so I suppose you could watch media there, but it's set up as a desk, not a couch or something. You can borrow some games, but not game consoles, and there's definitely not a spot to play the games on-site. Definitely no VR rooms. There's one branch of the library in the city that has 3d printers. One branch that has a "music editing station" with a music keyboard attached to a computer. One branch has a high quality, large format scanner for scanning historic docs. Definitely no kitchen or playground.
The idea still seems to be that libraries are supposed to be quiet places where you can read books or study. Any media is meant to be consumed with headphones on, so obviously no shared listening of any kind. They do loan music, video games and movies, but they're meant to be brought home. You can borrow a lot of musical instruments, but again, there's no place to play them on-site because the library is a quiet place for reading or studying.
I think it would take a major mental shift for people here to consider libraries as places where you might do something non-quiet, and/or non-serious. And something like cooking on-site would be seen as completely non-librarylike.
The one in Helsinki is separated into 3 floors, 1 of them is for quiet reading.
Everywhere I've lived in the US has had plenty of public parks. As a teenager I'd hang out with my friends in them. Hell I've been to big community picnics at a park.
The thing is it's easier to hang out online all the time and people aren't looking to socialize at parks when there aren't events.
I'd say the qualities of the average American park leaves much to be desired, when compared to NYC Central Park, San Diego's Balboa Park, or SF's Presidio.
In suburban areas, the municipal park tends to be a monoculture of grass plus maybe a playground, a parking lot, and if lucky, a usable bathroom. Regional parks are often nicer, with amenities like pickleball courts or a BMX park, though asking for benches (not rocks or concrete verges, but actually bench seats) and shade might be a stretch.
My point is that the USA has fewer parks and public squares than it ought to. I don't mean just a place to go jogging or to push a stroller along, but a proper third space where people actively spend time and create value at. Where street vendors congregate because that's also where people congregate. A place that people -- voluntarily, not by necessity, eg a train station but not to catch a train -- would like to be. A destination in its own right, where even tourists will drop by and take in the air, the sights, and the social interactions.
Meanwhile, some parts of the USA actively sabotage their parks, replacing normal park furniture with versions that are actively hostile to homeless people, while alienating anyone that just wants an armrest as they sit down. Other municipalities spend their Parks & Rec funds on the bare minimum of parks, lots that are impractically tiny. Why? Because a public park can be used to exclude registered sex offenders from a neighborhood, leading to the ludicrous situation where whole cities are an exclusion zone. Regardless of one's position on how to punish sex offenses, the denial of housing and basic existence is, at best, counterproductive.
So I reiterate: the USA might have a good quantity of parks, but not exactly good quality of parks. People will socialize online unless they are given actual options to socialize elsewhere. And IRL options would build value locally, whereas online communities only accrue to the benefit of the platforms (eg Facebook, WhatsApp) they run on.
The problem is in parks everyone is too spread out to talk to strangers. There needs to be a park with a bar to bring everyone together.
Check your library. They do all kinds of activities.
I should tbh
I regularly do. They are 95% for parents to dump their kids for a few hours, and the the rest manage to suck even more.
Honestly I'm cool with fucking up my body to have a good time, I just wish it didn't cost me $200 for the privelege.
Your local gym? CrossFit box? Football/soccer club? Community centre? Library? Outdoor? Scouts?
Community center and library sure, I wouldn’t really consider the rest a third space.
Depending on the gym, some are a lot more third-spacey than others. I've been to a smaller gym where people just hang around after their workouts to socialize, with occasional impromptu dinner outings when the gym closed for the night. I miss that place. You still meet people at bigger commercial gyms, but it's not the same.
Hacker/makerspace.Coffee/tea shops. Library. Community Center.
For the non religious, that's where clubs like the Shriners, or Lions come in. Social clubs that don't revolve entirely around alcohol
Public libraries are great third places. Larger ones often have classes, groups, and social clubs. And you'll meet like-minded people just by becoming a regular.
It used to be the Mall. It was always a place to hang out, meet friends, window shop, eat, see a movie, etc.
When I was a kid, the local mall even included the local library. I thought that was a great idea, but I never saw another mall with a library.