Have you ever frequented a shop or public space at some period of your life, only to find that it has closed down when you try to revisit it months or years later? Or do you wish you could revisit your elementary school in a former city or state decades later, only most teachers you knew would have long since retired and the school name has long since changed? What about former living residences – old rental flats or family homes that have long since been sold and you have no remaining friends or family there?
Knowing that I can never again revisit certain places that were meaningful to me in the past makes me sad in a heavy sort of way, so I have given some thought as to why we cling so tenaciously to these spaces that we once took for granted. I believe the reason why places matter to us so much is because of what the place meant to us on a personal level.
How a Shop Came to Be a Special Place for Me
There is a shop in a town where I previously lived and I loved to regularly peruse it, even if I didn’t buy something every time. I later found out that the shop had opened just before my husband and I moved to the town, and so its life there began around the same time ours did. It quickly became my favourite place to idly spend time, whether alone or with anyone else. It was a creative consignment shop with various vendors’ booths of homemade or re-used clothing, jewelry, accessories, and all kinds of other goods that were fairly affordable.
The space was artistically and fashionably decorated and arranged so that you enjoyed your time there, with fun (but not crazy or distracting) music playing. Also delightful was the small bar/check-out area where you could purchase a coffee, snack, or a glass of wine, so that you could sip while perusing the merchandise or sit at the bar and chat with the shopkeeper. This was most exciting to me because I loved to look at everything while sipping a glass of delicious red, and I also enjoyed chatting with others if I had more time. Later, it also became a most welcome retreat after a long day of work.
After several years, the owners opened a chic lounge in the newly renovated upstairs space – another fun and welcome addition to the small town. My husband and I enjoyed a couple of events there and met a friend or two. By this point we were in the process of moving into our first house in a nearby city, so we weren’t in the area to witness the next change: the shop itself moved to the space next door and, in the original downstairs space, a brewery opened.
When I first visited the shop in its new space next door, it seemed similar of course but there was just something different about it that made it a little less pleasant to me. I think it was technically larger in size but it just felt smaller for some reason, and it didn’t have the special ‘feel’ that the former space carried for me. Because I lived a 25-minute drive away by this point (instead of a 5-minute drive up the road), I didn’t go but the few times I had a reason to be in the area. I began to become ‘out of touch’ with the place.
During the last time I went to this shop, I overheard the shopkeeper chatting with someone and learned that the previous owner had recently sold the business to her. The new owner was friendly of course but I felt a little sad to hear that I wouldn’t be seeing the former owner anymore, whom I casually knew and liked and with whom I had enjoyed plenty of conversations. I have not been back to the shop since, which is due mainly to having a baby/toddler as well as the shop’s increasingly dwindling open hours. Though I plan to go as soon as I get a good opportunity, it will never quite be the same, and never again can I be in its original space (because it is totally renovated and unrecognizable as the next door brewery), with its original shopkeepers.
The Volatile Nature of Small Businesses
This is a completely normal, natural and healthy phenomenon. Small businesses change frequently, and owners have to make whatever changes they deem necessary based on their own life demands, the business demands and costs, and what works best in the end. Of course I understand this, but I am always caught off guard by the tugging nostalgia I feel for such places.
There are a couple of other spots in that town that have also changed – either gone out of business entirely, moved to a new location, or changed owners (and I loved some of those previous owners). I feel sad about that because they crafted the picture of my experience living at that small and relaxing town. And we all know how difficult it is to own/run a small business, which is why it is so important to support and frequent small businesses while we can. I used to take their existence for granted, but now I know better and have come to better understand why places matter.
It Takes Regular Visits for Places to Develop Meaning to Us
I have yet to take the same sort of liking to any local shops here in my current city, but that is likely because I go so infrequently. Most of the time spent living in my former town was during transitional periods: job searching, working at a job with a shorter commute and shorter overall day, and going to graduate school with a more flexible schedule. During those stages, I had more spare time to spend in town.
Since living in my current city, I have either been gone 11 hours each weekday for work, or caring for my baby (with zero time in between those two busy life stages). So while I have visited a handful of little shops downtown or in other areas of the city, I haven’t cultivated the free time to spend places that I had in my former town. And there was a certain character alive in the smaller town that I haven’t detected here. That’s not to say there aren’t other great opportunities here of which I’ve gladly taken advantage, but you can’t carry one experience to another place. It just doesn’t replicate that way.
