"Non-melanated POC" is just how they say they think East Asian people are basically white. They're paper bag testing at the door of their anti-racist book store.
The "just you wait" people are so annoying. Maybe it'll go the way you think, but maybe it won't. Why ruin the present moment with predictions about the future that might not even be so bad if they pan out? Like sure, my 4yo doesn't eat anything I put in her lunchbox, but she also watches movies with me now and can be trusted on the big slide by herself, so it isn't somehow worse?
The two sides are talking past each other (it’s that SMBC meme), people with picky kids are still touchy about the moms with amazing eaters that quoted “First Bite” at them about the “taste window” and breezily implied that the reason their kids were so adventurous was because they were being fed grilled octopus off their parents plates at age 9 months (with an implied “and you probably fed them crappy jarred baby food” added in). Or maybe they’re still annoyed with the (mostly non-parents) who insist that the solution to picky eating is to send kids to bed hungry if they refuse to eat and then not let them eat anything else for breakfast until they FINISHED THEIR PLATE.
But of course none of that is what this poor mama is saying! Too much of the internet is basically people taking their trauma out on undeserving victims, which then leaves those people thinking “god why is group X such assholes?”
This reminds me of a family travel influencer I follow who had tons of advice for how she got her oldest to be a good traveler and flexible sleeper. Then when her second was born and was not as down with program she was like wow yea maybe my oldest was just like that! Points to her for admitting it and also it made me feel a lot better about my own kid who struggled with travel!
Yeah, my mom talks about how I was a very quiet baby whom you could take to fancy restaurants and the symphony, and then she had to learn the hard way with my younger sister that that was Not Every Baby.
That reminds me of the old chestnut (not used anymore in these days of more equal parenting) - “Just you wait until your father gets home!” (And then half the time Dad didn’t want to be bothered with matters of discipline, he just wanted his martini and La Z Boy recliner.)
Who knows what the kid’s eating habits will be five years from now. I wager that at least some of those kids will be eating a wider variety of food simply because they are in school and want to be like their friends, and don’t want to be laughed at, so they’ll suck it up and try the broccoli or garbanzos or whatever. (Worked for me! As a kid, not a mom.)
Why do people insist on spelling folks “folx?” It’s the same pronunciation! Is one extra letter too much to type?
Also this is why we can’t have nice worker owned cooperative things. Worker owned cooperatives tear one another to bits over trifles, although, it seems that this particular WOC was rather sneakily imposed in order to avoid paying debts.
It’s a virtue signal in the purest form. At least “womyn” and “Latinx” have an ethos.
This WOC seems to consist of the sort of people who assume “owners” don’t do anything except twirl their mustaches and swim in their Scrooge McDuck vaults.
I think "folx" was the wakeup moment for me when I realised that sometimes this language is just about signalling a sort of status of progressiveness. Most of the time there's at least some sort of rationale for why a certain term should be avoided and another one used, but this one doesn't even have that. There's nothing different about it, except that it kind of "looks woke". It's just a new made up one that exists only for the purposes of showing woke dominance and castigating those too privileged to use it.
I gotta say, I think the "folx" is something is person made up completely on their own as some weird attempt at being the new Ibram X. Kendi. Like I don't even think in super left circles this is a thing.
It actually kind of tells me that this whole "revolt" is just lefty cosplay (and in retrospect, some of the 2020 stuff was this too). But more import, I suspect this whole (objectively hilarious) incident is basically a version of Sayre's law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law
I'm pretty pro independent bookstore. And given we're living under an administration who represents the greatest political threat to speech in America since "Jim Crow"*, I'm especially inclined to not think it a good thing when bookstores or libraries fail. But stepping back...yeah it's just a bookstore people.
* I'm hardly the first person to note that there is a lot of commonality between anti-free speech Jim Crow authoritarianism and the impetus behind attempts to suppress free speech today. Count me among those that think "DEI" has clearly been coopted by right wingers from its original very narrow meaning to basically become an acceptable way to be white nationalist.
I know, I think about this every time I see the word. Lol. And while we’re at it since when did we return to using the word “folk” to describe people at all
I really struggle to understand this fixation with "third places". It seems that at some indeterminate point in the past, the world was in a golden age of free, queer-friendly places to meet up that were taken away by capitalism. Was it and I just didn't see them?
There are just fewer places where you can hang out without having to spend a lot of money. Especially a city like NYC when it's not good weather to be in central park. There used to be more places where you could be a regular, and there were other regulars, and you knew them and made friends with them, became a small little community. This worked great if there was an owner who spent a lot of time in the place talking to customers and was the nodal point for all the customers. I've experienced that type of cafe in many parts of the world, including right outside my school. There was always an everything-shop that had limited square footage, but carried everything a student could need from candy to world maps, and there was always a chatty lady behind the counter. All the cool kids would hang out on the sidewalk there and the proprietress was part of their gang in a way. Her friendliness meant they'd stay there longer and keep ordering stuff and her place seemed popular and aspirational.
