QOTW: What is your third place?
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Okay, a little explanation beforehand: QOTW stands for Question Of The Week - the idea is that each week (probably), one of us will ask a question to the rest of the metblog team, combines the answers, and posts them here, opening the question to you, the most valued reader. Then the next week, it’s another author, and another question, and so on.
Some days ago, Chris in London wrote about something he called the third place - he explained it like this:
Your first ‘place’ is home. Your second is work. You spend a lot of time in these two places, naturally. But people nowadays invariably have a third place. Somewhere they can gather with others - family, friends or strangers - and enjoy each others company, interact, be a part of their local community.
So this week’s question is - what is your third place?
Thomas Koenig: My best friend’s flat in the 7th district. I have a key to his place, and when my flat becomes too unbearable or if I just want to watch some TV, I visit him, jump on the couch and turn comatose.
Anjie Shaks: Used to be Starbucks on Oxford Street in London, now its the one in Karlsplatz. Same reasons: read, write, relax on comfy sofas, meet friends, play scrabble and sip expensive frap. Highlights: watch people crossing smallish roads during a red light - i am sure you can witness an accident if you wait long enough.
Daniela Zaremba: If i am hiding from the city (which i do weekly), I am running to my parents house in lower Austria. Lots of woods, and my kitty, and my grandmother and all of those nostalgic things that make one pseudo viennese citizen happy. If i am hiding from the people in general, than its either my appartment or a park or a cafe. it usually changes if my appartment is a mess, or i dont feel like sitting in a park surrounded by strangers, or i dont have the money to spend a whole day in a cafe. Either way, the usual hiding place is outside of Vienna.
Umberto Cappellini: My various parallel lifes are spreading over several places. If I have to be more specific, I’d say the Louisiana Blues Pub, orbmore generally, to a Blues club. Another “fixed” point is my town in Italy, where I go back to once a month.
Karin Harasser: My third place can be anywhere, but if I have to name one, it would be a pedal boat in the Danube.
Heinrich Hinterhalt: This is a new series, eh…. not about second thoughts, but third places. But in my mind these are things that go together quite well. Where to carry all your second toughts? To your personal “third place”. Right.
Among all those important third places which are coffee houses, friend’s places, cinemas… I’d like to pick a very familiar one. My family’s place. Though my parents are divorced, they live in the same town - Gumpoldskirchen. It’s a 20 kilometers trip out of the city that you need a lot of tickets for, but it pays off. I can stay either @ my fathers’ or @ my mothers’ house. You get a fucking lot of good wine (84 winehouses for less than 3000 inhabitants), nature, quiescence and last not least the feeling of “home”. Jogging without seeing other people and a place to roam freely when I can’t sleep. These are the things I miss most about the place i used to stay at. But there’s lots of things I don’t miss… live in small place for 20 years and know, or just believe me.
Luc Gross: I have no static third place, but I like to retreat to sites where there’s water.
Karl Kilian:Hard to say. My third place can be a book, a disco, a dinner, maybe even a conversation. Since I lead a rather erratic life, I have a hard time framing just one third place. It could be a journey, or a state of intoxication, achieved through sex, alcohol, music or some other stimulant. But it has never been one fixed location for me.
Philipp Drössler: My third place is a mixture of modern coffeehouses like the Phil or the Möbel - mainly because I reached a level of geekhood where I find locations without WiFi almost unbearable. But besides that, I also have the fountain at Schwarzenbergplatz in the third district. It’s a wonderful place to chill, relax and think, and in summer, the fountain is illuminated at night in various colors - it’s really beautiful. Apart from locations, it’s music - it creates a bubble of thirdplacery wherever I go. And currently, I’d have to say that my third place is in my girlfriend’s arms. That might sound kitschy, but I don’t care.
And there you have it. Your turn - where is your third place?
It has to be sitting drinking coffee sat outside Lewandofsky in Bad Aussee. But, seeing as I live in Oxford, UK, the journey there is a bitch.
Starbucks is the global corporate, polished on the surface ugly on the inside, marketing-varnished, brand-positioned, turnover-oriented version of a third place. So much so, that they even used the phrase as an advertisement-slogan. Yuck! That’s like answering McDonald’s to the question: what’s your favorite family restaurant.
In a city with a few hundred years tradition of coffeehouses, beer gardens, heurigen, I’d hope for something better than that from people who want to present this city to the world.
Philipp, your third place is missing!
p.s. by the way my surname is Cappellini, I still haven
crackerjack: I like you most when you wipe our your own arguments, just like you did now. First you state your completely subjective view on Starbucks, complete with a hint of the anti-Americanism that’s all the rage among Leftists today, and then you accuse us of not sharing your concept of a third place, or resting culture. Surprise: We are not elected officials. We are bloggers. We represent not the city itself, but our living experience in it. And the last time I checked, this place was still a representive democracy, and people can choose whatever restaurant, coffeeshop or whatnot as their third place that they like. And, as shocking as that might sound to you, there are people out there who like glocal corporate culture. Also, for the record, your snotnosed remarks aren’t especially representative to the world either.
Umberto: My sincere apologies, as a Philipp who’s been spelled “Philip” by various people all his life, I share your pain :) It’s been corrected, and my third place is now here, too.
Karin has the best answer. definetely!
someone knows how to get the most out of the next self cooked dinner ;)
Yeah, just lean back, close Your eyes, enjoy the taste, and this will get You anywhere/else!
@ Phillip: I didn’t accuse anyone of anything. I just mentioned that Starbucks is a yuck-choice of a third place. If I wanted anyone to share my concept of a third place, I would have had to mention my concept, wouldn’t I?
Moreover, you are right to insist on everybodys right to speak out their own opinion, e.g. liking global corporations like Starbucks and not caring about how they give a shit about worker’s rights, fair trade or how they put censorship on everything (Starbucks stepped back from selling the last Springsteen-CD because it wasn’t up to their family values!) But you’d also have to include me and my opinion.
You have any right to like McDonalds, Nike and Starbucks, listen to Take That and download ringtones from Jamba and tell us about it. You also have the right to not like all of the mentioned and tell us about it. Surprise: Either way you might get a reaction that you don’t like.
P.S.: I am still waiting for your post on the cultural importance of tourism on a city like Vienna.
Hi crackerjack, do you know adbusters.org? There’s also a Viennese branch of the so-called culturejammers movement.
And… I *love* Viennese old-fashioned coffehouse :)
:crackerjack
honestly there is no need to get your knickers in a twist over something as unimportant as Starbucks being my third place.
I regularly read the London blog and had read the original post and the comments there before Philipp posted it to us. I promptly replied to that unlike other vienna metbloggers who did the smart thing and read Philipps Question more carefully. If you read the london blog for june the10th you will notice it is more about where we end up spending time other than work and home - not where we unwind or would prefer to. In london living as a foreign student in a tiny box on an even tinier budget you end up making one other place your third place and that is where you are not thrown out even after 5 hours and you can hook up your laptops to work. Those are the deciding factors for most foreign students who spend hours commuting and dont particularly like going back to their shared hostel rooms where your feet are practically out of the door when you sleep. The same habits in this case shifted to Vienna whenever there was even one person bringing in a laptop to work for a few hours together or visiting friends who preferred to make it a meeting point due to its central location - convenience. As simple as that crackerjack.
A long history on the background of each post as to why this or that was written is frankly very tedious as this post is proving to be. Most posts on blogs and forums are written on the spur of the moment within a few minutes by random unimportant strangers and dont really require a positive or a negative reaction - they are just meant to be read and forgotten.
I propose The Third Reaction: which is No Reaction.