There’s no shortage of irony in the news, but I nearly fell out of my chair laughing when I read a New York Times piece about how Starbucks wants to bring back the “third place.” A third place is not a corporate imitation of a coffee house that serves the same menu at every location. It is not a carefully cultivated vibe of Brand Safe Boredom that extends from its forgettable decor to the inoffensive playlists played at a volume that ensures you will never actually remember what you heard.
If you’re on the chattier social apps, then you’ve probably seen people describe the third places they wish they had, which, for some reason, always seem to sound like the public libraries they clearly don’t patronize. But, third places were a real thing. Once upon a time, people did have their own, local versions of the DoubleR or the Central Perk. Technically, they still exist. Underground, where I often guest DJ, happens every week. If you’re a regular there, it is a third place. Last year, I wrote a story about the pinball tournaments at Revenge Of. For pinball players, that absolutely falls into the category of “the third place.”
The whole concept of the third place, though, began its death spiral well before the pandemic. I suspect that there are multiple reasons for that, but let’s start with Corporate Coffee.
Back in the ‘90s, legit coffee houses were common throughout Los Angeles. Each one had its own identity, but they all had similarities. Their names were either a coffee-related pun, like Common Grounds, my high school hangout, or something totally ridiculous, like Van Go’s Ear, where my friends and I pulled a few all-nighters in college. The decor looked like it came straight out of Goodwill, if it weren’t picked up off a sidewalk, and the art on the walls was typically made by someone local. There were always L.A. Weekly stacks, usually with a few piles of show flyers nearby, and a community board where people posted notices looking for new roommates or a drummer. Often, there was a boutique-like stand in the corner where they sold beaded jewelry and candles made by the local hippies. These coffee houses were open late, sometimes all night, and were always all-ages, since they didn’t serve booze. All that made for a weird, amazing mix of everyone from alternateens to old beatniks.
By the end of the decade, though, Corporate Coffee had taken over L.A. and our real deal coffee houses disappeared one by one. This wasn’t just a local phenomenon and it wasn’t limited to coffee. The ‘90s was really a boon for rapidly expanding mega-corporations. Starbucks was to coffee house what Barnes & Noble and Borders were to bookstores, what Blockbuster was to video stores and what Hot Topic was to whatever the Retail Slut of your city was. There were so many mom-and-pops going under after the Big Chains came to towns across America that it was a frequent theme on TV shows, like King of the Hill. People weren’t happy about all this. In fact, Starbucks was one of the targets of the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle.
But, the tide would change in the next few years. A particularly good article about the WTO protests, also known as the Battle for Seattle, in The Nation points out that the anti-corporate activism that was rising around Y2K faded in the aftermath of 9/11, which matches up with my own memories of life in L.A. at that time. Eventually, people forgot that corporations suck and now they’re nostalgic for Blockbuster and think Starbucks is a legit third place.
There’s another thing that happened and that’s the rise of social media, specifically image-based platforms like Instagram and, later, TikTok, as well as the “millennials want experiences” marketing ploy of the 2010s. That’s around the same time that I started seeing a really gross shift in L.A. There were more places that were designed to look good on Instagram and overrun with obnoxious foodies, but weren’t actually fun. When it comes to coffee, that meant indie places made a comeback, but with more coffee art, more inspirational neon signs on the walls and fewer places to, like, actually sit down and chat. This even infiltrated clubs and bars. On the club side, when I worked door, I would occasionally see people, always those who were “on the list,” come in, take photos and leave. How fucking stupid is that? Corporations may have kickstarted the death of the third place, but clout-chasing, experience-seekers jumping from one influencer backdrop to the next drove the stake in deeper.
The third place isn’t a destination. It’s not necessarily photogenic. It’s not something that’s going to viral. In the old days, it might have earned a mention in the local newspaper, like when the L.A. Times ran a short piece about Common Grounds, but that’s about it.
I have no photos of 1990s coffee houses, let alone video, so I’ll just refer you to Mike Meyers’ greatest film, So, I Married an Axe Murderer, because “Hey, Jane, get me off this crazy thing called love” isn’t all that different than what I saw IRL. My friends and I went to a lot of different coffee houses during the decade, but Common Grounds was the biggie, partially because it was walking distance from my parents’ house and also because it was CSUN-adjacent, so the crowd was heavily weird college kids and weirder high schoolers. Also, there was a liquor store in the same strip mall that sold cloves *and* beedis, both of which were very cool in my teenage misfit social circle.
We went to Common Grounds a lot in high school, as well as during college summer vacations. However, outside of a few memorable performances on open mic night— for which I was only a spectator— my memories are mostly a blur of conversations, music and gobs of whipped cream atop an iced something or other.
That’s the thing about third places, their appeal doesn’t need to make sense to anyone but you and the other people who are there. In fact it shouldn’t make sense to anyone on the outside. The corporate place can never be the third place because its goal is to appeal to the masses. The same can be said for the viral-striver because it’s designed to meet the needs of influencers rather than regulars.
Like I said earlier, though, third places still exist to some degree. But, if you want to find them, you have to get outside and look around your city for yourself. You can’t rely on algorithms to point you in the right direction. And, when you do find one, you actually do need to support it regularly. Otherwise, your new third place will go away the way of the old coffee houses.
Liz O. is an L.A.-based writer and DJ. Read her recently published work and check out her upcoming gigs or listen to the latest Beatique Mix. Follow on Instagram for more updates.
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