You can't quite do that now in the US. Lots of places are closing. They also aren't owner-operated to the same extent as before. It's hard to trust your customers and it seems like a mistake to be friendly with them. So there's fewer places where you can just hang out and hope to get in on a scene and make friends.
Maybe it's because I don't live in New York, but I am 43 years old and I just don't recall ever living through this supposed golden age of third places that is now gone. I remember you always had to buy something to sit in a cafe. And most cafes don't expect you to buy much. Spend like $5 and you're good for hours. You don't have to spend "a lot" of money. If I don't want to pay, I can meet someone in a park or a library - I have no more difficulty finding these places than I did in the 90s.
A lot of what you're describing sounds less like places existing and more like people collectively choosing not to use spaces that exist in the same way. And you don't solve a problem like that with nostalgia.
In a lot of major cities, they removed seating from starbucks so you just walk in, get your coffee and gtfo. This is especially the case in high-traffic areas because they otherwise get homeless people refusing to leave and scaring off other customers. They don't have bathrooms for customer use in a lot of places as well because they got too many people overdosing in their bathrooms, or destroying the place. I used to hang out at the library a lot until it became full of junkies.
I remember a Friday evening in San Francisco after work when someone asked me if I was going to the Mission. I said "nah, im going back home, there's nothing to do in the Mission but eat and drink". There's few places where you can just feel like being, in one of the biggest cities in the US, that's definitely a problem. Like, even the mall would close at 8:30 and everything before that would feel like you had no business being there unless you were buying stuff and everything was too expensive for casual shopping.
What else am I supposed to be doing, I'd wonder. I got my answer in San Jose, 50 miles away on a Friday night. Everywhere is full of young entry-level workers dressed up. There are cheap shows to watch, cheap emo nites to hang out in and meet people, and nerd events that are open to the public. You can go barhopping, there are enough bars that feel lively and are open late. There are food trucks that don't cost a bomb, and you can stand around eating and giggling on the sidewalk. There's even a couple of nightclubs.
What's the difference? It caters to normies, and prioritizes normies over being too for/against junkies. They aren't having hostile architecture that penalizes junkies, but at the same time no one is catering to them either and business owners turn out people ruining the mood. And there's a critical mass of people enjoying themselves and there's sidewalk life.
If I try doing the same thing in San Francisco, things feel much more insular. More expensive to get into the nightclub. Restaurants cost a bomb, or feel trashy. And when you're in, the waitstaff is hostile and the places shut early. Often, there's just no one there. In San Jose, There's parking nearby and you don't feel like you're going to be mugged to/from your car. It's easy to go out and hang out and talk to strangers, easy to organize stuff.
So this third places thing is something very real.
This seems like a homeless/junkie problem more than a third spaces problem.
I’m in “suburban sprawl hell” but there are easily a dozen places in a 10 minute drive I could go veg out while reading a book and nursing a beer and shooting the shit with whoever wanders in.
The real thing missing seems to be an *expectation* that most working adults would go hang out at a place like that (or a bowling league, or an Elks club, or whatever) for several hours a week. And that seems to be more driven by fewer IRL friendships and more solo entertainment options.
Its all connected. If people didn't have a long commute back to suburban hell, they might hang out at the elks club for a bit after work. If they did that, they'd have irl friends. And I guess the places 10 minutes away are places no one wants to go to, including the junkies. The root here is desirable and accessible places that people want to go to get beset by junkies and the owners prefer to shut down or make it uncomfortable because they aren't equipped to deal with the junkies.
The ideal third place is easily accessible to people who have prosocial tendencies as well as lots of time on their hands. Indie bookstores typically try to be this third place. Of course, the issue with this place is the owner-staff let in a lot of people without prosocial tendencies (and it seems like they didnt have great prosocial tendencies either).
It's partly the commute, and partly that we're not all working 9 to 5 Monday through Friday anymore. Since everyone is doing something different for work—work from home, multiple gigs, being called in for random events or shifts—and parents are driving their kids all over the place for sports etc, chances are that you aren't going to run into your people at your third place because they are working or at a soccer game or something.
The places 10 minutes away get plenty of traffic and have no junkies. The only thing preventing you from going there and being a regular is your desire to do so (and in my case, a perversion for novelty and a needy toddler).
Ultimately 3rd places seem like one of those things that everyone wants to say they want, but nobody *actually* wants that badly, because plenty of underutilized options exist.
