I levitate when I’m writing in a coffee shop. I say this as a guy who does virtually all of his work at some coffee shop, somewhere. It’s the only place I feel weightless while toiling away at my measly computer screen words. Sure, I could stay home and labor in my cramped home office beside a mountain of laundry while sipping a cup of fancy Nespresso coffee. That would save me a lot of money, after all, and perhaps would be more practical.
Unfortunately, it wouldn’t work. Not a chance. I’m too much myself at home. I am the dirt. A crusty-eyed, pajama-clad loser with no sense of community. I trade blows with despair, which puts me in a headlock and beats me to a pulp. I wander around bleary-eyed and get mad at the dogs for refusing to eat their dry breakfast nuggets, the same dry breakfast nuggets they’ve eaten for years without complaint. I’m chained to the creaky wooden floor when I’m at home; when I’m at a coffee shop, I’m a small cog in society, a blimp surveying the crowd and admiring the faces, seeing and being seen, outside my head and assuming a better skin, maybe becoming somebody else entirely. I’m enlivened by the life around me: the focused baristas, the hot dirty smell of the coffee, the medium-pitched grinding of the espresso machine. I’m a person in the world who might mean something, despite ample evidence to the contrary.
Time Magazine recently ran a piece about the decline of “third places,” which the article defines as “informal spots to gather for socializing outside of home and work.” The focus of the article is on how the importance of these third places has diminished in recent years, a theory introduced by Ray Oldenburg in his 1989 book The Great Good Place.
The de-emphasis of third places, the article posits, has led to an increase in social isolation and friendlessness, and a decrease in a sense of community, particularly during the post-COVID years.
“These days, the role of coffee shops and bars, libraries and community centers, civic clubs and houses of worship, have faded as the creep of work and domestic obligation in American life have become all but inescapable,” states the article.
I don’t personally use coffee shops as places to socialize in the traditional sense. I’m not having long, leisurely conversations about Nietzsche or musing on the economic impact of tariffs. Yet to be consistently present in a public space, to see faces I know and have my own recognized, seems like a subtle practice in community-building that, I think, has tangible benefits to my mental and spiritual health. I feel more alive and connected while working in a coffee shop.
I’d go as far as to say that any city is only as good as its best coffee shop. Thankfully, there are two great ones here in Staunton. There’s the By-and-By on West Beverley, a cozy little spot at the end of the block frequented by Mary Baldwin students. It has a distinctly thespian vibe. It’s a smaller space, and I go there when I can find an open table, though I consider Crucible Coffee, down in the Wharf-adjacent area off Church Street, my “home” coffee shop. It’s more blue-collar, the kind of place a contractor might go to grab a drip before starting his day. It has high ceilings that make the space feel bright and airy, and I’m almost guaranteed to find a spot to work, which is a vital characteristic of a good cafe.
Based on the steady daily patronage I witness there, Crucible doesn’t seem like a third space in decline: I regularly run into fellow preschool parents, as well as my hair stylist, who occasionally has her 5-year-old daughter in tow. I’m there at least three days a week from 9-11ish, headphones strapped to my ears, simultaneously blocking out the world and absorbing it, practicing the art of community-building while keeping said community at a distance.
I see several other regulars on a fairly consistent basis. We’ve never interacted; I don’t even know their names. Yet there seems to be an unspoken relationship between us, the silent bond of coffee shop people. It’s strange, this idea that we, or at least I, go to a coffee shop because of a need to be around other people, yet the thought of engaging with these people fills me with a minor sense of dread. I want to be reminded that I exist in society, but I also want to remain anonymous. Mostly I want to be left alone. Personal defect? Probably. But even Hemingway understood how frustrating it is to be interrupted while immersed in work. “Your luck had run out and you shut the notebook,” he wrote about an acquaintance approaching him in a cafe. “This was the worst thing that could happen.”
Crucible and the By-and-By are my new hot flings, as it were, but I’ve engaged in serious relationships with many coffee shops through the years, based on wherever I was living at the time. These old haunts feel like former lovers: we spent countless hours with each other and shared emotionally charged moments before going our separate ways. I think about them often. In Western North Carolina, it was Odd’s Cafe in West Asheville, where I’d often overhear two 80-year-old German guys in thin white T-shirts discussing philosophy (they understood the social importance of third places!), and Farewell, a hip bleached-out space that doubled as a plant seller and played Beach House songs with disturbing regularity.
