Café Society

A. Tjora, G. Scambler, A. Tjora, G. Scambler

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137275936
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia sociale

While tracing the historical emergence of the café as a social institution and noting its multiple faces and functions in the modernity of the occident, three themes run like threads of varying texture through the chapters: the social connectivity and inclusion of cafés, café as surrogate office, and café as site of exchange for news and views.

1

THE CAFÉ AS A THIRD PLACE

Ray Oldenburg

The Boston wit, Thomas Appleton, once remarked that “Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris.” That aphorism is more appropriate today than it was a century and a half ago for in the interim American cities have been shaped to accommodate automobiles, not people. Paris would be “Heaven” for Americans who, during their lives, suffered the lifeless streets of suburbia and the cold corporate towers of the Central Business Districts and were denied those “long sweet days, of the sidewalk cafés,” to paraphrase Joseph Wechsberg (1967). Small wonder that Paris is the most visited city in the world.

In this chapter, we review the concept of the “Third Place” in order that cafés and their contribution to personal and social life might be better understood and more highly valued. The concept of the third place is sometimes introduced as a correction of Freud’s contention that emotional well-being depends on having someone to love and work to do (Grossman, 1990). Evidence the world over, however, suggests that beyond the conjugal nest and the work lot there must also be a third place. It is “The Great Good Place” described in fiction by Henry James; a haven of rest and recuperation, an escape from the daily grind (James, 1990). There is, however, much more than that to be gained from third place sociability.

What, then, is a “third place?” The concept derives from the advent of the industrial revolution that put considerable distance between the home (the first place) and the workplace (the second place) both in terms of physical and social separation. Both the home and the workplace are relatively small worlds and both constrain individuals to play the social roles those settings require. Those two settings may be said to anchor our lives. Taken together, however, they are adequate neither to the development of community nor to the broadening of the individual. Toward those ends a third place is needed, one in which people from a diversity of backgrounds combine to expand one another’s understanding of the world and, out of the bonds formed there, community takes root.

Most third places, but certainly not all, are business establishments that serve food and/or drink to customers on a daily basis. When people from many walks of life visit such places often and for the pleasure of one another’s company, it is, for them, a third place. They are the “regulars” (or “habitués” in café parlance) and it is the regulars (i.e. regular visitors), more than staff or management, who set the tone of conviviality within. Their laughter, their banter, their good-natured jibes at one another all combine to make the third place a treasured respite from the cares and concerns of the day. The regulars are not a closed circle. In the usual case, they are proud of the diversity in their number and are always happy to receive a new “member” as doing so promises new things to talk about and to learn.

In seventeenth-century England, a political movement was promoted by the Levellers to eliminate all distinctions in position or rank in order to make everyone equal. It did not succeed in transforming British society, but it did succeed in England’s newly evolving coffeehouses where a new intimacy emerged among people who had earlier been kept distant from one another. Two features essential to its success were introduced simultaneously and the first was the low cost of entry and participation. A penny was the price of admission. Two pence was the price of a cup of coffee. A clay pipe cost a penny and a newspaper was free. These coffeehouses sprouted all over London and came to be called “Penny Universities.” So popular did they become that the amount of small change minted was inadequate to the demand and the coffeehouses and the houses had to issue tokens that were generally acceptable within the immediate area.

The second feature was that of posting the same set of rules in every coffeehouse, the first lines of which required all persons, regardless of station or position in society, to be treated as equals. This requirement, to the surprise of many, was readily accepted by patrons at all levels and in no small part because of the excitement these places offered in contrast to the highly segregated society in which they existed.

Owing to the remarkable advances in electronic communication, it has become fashionable for many to argue in behalf of “virtual” third places, which one can engage while sitting at his or her computer. That notion, however, abuses the word “virtual,” which means that one thing is the same as another in both essence and effect. As Christopher Lasch observed, the difference between face-to-face versus electronic communication is that between participating and being a spectator (Lasch, 1995). One must also consider how “virtual third places” differ from real ones in terms of their formation.