I guess to me, what you're describing doesn't look like "third places are going extinct", but more like "San Jose has a cheaper and better party scene than San Francisco". San Francisco is probably the outlier while San Jose is more normal. It's more or less always been true that some places are friendlier than others, and from what I understand, San Francisco is more known for its house party scene than its clubbing scene.
Also, I don't think the leftist bookstore people want anything like what you described in San Jose, particularly if it appeals to "normies".
Not talking about the bookstore people that's a whole different topic.
But this IS what third places going extinct looks like. This is not a party scene, just normies looking to see what to do to relax after work. Not much i needed - just a few places to hang out with friends and make new ones at. Could be a pier, a mall, the river, whatever. I suppose this is not a problem in one horse towns with one bar that's also a restaurant as well as a casino and everyone hangs out there on Friday.
In most mid American cities I've been in, places aren't open late, and if you're walking around after 8 pm, everything looks dead, except for one really crowded restaurant. I mostly travel for conferences or work and everywhere is a touch depressing as the years go on tbh. In 2012, everywhere seemed to have the San Jose vibe i described, but by 2019, places felt quite dead. The pandemic closed a lot of storefronts, and things feel worse now. I've always enjoyed NYC but now everywhere seems expensive and worse.
Not gonna lie, this kinds feels like an issue of you and your area. I lived in small town Michigan for a while and I wouldn't say it didn't have third places, those places just weren't my scene. In the same way, I severely doubt San Fran doesn't have anything to do. It just doesn't have the stuff *you* want to do.
I'll give you the stuff about junkies or asocial types making certain places intolerable and ruining it for the rest of us. I think a lot of folk who grieve over the loss of third spaces also don't like the idea of greater (police) enforcement of order in those spaces. You can't have a space for everyone where people are allowed to do drugs and ruin the facilities because then it ceases to be a place good faith folk want to go to.
It's a big city issue, not an US issue. The larger the city, the more amazing the stuff is you can do *with money*, but since every little corner is just so damn valuable everything that can be done for free/cheap vanishes. With small cities/towns, it' the other way around.
In my rural area, third places often come and go. There will be a beloved bar, cafe, bakery, whatever where folks like to meet. Eventually, the owners burn out, or realize they aren't making enough money, or can't hire enough good help, so they shut down or change their business model (catering, events, etc). If they close, often some new idealistic person buys the business, and there's a lot of enthusiastic publicity, and the whole cycle repeats.
It also depends on when you want to hang out. A lot of places are only open say Wednesday through Saturday or midday Sunday. So if you want to hang out with some friends on a Monday night, you may have to drive to the nearest city or suburb.
There was never a time when there was a plethora of free queen-friendly third places to hang out, at least not openly. Most historical "third places" were things like social clubs, local bars, and religious community centers, all of which were probably waaaaay to conservative for any of these folx to hang around, but the idea of third spaces for building community has a pretty left wing feel so they kind of mushed them together.
Yeah, your options were limited and you had to make what was there work for you. Some of this feels like complaining that a super-niche perfectly-tailored-for-you thing doesn’t draw enough traffic to justify the space it takes up. That requires some self awareness about how uhh, “niche” you really are. Nothing wrong with being that person but at some point an eccentric either has to be independently wealthy or get used to imperfect fits.
Sure, but there also have long been traditionally queer-specific third spaces - think gay bars - and those have been disappearing as well, especially lesbian bars. Granted, some of this is a result of greater societal acceptance (a lot of LGBTQ+ people no longer feel like they need their own separate bars - which I get, but I also appreciate having a space where a woman hitting on another woman is the norm rather than an exception, and there's less fear of someone reacting poorly if you are wrong - even if the worst-case scenario is less of a fear than it used to be) - this becomes really noticeable if you visit a country where being LGBTQ+ is still not as socially accepted, and there are many more and a greater variety of gay bars - and also that younger generations of queer people get out less and are doing much more of their hooking up and meeting people on the apps. But I still don't have to like it!
"Third place" is just a sociology term where people interact outside of home and work. The general urbanist critique is that most third places in the US are private businesses as opposed to public plazas. Queer third spaces (bars and nightclubs, for example) would have historically been private businesses because of public intolerance (including physical violence).
I think people may have nostalgia for those havens without understanding that they are celebrated BECAUSE they were rare.
Yeah, I absolutely wish that lesbian bars weren't going extinct everywhere right now, but I wouldn't trade that situation for the days when those bars were the ONLY place that you could risk being openly gay. I'm very glad I live in these times. It's upsetting enough how many rightoids are trying to roll us back to those days, we don't need queer people getting misplaced nostalgia for them!
Yeah you can still meet your fellow niche folk. Have a meet up at one of your places, the library, a brewery, the park. I run into gay cycling groups when I'm just biking on the trail near me. Although, this also requires you to actively go out and touch some grass so ...