In the small town of Waynesville, just outside of Asheville, I’d go to Panacea, a cavernous converted warehouse unique for two reasons: the fluffy black cat that hangs around outside (you can buy a t-shirt with a picture of said cat on it) and the creekfront patio that offers rustic ambience during warmer months. There’s something existentially relaxing about letting the white noise of a rushing creek fill the dry crevasses of your brain. This is especially true while entering the initial stages of a caffeine high.
My involvement with coffee shops reached its peak when I lived in Austin (a lifetime ago) and actually decided to work at two of them: Floyd’s Cafe during by day and Monkey Nest by night. These were the wayward years. I wore a lame paperboy hat and skinny jeans, wrote bad poetry, and was super into street photography, if that tells you anything about the kind of person I was back then.
Floyd’s, which I think has since closed, was on the first floor of a 22-story office building at 301 Congress Ave. I’d serve coffee and sandwiches to people my age who were making way more money than I was and, in my estimation, much further ahead in terms of life progress. Here they were, purportedly with their lives in order, while I was cobbling together an income from two barista jobs and inconsistent work as a freelance sportswriter. I’d often leave my shift at Floyd’s and go directly to Monkey Nest and work until 11 p.m., drinking numerous cappuccinos to power me through a six-hour shift.
I’d be so loaded on caffeine after getting off that there was no chance I’d be able to sleep, so I’d plop down at one of the wobbly tables and, while wearing my dumb little paperboy hat, harness my jitters into perhaps frivolous creative endeavors, like a still-unpublished novella titled Pardon the Octopus about a go-nowhere boozehound named Andy Moon who leads a hedonistic existence until he finds a good woman to set him straight. I was very confused and sad back then but also very alive in a similar way that Hemingway felt alive as a poor 20-something in Paris. “It had never seemed strange to me to wear underwear as sweatshirts to keep warm,” he wrote. “It only seemed odd to the rich. We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together.”
I recall the names of some of the people I worked with all those years ago, the Ryans and the Tonis and the Cindys, but it’s the faces that have stuck with me the most, the faces I saw multiple times per week for the better part of two years, the way those faces seemed like they’d be part of my life forever, or at least for a long time, the way everything felt so real and permanent when in reality it was so temporary and brief.
That’s the problem, and sometimes the virtue, of time: the way it wipes the slate clean, the way it implores you to start anew when you never thought you could, the way it forces you to forget things that were once so familiar, so everyday. Those everyday things slowly become yesterday’s things, and when that shift occurs, a sense of unreality creeps in. Lately, I’ve been having a harder time recalling the names, and, horrifically, seeing the faces. It’s been seven years since I lived in Texas. That period of my life, and everyone I knew in it, feels more illusory as the past fades towards the receding horizon.
Historically, my flings with coffee shops have been relatively short-lived. My wife, Caitlin, and I have never stayed in one place for too long: two years in Austin, five years in Western North Carolina. Staunton feels different, though. We’re in our mid-30s now, established with friends and a good school for our son, plus family and long-time friends a day trip away in Richmond and Roanoke. Staunton is the perfect hub for us: quaint and interesting and mountainous and centrally-located. The thought of uprooting our lives for the rush of novelty doesn’t appeal the way it once did. Moving to a new city as a childless 20-something is invigorating. Doing it as a 35-year-old with a young child in tow is like trying to swim with a howler monkey latched to your back.
All this to say: I’m thinking about making my relationships with Crucible and the By-and-By more, how should I say this, permanent. I’m talking 15 years minimum, perhaps longer, if things work out. It’s a level of dedication I’ve never experienced with a coffee shop. It’s going to require hard work on both our parts, but I’m ready to take things to the next level, because I know Crucible and the By-and-By are marriage material.
So, here’s my formal proposal: will ya’ll be my…long-term third places? Yes, I’ve had commitment issues in the past, but I’m here and I’m ready and I’m yours. All you have to do is say yes. I promise I won’t wear any more silly paperboy hats. I promise I won’t write bad poetry within your walls. I swear all of that nonsense is behind me, that I’m all grown up and mature now, that I’m finally ready for the real thing.
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