A good corner tavern or all-night coffee shop should be a joy forever.
Unfortunately that elementary truth eludes architects and developers and their myopia, notes Ray Oldenburg, is making all of us poorer. Not in dollars and cents, but in something less tangible yet ultimately more valuable.
Oldenburg, a sociologist who has lifted many a beer stein studying the issue, splashes his thesis across the title page of his recent book: ”The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, Beauty Parlors, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts and How They Get You Through the Day” (Paragon House, $19.95).
”All great societies provide informal meeting places, like the Forum in ancient Rome or a contemporary English pub,” explained Oldenburg, a faculty member at West Florida State University. ”But since World War II, America has ceased doing so. The neighborhood tavern hasn`t followed the middle class out to the suburbs.
For Oldenburg, that is a personal lament as well as professional judgment. A product of smalltown Middle America, his earliest hangout was the soda fountain at Bender`s Drugs in Henderson (pop. 739), Minn. In late adolescence, he graduated to the Red Feather Bar. Now Oldenburg lives in a suburb near Pensacola, Fla.
”When we got here, I took a chair outside and spent the day looking down our street, which is nothing but one tract home after another as far as the eye can see,” the 57-year-old Oldenburg recalled. ”I asked myself: `How the dickens do people met one another living like this?` ”
That was a rhetorical question. But it started Oldenburg thinking about a way he might combine scholarly advancement with temporary escape from the predicament of what his fellow sociologist, David Riesman, once called ”The Lonely Crowd.”
Accordingly, for eight years, Oldenburg devoted himself to gathering the legend and lore of America`s last remaining neighborhood taverns, ma-and-pa grocery stores and other examples of what he calls ”Third Places.” The term derives from Oldenburg`s gloss on a Freudian concept.
Sigmund Freud held that emotional well-being depends upon having someone to love and work to do. Oldenburg argues that the great psychoanalyst made his mental-health list one item too short. Besides a mate and a job, Oldenburg said, we need a dependable place of refuge where, for a few minutes a day, we can escape the demands of family and bosses.
In that kind of psychological Eden, an easy-going conviviality allows us to be temporarily amnesic to our woes and shortcomings.
Oldenburg is convinced that many problems of contemporary society-alienation in the workplace, soaring divorce rates, etc.-trace to America`s declining supply of such Third Places.
He is the first to admit that he is not the kind of computer-wielding high-tech social scientist who can punch out the numbers to support his hypothesis. Yet he assures us that his conclusions are supported by a wealth of anecdotal data, some of which he can personally vouch for.
Oldenburg recalled that one of his first teaching jobs was in Round Rock, Texas. He had recently taken a bride who resolutely resisted his Third Place theory.
”I wasn`t allowed out of the house, so I never found out what the local bars were like,” Oldenburg said. ”In retrospect, it`s no wonder that marriage didn`t last.”
Other nations are wiser than the first Mrs. Oldenburg and America`s city planners, he added. There would be barricades in the streets of Paris at the mere suggestion that the City of Lights be stripped of its beloved bistros in the name of urban renewal.
The Viennese think a day is incomplete without a leisurely hour or so of watching the world go by from the vantage point of a favorite kafe haus. Greeks and Italians have similarly strong feelings about their tavernas and trattorias.
Only in the U.S., Oldenburg said, have we allowed ourselves to be flimflammed by shibboleths like ”progress” and ”convenience.”
”Half of the Main Streets in America-with the beer joints and coffee shops that served as unofficial city halls-have been ripped up and replaced by antiseptic redevelopment projects with fast-food outlets and convenience stores,” Oldenburg said.
”Where`s the `progress` in that? What`s so `convenient` about bolting down a franchised cheeseburger next to another anonymous customer, then rushing out the door without exchanging a single word of simple, human communication?”
Fortunately, he adds, there are still a few Third Place holdouts against our Brave New World. For readers who would like to sample their restorative powers, Oldenburg passes on the following spotter`s guide to the species:
– Third Places are neutral ground. Nobody has to play guest or host and everybody is free to come and go as the spirit moves them. ”The best way to spot a true Third Place,” Oldenburg said, ”is to look for, say, a bar or lunch counter where people arrive in singles, rather than pairs or groups, confident that they will always find a friend in attendance.”
– Third Places are democratic. Everybody is reduced to the same level, no matter what their social standing in the larger world. ”The price of admission to a Third Place,” Oldenburg said, ”is that patrons agree to shed their status at the front door. Nobody boasts of their successes or forces their miseries on companions.”
– Conversation is the raison d`etre of a true Third Place. Superficially considered, it might seem to exist to sell booze or to serve food. But the regulars come because they know it is a place where they will never lack for the sound of a human voice.
”If patrons are playing cards, take a look at the game,” Oldenburg suggests. ”Bridge is totally unsuitable for a Third Place because it requires too much concentration. Gin rummy is perfect, since it allows kibitzers and players to contribute wisecracks with every card that is played.”
– Third Places are marked by a playful mood. In them, 60 seconds can scarcely pass without someone finding a bit of humor to share with his fellow patrons. ”The imp of fun reigns,” Oldenburg said, ”and conversely, no serious conversation is tolerated for any length of time. `Lighten up,` is the Third Place password.”
– Third Places provide roots and a sense of homeness away from home. The measure of this, Oldenburg noted, is that steady patrons can miss a day or two. But if they are absent any longer, others start asking questions about them. Have they taken ill? Or worse yet, defected to some other hangout?
– A Third Place must have a solid cadre of regulars. They need not be in the majority. A tavern or coffee shop can have lots of casual customers, too. But it is the regulars who set the tone of conviviality.
– In return for that service, Third Place regulars enjoy a certain amount of control and possession, no matter who might be the legal owner. Regulars have perks: they can come in through the back door, pour their own coffee, use the bar phone, etc.
”But note carefully, in a true Third Place there is democracy of access to those privileges,” Oldenburg said. ”The rule of thumb is: Every regular was once a stranger.”
– Third Places maintain a low profile. They generally will not be marked by neon signs, almost as protective coloration against being too widely discovered. Proprietors and habitues instictively recognize that a true Third Place can`t survive once it is ”found” by the trendy and ostentatiously affluent.
”Consider the difference between the relaxed neighborliness of an old-fashioned barbershop or beauty parlor and these new high-style unisex shops,” Oldenburg said. ”In a hair boutique, the worker is almost like a doctor; he or she can`t be bothered with small talk.”
Oldenburg said that he twice rewrote the final chapter of his book. His first drafts pessimistically forecast an America increasingly stripped of its Third Place resources. How else could a responsible social scientist read the evidence? In this shopping-mall era, the same set of soulless franchises are now advancing coast to coast.
”Then I took note that, historically speaking, we`ve created this mess in the blink of an eye,” Oldenburg said, ”and already there are, here and there, signs that people are subtly rebelling against it.”
In his own back yard, Oldenburg found a Third Place in the most unlikely of settings-a franchised doughnut shop. There he recently joined a morning coffee-klatch whose members refuse to honor the eat-and-run ethic. His own spiritual batteries refreshed by that discovery, Oldenburg was inspired to end his book on a hopeful note.
”If there is one message I wish to leave with those who now despair suburbia`s lifeless streets, of the plastic places along our `strips,` or of the congested and inhospitable mess that is `downtown,` it is: It doesn`t have to be like this.”