Yeah, I honestly suspect that a lot of this complaining is driven by people with severe social anxiety who are looking for some external force they can blame for their lack of a social life.
I’m friendly with a lot of people in my neighborhood because we run into each other all the time when taking our dogs out. I just wish my dog was a little more social, she kind of kills the vibe sometimes.
Third spaces as a term/concept doesn't have anything to do with queer people. Libraries, community centres (especially youth centres) and parks are common third spaces that are often being closed down, underfunded or built over (whether this is happening to parks depends on the country though - in the UK, they are super popular). The common areas within shopping malls were another popular third space for young people that basically no longer exists, at least in the USA. Third spaces that aren't totally free (e.g. a cafe or bar) are also becoming more hostile to people just wanting to hang out, as they prefer to turn tables and design an environment that is deliberately uncomfortable in terms of seating or aesthetic. So this is a real problem that's happening, and it disproportionately affects the youth.
"feeding therapists" . . . wow, added to my list of professions I had no idea existed, or needed to. Being a very old person, back in the olden days, we had kids who were picky eaters . . . but we found that when they got hungry, they ate. Not one ever starved to death.
The therapist with the kpop fan account is definitely something.
Reminded me that I recently had to explain to my therapist what a vtuber is, and as awkward as it was, I'd have been a lot more concerned if I *didn't* have to explain it.
This is pretty standard. We present him with adult food and attempt to "force" him to eat it but it doesn't work. He is still growing fine and is perfectly healthy, so whatever. He'll grow out of it eventually as we are decently adventurous eaters and cookers of food at home.
"He is still growing fine and is perfectly healthy, so whatever." I'm sorry, but this take is entirely too sane for the internet. I'm prescribing you four- to fifteen hours of TikTok per day.
Literally so many parks, libraries, and other bookstores exist in every big city including NYC. Are these ppl really claiming there is no other library/book site or coffee shop to hang out in?
To be fair, given the incredibly specific intersectional descriptors of this particular one that is closing down and how even that was seemingly too fractured to keep together, I can imagine these worker-stewards may have some difficulty finding a replacement that suits their needs.
Human generated video content is of questionable value to begin with. A.I. generated video content takes human generated content and filters every possible ingredient of value out of it until you are left with the pure synthetic dregs. Really, what are we doing here?
I am horrified with "Dr Trump" telling people to split up the MMR when it can't be done, and not to take Tylenol at all, which will have the unfortunate effect of a woman running a high fever and refusing to take it, risking the health of her unborn child. But I did see two people repeating the same 'story' of a pregnant woman in the hospital with liver failure (I think) due to a Tylenol overdose. Amazing how that happened so quickly! You know this is going to lead to an ex husband suing his ex wife if their child have autism, claiming she took Tylenol.
As measles cases rise across the US, who may need another vaccine ...
Yes, the MMR vaccine was created in 1971 by combining three previously separate vaccines: one for measles (approved in 1963), one for mumps (1967), and one for rubella (1969)
It can be split, but availability depends on the country. For instance, in the UK, there's a measles shot, but not a rubella or mumps one. But in South Africa, there's a separate rubella shot (and a measles one), but still no mumps one. Not sure which countries have separate mumps shots available. However, mumps is the least dangerous of the 3 for a baby to contract, so some parents may decide to just skip that one if they don't want the MMR.
Here in my mid-sized town, we had an independent, POC/queer-owned and -themed bookstore that imploded in a flurry of drama that culminated in the arrest of one of the co-owners.
If I had a nickle for every time this happened, I'd have two nickles. Which isn't a lot, but it's still weird it's happened twice.
I wish I could say “You made that shit up”, but it really is the end times. On the plus side, I am sure the new NYC mayor will get that bookstore squared away.
[tom hanks on a boat meme]
Look at me. I'm the bookstore ownxr now.
"Non-melanated POC" is just how they say they think East Asian people are basically white. They're paper bag testing at the door of their anti-racist book store.
The "just you wait" people are so annoying. Maybe it'll go the way you think, but maybe it won't. Why ruin the present moment with predictions about the future that might not even be so bad if they pan out? Like sure, my 4yo doesn't eat anything I put in her lunchbox, but she also watches movies with me now and can be trusted on the big slide by herself, so it isn't somehow worse?
The two sides are talking past each other (it’s that SMBC meme), people with picky kids are still touchy about the moms with amazing eaters that quoted “First Bite” at them about the “taste window” and breezily implied that the reason their kids were so adventurous was because they were being fed grilled octopus off their parents plates at age 9 months (with an implied “and you probably fed them crappy jarred baby food” added in). Or maybe they’re still annoyed with the (mostly non-parents) who insist that the solution to picky eating is to send kids to bed hungry if they refuse to eat and then not let them eat anything else for breakfast until they FINISHED THEIR PLATE.
