I am reading book that discusses the concept of a Third Place, where your First Place is home and your Second Place is work, it is a place you go with the following criteria:
It is open to the public.
It has a relaxed and mostly casual atmosphere that facilitates conversation.
You can interact with people you don’t know.
Bars, Taverns and Coffee shops are examples of common Third Places. You can make the argument (and indeed the book I am reading does) that Social Media or boards like this one are also Third Places.
Yeah, I don’t interact with people I do know much less don’t know. Except if I’m really wasted. The closest I can come up with is Manager’s Reception (free drinks hour) at Embassy Suites which has a good enough combo of atmosphere and drunkenness where I can talk to people I don’t know, but I’ve only experienced it a dozen or two times, so I can’t really call it my place.
If they mean my happy place, I’d say it’s the balcony of the Contemporary Resort at Disney World, where I can sip my tea in peace in a beautiful futuristic setting while I watch the monorails go by.
I can’t think of any place that I go to interact with people I don’t know. I do not go to bars. If I’m not at home or work I’m usually walking the dogs in the woods somewhere. Luckily I don’t see a lot of strangers there! But that would be my third happy place. Somewhere on a trail in the woods, or near a creek or lake - either just me and the dogs or with my husband, a sister or a friend.
This place fits the best, I think. The other board I’m on regularly is very small and we’ve all known each other (online, anyway) for close on 20 years. I wouldn’t call them strangers even though I haven’t most of them IRL.
I work retail, there is no way in hell I’m going to hang out in a public space to chat with strangers on my own time for the fum of it. I do actually kind of like being alone in a ‘crowd’ (like a coffee shop or a restaurant), but I still want to be ~left~ alone. I don’t want interaction, I just like to be a nonentity on the fringes and maybe do some subtle people-watching.
On second thought, I do have one place, though it’s more an activity than a single place. I volunteer a fair amount at horse shows (eventing, for the horse-y folk. I like to jump judge and do Finish timing on cross-country). In that regard I am interacting with strangers, mostly on a radio and a bit of face-to-face.
It’s not really a fixed place per se, but a couple of running stores in my town host group runs. Definitely casual, since it’s hard to be stuffy wearing 3” shorts and a sweat-soaked singlet, and it’s very easy to strike up a conversation: “What are your favorite shoes?” and “So, training for a race?” are pretty sure-fire opening lines. I have lost count of the people I’ve met and chatted with during the course of a run, even in a race. Runners like to talk about our sport. Ad nauseam, according to my wife.
FWIW You don’t have to interact with people you don’t know, just that there is an opportunity to do so. And yeah I think this board is a valid answer. That was actually the reason the book (“Because Internet” in case someone is curious) brought up that concept. To say that places on the internet have essentially become the “Third Place” for many (most?) people.
Given that I don’t really consider online interactions to be “meeting people”, I don’t go to any Third Places. The stores and eateries I go to don’t really have atmospheres that facilitate conversation with strangers. I mean, it can happen, but it doesn’t happen.