Notes from third spaces

The first Saturday night of 2025 at Skate Place brought out the youth. Holiday visitors had said their farewells and travelers had returned home. Classes were to resume that Monday.

Chandra is making the most of her roller skates, a gift from Santa Claus. They are black and pink with hearts and wheels that light up multi-colored when they roll at speed.

She has worn the skates often since Christmas and put them on in the morning of the aforementioned Saturday when she got out of bed.

The atmosphere in the concessions area was frenetic with teenage chatter and popular music bleeding over from the skating area across the lobby. Blue, snowflake-shaped lights drifted around, issuing from a projector that cast them in moving patterns on the orange walls and matching tabletops, the yellow bench chairs and dark, retro carpet—you know the kind, with patterns resembling confetti and curly ribbons.

* * *

The library in West Branch is a fine place for quiet concentration regardless how many people are inside. Typically a jigsaw puzzle is in some stage of assembly on a large table by the window.

Chandra joined an elderly woman to work on the puzzle. I repaired to a smaller table to work on a business plan. I don’t recall if it was Saturday before Skate Place or Sunday before the big game.

Our library visits are becoming frequent, habitual. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself. Fake it ‘til you make it, so I’ve heard.

* * *

The local bar was well populated the first Sunday of 2025, most denizens turning out to watch the final regular season game for the Detroit Lions. The environment was more frenetic though much less teenaged than the concessions area at Skate Place.

* * *

Being torn between either working from home or at the office while banging my head against the conclusion of this column is not a third place as defined by sociologists in the 1980s. However, including it at this point in the column will serve a number of purposes.

First, it justifies preserving the original title. “Notes on third places” is less intimate and inviting—much more academic and detached than this column, which was conceived in a concessions area, is really going for.

Second, it’s an honest statement of fact. As much as exploring places other than home and work is fun and, so say the experts, necessary for most people’s mental health and every community’s vibrancy, practicality demands our presence at home and at work. The only third space I’ll be visiting today is the waiting room at the dentist’s office during my spouse’s appointment.

Third,