But of course none of that is what this poor mama is saying! Too much of the internet is basically people taking their trauma out on undeserving victims, which then leaves those people thinking “god why is group X such assholes?”
This reminds me of a family travel influencer I follow who had tons of advice for how she got her oldest to be a good traveler and flexible sleeper. Then when her second was born and was not as down with program she was like wow yea maybe my oldest was just like that! Points to her for admitting it and also it made me feel a lot better about my own kid who struggled with travel!
This is why some of us are pro natal. Nothing will humble your parenting skills quicker than a second, third, or 4+ kids. A lot of it is luck
Yeah, my mom talks about how I was a very quiet baby whom you could take to fancy restaurants and the symphony, and then she had to learn the hard way with my younger sister that that was Not Every Baby.
That reminds me of the old chestnut (not used anymore in these days of more equal parenting) - “Just you wait until your father gets home!” (And then half the time Dad didn’t want to be bothered with matters of discipline, he just wanted his martini and La Z Boy recliner.)
Who knows what the kid’s eating habits will be five years from now. I wager that at least some of those kids will be eating a wider variety of food simply because they are in school and want to be like their friends, and don’t want to be laughed at, so they’ll suck it up and try the broccoli or garbanzos or whatever. (Worked for me! As a kid, not a mom.)
My wife does the same”wait until your father gets home” im easier on them than she is but it does work
Why do people insist on spelling folks “folx?” It’s the same pronunciation! Is one extra letter too much to type?
Also this is why we can’t have nice worker owned cooperative things. Worker owned cooperatives tear one another to bits over trifles, although, it seems that this particular WOC was rather sneakily imposed in order to avoid paying debts.
It’s a virtue signal in the purest form. At least “womyn” and “Latinx” have an ethos.
This WOC seems to consist of the sort of people who assume “owners” don’t do anything except twirl their mustaches and swim in their Scrooge McDuck vaults.
I think "folx" was the wakeup moment for me when I realised that sometimes this language is just about signalling a sort of status of progressiveness. Most of the time there's at least some sort of rationale for why a certain term should be avoided and another one used, but this one doesn't even have that. There's nothing different about it, except that it kind of "looks woke". It's just a new made up one that exists only for the purposes of showing woke dominance and castigating those too privileged to use it.
I gotta say, I think the "folx" is something is person made up completely on their own as some weird attempt at being the new Ibram X. Kendi. Like I don't even think in super left circles this is a thing.
It actually kind of tells me that this whole "revolt" is just lefty cosplay (and in retrospect, some of the 2020 stuff was this too). But more import, I suspect this whole (objectively hilarious) incident is basically a version of Sayre's law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law
I'm pretty pro independent bookstore. And given we're living under an administration who represents the greatest political threat to speech in America since "Jim Crow"*, I'm especially inclined to not think it a good thing when bookstores or libraries fail. But stepping back...yeah it's just a bookstore people.
* I'm hardly the first person to note that there is a lot of commonality between anti-free speech Jim Crow authoritarianism and the impetus behind attempts to suppress free speech today. Count me among those that think "DEI" has clearly been coopted by right wingers from its original very narrow meaning to basically become an acceptable way to be white nationalist.
When they were calling Kendrick's halftime show "DEI" that's when it became really obvious it was just the n-word for some people.
I know, I think about this every time I see the word. Lol. And while we’re at it since when did we return to using the word “folk” to describe people at all
remarkably, there's another case of leftist bookstore drama in london this year
https://www.the-londoner.co.uk/scarlett-letters-closure-left-wing-bookshop/
Holy crap, this story is a TRIP.
I really struggle to understand this fixation with "third places". It seems that at some indeterminate point in the past, the world was in a golden age of free, queer-friendly places to meet up that were taken away by capitalism. Was it and I just didn't see them?
There are just fewer places where you can hang out without having to spend a lot of money. Especially a city like NYC when it's not good weather to be in central park. There used to be more places where you could be a regular, and there were other regulars, and you knew them and made friends with them, became a small little community. This worked great if there was an owner who spent a lot of time in the place talking to customers and was the nodal point for all the customers. I've experienced that type of cafe in many parts of the world, including right outside my school. There was always an everything-shop that had limited square footage, but carried everything a student could need from candy to world maps, and there was always a chatty lady behind the counter. All the cool kids would hang out on the sidewalk there and the proprietress was part of their gang in a way. Her friendliness meant they'd stay there longer and keep ordering stuff and her place seemed popular and aspirational.
You can't quite do that now in the US. Lots of places are closing. They also aren't owner-operated to the same extent as before. It's hard to trust your customers and it seems like a mistake to be friendly with them. So there's fewer places where you can just hang out and hope to get in on a scene and make friends.