We Naturally Attach to Places Without Trying
I realize that there is probably some psychological connotation regarding attachment and a Buddhist need to let go, but the reality is we are going to naturally attach to people, places and experiences that fade in and out of our lives. While it is obviously understandable that we mourn the loss of people and experiences that can no longer exist alongside us in our everyday life, the sentimentality for other spaces always seems to catch me off guard. I don’t think it’s any mysterious magic in the pieces of lumber holding the facility together or the products themselves, but it is the experience that the atmosphere of the place evokes. This is related to the owners/workers and the way they arrange the environment of the space. It was a place where we enjoyed being, much how we strive to create our homes as places where we want to be.
How to Create a New Third Place When We Lose Ours
We cannot replicate former spaces that are no longer in our lives, but how do we create new experiences now? Of course, this is why it is so important to create a comfortable and enriching living space for ourselves. Unless there is a drastic change that requires you to leave your home, it is the one place that otherwise doesn’t change except on your own terms. But we obviously aren’t going to spend every waking moment at either work or home. Even if our life stage limits our ability to go to as many other places as we would like (when caring for a young child, for example), it is comforting to have other places where we can relax and enjoy ourselves.
A place like this, where we feel ‘at home’, is called a third place. Established third places are sadly lacking in the lives of typical Americans. In other countries, people frequently go to a favourite pub or café after work to relax a bit with others, while Americans – perplexingly, those without children – go straight home after work and tend to stay there Every. Single. Day. Not everyone does this intentionally, but many sort of fall into this isolating habit. If the recent pandemic has taught us anything, it is that long-term social isolation has real effects on mental health. Even introverts benefit from regular outings to somewhere besides their workplace or errands.
Depending on where you live, your third place options may be limited. Or, they may be just a little more inconvenient than you prefer: uncertain street parking in less ideal areas, with less than ideal open hours, etc. But one important factor to keep in mind regarding your options is who runs the space: I’ve found that a shopkeeper or wait staff can make all the difference in an environment. Personalities can really charge the energy of a space.
You have to actually have a reason to relax at a place, whether to enjoy a coffee, peruse merchandise you like or need, or read a book at the library. But this tends to be less enjoyable if those in charge don’t seem very welcoming. So even if your only third place option is a spot to sip a boring cup of coffee, get to know the staff, or bring a good friend or two, and strike up some good vibes simply based on human connection. You never know who you will meet or what you will learn, and that can begin to embed some good memories in a space.
Understand What It Is About a Place That Draws You
People and places will come and go, and we cannot take their existence in our lives at any given time for granted. If we do, we may mourn their loss like we never expected. But the loss doesn’t have to be meaningless: we should ask ourselves what we have learned from the experience. What is it about a space that so draws us back to it? The better we can answer that, the better we can create our own spaces at work or home and seek out other places where we can relax and feel inspired.
I learned that a creative retail space really lights me up, specifically one that sells clothes from various vendors because that tends to wield the greatest diversity – both in cost and styles. I love pleasant surprises so consignment purchases are more interesting (and affordable) than boutiques since there is the element of surprise in not knowing what you will find. Yet, to me there is a huge difference in environment when shopping at a large chain thrift store versus a locally-owned consignment shop.
Environment is everything: the smell, the lighting, the decor or lack of it, the busyness-factor, and, the quality of merchandise and how it is presented. A thrift store chain may have a really cool find but I’d be less inclined to search because I dislike the way the harsh fluorescent lights glare down on me, the ever present musk of old fabric, the complete lack of artistic touch on the way the space looks or feels, the lack of organic conversation with the workers, and the ultimately draining feeling I get after spending time in such a place.
If none of that mattered to me, I’d be a fool to pass up such affordable clothing (given I had the hours to root through things to find something I actually like enough to purchase). But the quality of a space does matter to me, and it matters enough to other people that shopkeepers and restaurant owners go to great lengths to design an inviting atmosphere where people are relaxed and inspired. I am a poster example for why that effort is worth the extra overhead.
The Takeaway: Know Your Ideal Third Place and Always Find It
Think about which places you love and why. Identify the elements that subconsciously invite you there, and make an effort to go and explore other places that may also present some of those elements. Find reasons to meet up there with friends in your spare time, and convince the chain-addicted friends to follow you to a quirky local place to give it a chance, too. They, too, will hopefully come to understand why places matter. And if or when that place goes under or at least changes its scene in some way or another, make an effort to keep exploring, wherever you are and whenever you have time.
Remember, you can never count on an external space remaining the same. It will evolve with new ownership and other changes, but we can identify what matters to us, embrace the flow, and find our new spaces. Establishments go but they also come, and you never know when your next new space will spring up!