Third Places & Homesteads in the Shadowlands 🏘

on a more humane-sized daily life

The Café (Café Conte, London), by Graham Bell (1938) #

This morning I had an early coffee with a neighbor friend of mine, both of us preferring the just-waking hours of the day before the hubbub requires our attention. I was the third customer there and I chatted with the manager and barista on staff by name, asking each other about our stuff: our kids, our day’s agenda, what one of them recently read in a book. Before I walked outside, the manager said, “Morning, Eric!” to the gentleman behind me. I’d seen him before here, so I nodded a hello to him as well.

While I waited for my friend to arrive, I also chatted with neighbors—an adult daughter and her dad, who themselves are neighbors to each other—and who I see on the regular at this same spot, their three white labs on leashes in tow. Once my friend and I sipped our drinks and prattled on the deck overlooking the herb garden, the coffee shop owners (and her landlords) said an “Oh hello! I didn’t see you there; what a lovely surprise” as she tidied the beds and plucked some weeds. Later, my friend’s own husband and his friend sat at a table a few feet from us as they caught up and mused over a chapter from the Book of Romans. Before we left we each grabbed a breakfast taco from the local taqueria (on sale daily at the coffee shop; hurry, they go fast), knowing I’d probably return later in the day to get some loose-end work done, and I’d probably see a whole new set of regulars reading, working, and catching up with each other.

This is our neighborhood’s third place.

Scene Two of the same Act: The day before, I was chatting with my fellow colleagues in the teacher lounge at our kids’ school. I’m new, so we’re still in the introductory phase of “Now where do you live?” sorts of conversations. Every time so far, when a new local friend discovers my family and I live in the Old Town neighborhood—meaning, the few walkable blocks right around our historic town square—every single person, without fail, has said, “Oh, that’s where we want to live, too. Either that, or buy some land outside of town.” Every single person. This happened again in this conversation—we talked about the challenge of finding an affordable family home in our neighborhood, and thus the desire to find affordable land outside town, also a real challenge. Others around us chimed in with similar ideals. Many people, in fact, move to our town with the strategic hope of eventually scoring a fixer-upper close enough to the Square.