Maybe it's because I don't live in New York, but I am 43 years old and I just don't recall ever living through this supposed golden age of third places that is now gone. I remember you always had to buy something to sit in a cafe. And most cafes don't expect you to buy much. Spend like $5 and you're good for hours. You don't have to spend "a lot" of money. If I don't want to pay, I can meet someone in a park or a library - I have no more difficulty finding these places than I did in the 90s.
A lot of what you're describing sounds less like places existing and more like people collectively choosing not to use spaces that exist in the same way. And you don't solve a problem like that with nostalgia.
In a lot of major cities, they removed seating from starbucks so you just walk in, get your coffee and gtfo. This is especially the case in high-traffic areas because they otherwise get homeless people refusing to leave and scaring off other customers. They don't have bathrooms for customer use in a lot of places as well because they got too many people overdosing in their bathrooms, or destroying the place. I used to hang out at the library a lot until it became full of junkies.
I remember a Friday evening in San Francisco after work when someone asked me if I was going to the Mission. I said "nah, im going back home, there's nothing to do in the Mission but eat and drink". There's few places where you can just feel like being, in one of the biggest cities in the US, that's definitely a problem. Like, even the mall would close at 8:30 and everything before that would feel like you had no business being there unless you were buying stuff and everything was too expensive for casual shopping.
What else am I supposed to be doing, I'd wonder. I got my answer in San Jose, 50 miles away on a Friday night. Everywhere is full of young entry-level workers dressed up. There are cheap shows to watch, cheap emo nites to hang out in and meet people, and nerd events that are open to the public. You can go barhopping, there are enough bars that feel lively and are open late. There are food trucks that don't cost a bomb, and you can stand around eating and giggling on the sidewalk. There's even a couple of nightclubs.
What's the difference? It caters to normies, and prioritizes normies over being too for/against junkies. They aren't having hostile architecture that penalizes junkies, but at the same time no one is catering to them either and business owners turn out people ruining the mood. And there's a critical mass of people enjoying themselves and there's sidewalk life.
If I try doing the same thing in San Francisco, things feel much more insular. More expensive to get into the nightclub. Restaurants cost a bomb, or feel trashy. And when you're in, the waitstaff is hostile and the places shut early. Often, there's just no one there. In San Jose, There's parking nearby and you don't feel like you're going to be mugged to/from your car. It's easy to go out and hang out and talk to strangers, easy to organize stuff.
So this third places thing is something very real.
This seems like a homeless/junkie problem more than a third spaces problem.
I’m in “suburban sprawl hell” but there are easily a dozen places in a 10 minute drive I could go veg out while reading a book and nursing a beer and shooting the shit with whoever wanders in.
The real thing missing seems to be an *expectation* that most working adults would go hang out at a place like that (or a bowling league, or an Elks club, or whatever) for several hours a week. And that seems to be more driven by fewer IRL friendships and more solo entertainment options.
Its all connected. If people didn't have a long commute back to suburban hell, they might hang out at the elks club for a bit after work. If they did that, they'd have irl friends. And I guess the places 10 minutes away are places no one wants to go to, including the junkies. The root here is desirable and accessible places that people want to go to get beset by junkies and the owners prefer to shut down or make it uncomfortable because they aren't equipped to deal with the junkies.
The ideal third place is easily accessible to people who have prosocial tendencies as well as lots of time on their hands. Indie bookstores typically try to be this third place. Of course, the issue with this place is the owner-staff let in a lot of people without prosocial tendencies (and it seems like they didnt have great prosocial tendencies either).
It's partly the commute, and partly that we're not all working 9 to 5 Monday through Friday anymore. Since everyone is doing something different for work—work from home, multiple gigs, being called in for random events or shifts—and parents are driving their kids all over the place for sports etc, chances are that you aren't going to run into your people at your third place because they are working or at a soccer game or something.
The places 10 minutes away get plenty of traffic and have no junkies. The only thing preventing you from going there and being a regular is your desire to do so (and in my case, a perversion for novelty and a needy toddler).
Ultimately 3rd places seem like one of those things that everyone wants to say they want, but nobody *actually* wants that badly, because plenty of underutilized options exist.
I guess to me, what you're describing doesn't look like "third places are going extinct", but more like "San Jose has a cheaper and better party scene than San Francisco". San Francisco is probably the outlier while San Jose is more normal. It's more or less always been true that some places are friendlier than others, and from what I understand, San Francisco is more known for its house party scene than its clubbing scene.
Also, I don't think the leftist bookstore people want anything like what you described in San Jose, particularly if it appeals to "normies".
Not talking about the bookstore people that's a whole different topic.