Real third places contain a generous mix of people who happen upon a particular site for a variety of reasons. They do not pick the people they associate with in a real third place. But in “virtual third places” that is precisely what happens. Mary Parker Follett addressed the difference many years ago in her discussion of horizontal versus vertical relationships (Follett, 1918). When the individual does the picking as in “virtual third places,” the like-minded are brought together. Ms. Follett was not at all impressed with “cosmopolites” who are “all the same.” When like-minded people associate, there is very little broadening of experience for the individual. “The satisfaction and contentment that comes with sameness,” she said, “indicates a meager personality (Follett, 1918: 196).” The charm of the mix was nicely illustrated years ago by Peter Donald in his description of the mid-day regulars in New York’s fashionable Club 21. It was “a kind of luncheon club that never got around to lunch” with eight or ten as a nucleus and “no two in the same racket” and therefore not equipped to bore one another with shop talk. There was a symphony conductor, a lawyer, a jeweler, a carpet tycoon, a steel magnate, a comedian, an ad man, sundry newshawks, and devalued millionaires (Donald, 1950).

Conversation is the main activity in third places. It is characteristically lively and holds the attention of everyone in the circle. This is not because those assembled are great speakers. Three factors contribute to the animated give and take among the membership. First, there is broad latitude for members to introduce almost any subject and to change subjects often. Second, as those present come from different backgrounds, they are more interesting than those the individual lives or works with day in and day out. Third, as the group often brings a half dozen or more people into conversation, one must both wait to talk and to judge one’s words carefully when gaining the floor. As Fran Lebowitz once quipped, the opposite of talking is not listening; the opposite of talking is waiting.

Most third places are modest, accessible, and very affordable. For the price of a cup of coffee or a glass of wine or draft beer, one may linger as long as one pleases. Hours of operation are geared to the demands of the first and second places, which means that they may open earlier or stay open later than other businesses.

THE FUNCTIONS OF THIRD PLACES

With the exception of the joie de vive or la dolce vita cultures, third places in the Western hemisphere have not enjoyed a good reputation. Both social reformers and urban planners have condemned them. “Hanging out” has been regarded as a small step above loitering. In the United States, the Supreme Court imposed single-use zoning in 1926 allegedly to protect urban residents from all manner of nuisances real and imagined. That judgment, of course, disallowed gathering places in residential neighborhoods where, if community life is to exist, they are needed most.

Third places serve individuals, communities, and the larger society in a variety of ways not widely understood. In considering these, it is well to bear in mind the reciprocity between individuals and their society; that which contributes to the well-being and happiness of the individual makes for a more pleasant and stable society.

Unify the Neighborhood

The closing scene in the movie “Fried Green Tomatoes” shows a weather-beaten Whistle Stop Café closed for business and abandoned. “It’s funny how a little place like this brought so many people together” is the last spoken line and apt testimony for the town’s one third place. It is important for people who share a locality to know one another; to know who can be counted on for what; to know who the leaders are, who to avoid, and who might become friends. When a place for all those souls to meet and get to know one another exists, there will be the genesis of community.

In areas of the city where cafés, diners, and coffee shops coexist with a variety of other businesses, it is common for the former to open their doors an hour or so before the other places of business. This allows local business men to meet there and keep in touch the better to serve themselves and their customers.

Friends by the Set

Among the more obvious, and to the individual more important, functions of a third places is the provision of a set of friends. In the words of Pete Hamill:

To hang out is a special thing. There is no specific way to define the experience but everyone who has done it knows what it is all about. It means, first of all, that you have friends. The friends are, as always, friends in spite of, not because of. They will not advance your career, or sell you insurance late at night, or try to steal your woman. They understand that at its dark secret root friendship is a conspiracy . . . But aside from friends . . . there must also be a place. (Hamill, 1969)

For those who thus enjoy the regular company of friends, the third place is indeed a blessing as it solves the major problem of having friends, which is sometimes called the Paradox of Friendship. Simply stated, we like our friends, we enjoy being with our friends, but we don’t want them “in our hair.” As Richard Sennett put it, “ . . . people can be sociable only when they have some protection from one another (Sennett, 1977). When friends meet at a third place, they may arrive and depart as it pleases them individually.

