Once upon a time, life had three natural anchors: home, work, and the third space. Home was where you recharged. Work was where you hustled. And the third place—your café, your bar, your bookshop—was where the connective magic happened.

It’s where you’d bump into an old friend, lock eyes with a stranger across the room, or just simply sat in the buzz of other humans existing around you. These spaces were more than backdrops. They were stages for  serendipity, and belonging. It sounds strange to say, but they completed us.

And yet, somewhere along the way, we’ve started losing them. The café became a cart icon, the bar became a group chat, We traded connection for convenience. We told ourselves FaceTime could replace face time, that UberEats could replace dinner with friends.

The result? A over-stimulated and under-connected society. Without a place to go, we forgot how to arrive.

Third spaces didn’t just vanish in a day. No, they slowly thinned out. Rents floated up, attention spans drifted down, and “meet me there” softened into “maybe next week.” We swapped the messy charm of showing up for the sterile convenience of delivery. We optimized the crossing of town and accidentally erased the crossing of paths. We told ourselves we were too busy for the detour, not realizing the detour was the point.

If you really think about it, third spaces are the original algorithm. They recommend people you didn’t know you needed without scraping a single data point. Those rooms could surface a friend of a friend, a future collaborator, a person who knows the best dentist in the neighborhood… and it does so through proximity, rhythm, and a shared soundtrack. A third place doesn’t track you; it remembers you. Loneliness stops feeling like an identity and returns to what it actually is: a passing season that changes with the weather and the willingness to go outside.

There’s also an accountability that only happens in person. You can ghost a group chat. It’s much harder to ghost the person who waved you over and saved you a seat. That small social gravity matters. The eye contact at the door, the bartender’s “the usual?” the server who remembers you hate olives…these micro-moments stitch you back to a neighborhood. They make you legible to a place, and the place legible to you.

Cities and owners have a role, too. We need to make lingering legal and encouraged. That’s actually one of the main reasons we created our social club in Chelsea. We believe that if we want richer relationships, stronger communities, and less loneliness, we can’t leave the third place to chance. We have to build it, protect it, invest in it. Pricing that welcomes you in, programming that gives you a reason to return, and design that slows you down: soft light, mixed seating, shared tables, and a soundtrack that nudges conversation instead of shouting over it. A place where you can show up solo and not feel strange. Where “grab a quick drink” turns into “we closed the place down.” Somewhere you can sit across from someone and actually feel something.

The truth is, connection doesn’t just happen. It’s built — person by person, moment by moment, place by place. So maybe it’s time to audit your people, your spaces, and your habits… because you can’t keep saying you want deeper connection while feeding yourself the snack version. Until next time x