But this IS what third places going extinct looks like. This is not a party scene, just normies looking to see what to do to relax after work. Not much i needed - just a few places to hang out with friends and make new ones at. Could be a pier, a mall, the river, whatever. I suppose this is not a problem in one horse towns with one bar that's also a restaurant as well as a casino and everyone hangs out there on Friday.
In most mid American cities I've been in, places aren't open late, and if you're walking around after 8 pm, everything looks dead, except for one really crowded restaurant. I mostly travel for conferences or work and everywhere is a touch depressing as the years go on tbh. In 2012, everywhere seemed to have the San Jose vibe i described, but by 2019, places felt quite dead. The pandemic closed a lot of storefronts, and things feel worse now. I've always enjoyed NYC but now everywhere seems expensive and worse.
Not gonna lie, this kinds feels like an issue of you and your area. I lived in small town Michigan for a while and I wouldn't say it didn't have third places, those places just weren't my scene. In the same way, I severely doubt San Fran doesn't have anything to do. It just doesn't have the stuff *you* want to do.
I'll give you the stuff about junkies or asocial types making certain places intolerable and ruining it for the rest of us. I think a lot of folk who grieve over the loss of third spaces also don't like the idea of greater (police) enforcement of order in those spaces. You can't have a space for everyone where people are allowed to do drugs and ruin the facilities because then it ceases to be a place good faith folk want to go to.
If every city manages to have a place for people from all walks to hang out and the US doesn't, it's a problem with the country
It's a big city issue, not an US issue. The larger the city, the more amazing the stuff is you can do *with money*, but since every little corner is just so damn valuable everything that can be done for free/cheap vanishes. With small cities/towns, it' the other way around.
In my rural area, third places often come and go. There will be a beloved bar, cafe, bakery, whatever where folks like to meet. Eventually, the owners burn out, or realize they aren't making enough money, or can't hire enough good help, so they shut down or change their business model (catering, events, etc). If they close, often some new idealistic person buys the business, and there's a lot of enthusiastic publicity, and the whole cycle repeats.
It also depends on when you want to hang out. A lot of places are only open say Wednesday through Saturday or midday Sunday. So if you want to hang out with some friends on a Monday night, you may have to drive to the nearest city or suburb.
There was never a time when there was a plethora of free queen-friendly third places to hang out, at least not openly. Most historical "third places" were things like social clubs, local bars, and religious community centers, all of which were probably waaaaay to conservative for any of these folx to hang around, but the idea of third spaces for building community has a pretty left wing feel so they kind of mushed them together.
Yeah, your options were limited and you had to make what was there work for you. Some of this feels like complaining that a super-niche perfectly-tailored-for-you thing doesn’t draw enough traffic to justify the space it takes up. That requires some self awareness about how uhh, “niche” you really are. Nothing wrong with being that person but at some point an eccentric either has to be independently wealthy or get used to imperfect fits.
Sure, but there also have long been traditionally queer-specific third spaces - think gay bars - and those have been disappearing as well, especially lesbian bars. Granted, some of this is a result of greater societal acceptance (a lot of LGBTQ+ people no longer feel like they need their own separate bars - which I get, but I also appreciate having a space where a woman hitting on another woman is the norm rather than an exception, and there's less fear of someone reacting poorly if you are wrong - even if the worst-case scenario is less of a fear than it used to be) - this becomes really noticeable if you visit a country where being LGBTQ+ is still not as socially accepted, and there are many more and a greater variety of gay bars - and also that younger generations of queer people get out less and are doing much more of their hooking up and meeting people on the apps. But I still don't have to like it!
The new generation is mad they missed hanging out in front of the Sam Goody at the mall
"Third place" is just a sociology term where people interact outside of home and work. The general urbanist critique is that most third places in the US are private businesses as opposed to public plazas. Queer third spaces (bars and nightclubs, for example) would have historically been private businesses because of public intolerance (including physical violence).
I think people may have nostalgia for those havens without understanding that they are celebrated BECAUSE they were rare.
Yeah, I absolutely wish that lesbian bars weren't going extinct everywhere right now, but I wouldn't trade that situation for the days when those bars were the ONLY place that you could risk being openly gay. I'm very glad I live in these times. It's upsetting enough how many rightoids are trying to roll us back to those days, we don't need queer people getting misplaced nostalgia for them!
Yeah you can still meet your fellow niche folk. Have a meet up at one of your places, the library, a brewery, the park. I run into gay cycling groups when I'm just biking on the trail near me. Although, this also requires you to actively go out and touch some grass so ...
Yeah, I honestly suspect that a lot of this complaining is driven by people with severe social anxiety who are looking for some external force they can blame for their lack of a social life.
Sure, what you're describing exists, but it's not caused by a lack of third places.