The average adult, we are told, has between three and five close friends and numbers are important here. A longitudinal study done in California some years ago demonstrated that the chances of living a long and satisfying life depend on the number of friends one has (Berkman and Syme, 1979). Seven thousand subjects were matched for initial health, health practices, obesity, smoking, drinking, and social class and then sorted into age and gender groups and into categories based on the number of friends each subject could claim. In all cases, longevity increased as the number of friends increased. For example, only 9.6 percent of the men aged 50–59 and who were “most connected” were dead nine years later as compared to 30.8 percent of the “least connected.” Among women aged 50–69, 9.7 percent of the “most connected” had died as compared to 29.4 percent of the “least connected.”

Those who have a third place and visit it regularly have an advantage both in the number of friends acquired and time spent with them. Those who opt for allegiance to a third place also gain a source of satisfaction that is unique in its singularity. If we compare third place involvement with involvement in home life and that in the workplace in terms of relationships with significant others, we find that spouses are the greatest source of satisfaction in the lives of married people, but they are also a source of conflict. If we examine the work situation, we find that bosses are a major source of conflict. The third place offers satisfaction without conflict.

The Joys of Camaraderie

In his tribute to places to hang out, Pete Hamill also commented on the differences between his colleagues, remarking that: “The most stopped-up, intellectually constipated, and unhappy men I know are those who work all day and go straight home to eat, watch TV, and sleep. There is no special period of the day reserved for the company of other men, no private experiences outside of work and marriage” (Hamill, 1969: 311). The place to hang out in England is the pub and a research team back in the l940s identified it as

the only kind of public building used by large numbers of people where their thoughts and actions are not in some way being arranged for them; in the other kinds of public buildings they are the audiences, watchers of political, religious, dramatic, cinematic, instructional, or athletic spectacles. But within the four walls of the pub, once a man has bought or been bought his glass of beer, he has entered an environment in which he is participator rather than spectator. (Mass Observation, 1943)

John Mortimer, through his character Rumpole, highlights the importance of camaraderie in an episode where Rumpole is about to lose a comrade to marriage. He implores his friend to think of “those peaceful moments of the day. Those hours we spend with a bottle of Chateau Fleet Street, from 5:30 on, in Pomeroy’s Wine Bar. That wonderful oasis of peace that lies between the battle of the Bailey and the horrors of Home Life” (Mortimer, 1981).

Typically though, the third place is hardly a peaceful oasis when the gang is gathered in full number and the revelry begins. At one point in our investigations, we had 33 groups of people observed in third place settings. The parties varied in number from three to eight persons per table or booth, and they were observed for three minutes each. The total of 148 people laughed 792 times. Doing a little arithmetic, we calculated that the average person laughed at the rate of 107 times per hour in these third place settings. This is rather striking when seen against the number of times the average American is reported to laugh per day and that figure varies between 17 and 20 (Feinberger and Mead, 1980). Laughter, we are told, increases our energy, increases blood flow, lowers blood pressure, and reduces stress. It also strengthens the bonds between people who laugh together. As Victor Borge once put it, “The shortest distance between two people is laughter.”

What gives rise to all this laughter? It is not jokes for they are a second-hand form of humor and many who love to laugh don’t like jokes at all. Indeed, the third place regular never comes closer to being a bore as when he tells a joke. Much third place humor plays on being impolite in a manner that really communicates affection. It is often heard when a regular enters and sees a buddy: “Oh no! If I’d known you were here I’d have kept on going.” And a rejoinder: “Can’t you find anyone else to bother?” Or to the bartender: “What kind of a place are you running here?” Such remarks are only made when there are others to hear them.

Revelry typically reaches its peak in all-male settings where working men are gathered and alcohol is served. In Canada, before the brasseries began offering quieter and more genteel settings, the old-fashioned, all male, beer only taverns hosted immodest beer consumption and boisterousness where noisy arguments, yelling, and shouting were encouraged. Men went there to “whoop it up,” but t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1   The Café as a Third Place
• 2   Heart of Urbanism. The Café: A Chapter of Cultural History
• 3   The Theory of the Café Central and the Practice of the Café Peripheral: Aspirational and Abject Infrastructures of Sociability on the European Periphery
• 4   Cafés, Third Places, and the Enabling Sector of Civil Society
• 5   The Café Community
• 6   Communal Awareness in the Urban Café
• 7   Becoming a Barista
• 8   Community and Social Interaction in the Wireless City: Wi-Fi use in Public and Semi-Public Spaces
• 9   Design for Solitude
• 10   The City, the Café, and the Public Realm in Australia
• Index