I’m friendly with a lot of people in my neighborhood because we run into each other all the time when taking our dogs out. I just wish my dog was a little more social, she kind of kills the vibe sometimes.
Third spaces as a term/concept doesn't have anything to do with queer people. Libraries, community centres (especially youth centres) and parks are common third spaces that are often being closed down, underfunded or built over (whether this is happening to parks depends on the country though - in the UK, they are super popular). The common areas within shopping malls were another popular third space for young people that basically no longer exists, at least in the USA. Third spaces that aren't totally free (e.g. a cafe or bar) are also becoming more hostile to people just wanting to hang out, as they prefer to turn tables and design an environment that is deliberately uncomfortable in terms of seating or aesthetic. So this is a real problem that's happening, and it disproportionately affects the youth.
"feeding therapists" . . . wow, added to my list of professions I had no idea existed, or needed to. Being a very old person, back in the olden days, we had kids who were picky eaters . . . but we found that when they got hungry, they ate. Not one ever starved to death.
Honestly, they were a huge waste of money
The therapist with the kpop fan account is definitely something.
Reminded me that I recently had to explain to my therapist what a vtuber is, and as awkward as it was, I'd have been a lot more concerned if I *didn't* have to explain it.
Going bankrupt is just an extreme commitment to anti-capitalism. Another successful venture!
(I like co-ops, but they still need people who understand business to serve on the board.)
I'd take more annoying-queer-worker's-bookstores-owned-by-melanated-POC any day over the right wing shitshow we have today!
Things my 3-year-old has eaten today, in order:
1) single pack apple sauce from Target
2) single pack apple sauce from Target
3) single pack apple sauce from Target
4) single pack apple sauce from Target
5) a lot of whole milk
6) Yumi bar from Target - blue
7) Yumi bar from Target - red
8) Yumi bar from Target - orange
9) Happy Baby creamies - green (1 entire pack)
10) pack of crackers
11) pack of crackers
12) pack of crackers
13) some fries from Wendy's
This is pretty standard. We present him with adult food and attempt to "force" him to eat it but it doesn't work. He is still growing fine and is perfectly healthy, so whatever. He'll grow out of it eventually as we are decently adventurous eaters and cookers of food at home.
"He is still growing fine and is perfectly healthy, so whatever." I'm sorry, but this take is entirely too sane for the internet. I'm prescribing you four- to fifteen hours of TikTok per day.
I know, I really should be a lot worse about everything in the world and my life and I hear TikTok is the best place to help with that 🤣
Literally so many parks, libraries, and other bookstores exist in every big city including NYC. Are these ppl really claiming there is no other library/book site or coffee shop to hang out in?
To be fair, given the incredibly specific intersectional descriptors of this particular one that is closing down and how even that was seemingly too fractured to keep together, I can imagine these worker-stewards may have some difficulty finding a replacement that suits their needs.
There's a leftist, Queer, Black owned bookstore and wine bar 10 mins from me in Brooklyn. It's not super rare to have these spaces.
Human generated video content is of questionable value to begin with. A.I. generated video content takes human generated content and filters every possible ingredient of value out of it until you are left with the pure synthetic dregs. Really, what are we doing here?
I am horrified with "Dr Trump" telling people to split up the MMR when it can't be done, and not to take Tylenol at all, which will have the unfortunate effect of a woman running a high fever and refusing to take it, risking the health of her unborn child. But I did see two people repeating the same 'story' of a pregnant woman in the hospital with liver failure (I think) due to a Tylenol overdose. Amazing how that happened so quickly! You know this is going to lead to an ex husband suing his ex wife if their child have autism, claiming she took Tylenol.
Might as well just bring back saying you saw her with Goodie Proctor at this point.
Why cant mmr be split up?
This is ai but it also makes sense
As measles cases rise across the US, who may need another vaccine ...
Yes, the MMR vaccine was created in 1971 by combining three previously separate vaccines: one for measles (approved in 1963), one for mumps (1967), and one for rubella (1969)
It can be split, but availability depends on the country. For instance, in the UK, there's a measles shot, but not a rubella or mumps one. But in South Africa, there's a separate rubella shot (and a measles one), but still no mumps one. Not sure which countries have separate mumps shots available. However, mumps is the least dangerous of the 3 for a baby to contract, so some parents may decide to just skip that one if they don't want the MMR.
Here in my mid-sized town, we had an independent, POC/queer-owned and -themed bookstore that imploded in a flurry of drama that culminated in the arrest of one of the co-owners.
If I had a nickle for every time this happened, I'd have two nickles. Which isn't a lot, but it's still weird it's happened twice.
I wish I could say “You made that shit up”, but it really is the end times. On the plus side, I am sure the new NYC mayor will get that bookstore squared away.