The great good place

What Hacker News says

1. scoofyJan 2026
   CTRL+F "third place" -- take my upvote.

   Anyone suffering in the loneliness epidemic should have a copy of The Great Good Place, by Ray Oldenburg. The entire point is that you should be putting yourself into socially active areas in your community.

   This includes: a church, a local pub or coffee shop with regulars (ideally walking distance from where you live), a rec sports/game league or club.

   Knowing this, I've perused it in my life and it seems very effective. I'm a regular at a Trivia Night one night per week (I don't go every week, but enough to know both the bartender and host by name). I'm a regular at a bar three blocks away from where I live, even if I consume only one non-alcoholic beverage and one alcoholic beverage per visit (a couple night a week), that leaves me plenty of time to chat with my neighbors. I'm a member of a local golf club (a very cheap municipal course), and play there every other week, and after a couple years have very good relationships with many of the other members even if we don't interact much outside of the club. At my last apartment, I was a regular at the coffee shop enough to know multiple baristas by name, it wasn't exactly a third place situation, but it was getting close before I moved. I'm not religious, but I'm very familiar with academic institutions and open lecture series that I used tot attend in grad school.

   I do this intentionally. My partner had never been a regular at a bar before, and she really, really enjoys it now even though she doesn't really drink. When she joins me, she will maybe consume one-half of a light beer. You don't have to be an alcoholic to be a regular, this is a major point that Oldenburg discusses when he contrasts German-style drinking culture with English-style drinking culture.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Good_Place_(book)

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2. eclipticplaneSep 2022
   You're missing your 'second place'. And, for a lot of modern society, your 'third place', too. This exacerbates the loss you feel for your second place. First is 'home', second is 'work', third is 'community'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place

   You don't _need_ a 'second place', but you may find it helpful to double down on the first and third.

   The original book, The Great Good Place by Ray Oldenburg, is a bit dated. It was written at the cusp of modern connected life (late 80s?). While it does bore a few faults, the concept has helped me immensely in being purposeful and direct in adopting a 'third' place.

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3. WumpDec 2020
   Absolutely agree. I've been reading a lot about this recently, recommend:

   Lost Connections by Johann Hari The Great Good Place by Ray Oldenburg Better Together by Robert Putnam

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4. mariodianaJul 2018
   I feel bad if my comment ends up being the first one, because I'm coming to suggest a book that I immediately thought of as I got halfway through the article. If you want to read about human society and how much of it we're missing, read The Great Good Place, by Ray Oldenburg. (I believe it came out in the late 1980's.) There is a chapter on suburbia, and what an awful mess that has made of human sociability, particularly because you have to get in your car to go anywhere.

   It's one of those books that lots of people have read, but many more people have heard of and mean to get around to reading. It's very good and very thought-provoking. I read it more or less when it came out, and it has stayed with me ever since. (I did re-read it about 10 years ago.)

   With respect to the article, the automobile is one of those things that has changed society so thoroughly—and which seemed like such a great idea at the time—that most people can't even imagine the impact or what they've lost. We just take it for granted.

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5. 0x4f3759dfJun 2018
   Jim Kunstler's podcast is good when he doesn't veer off into peak oil civilizational collapse speculation http://kunstler.com/writings/podcast/

   Granola Shotgun https://granolashotgun.com/

   http://www.andrewalexanderprice.com/

   I really enjoyed the books 'The Great Good Place' by Oldenberg , 'Streets are for People' by Rudufsky and the Geography of Nowhere by Kunstler

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6. iraphaelJul 2017
   What I don't like about the hyperloop is its focus on cars as a solution to the transportation problem. Mass transit can be way more efficient and desirable, as well as allow pedestrians to take back city life.

   A great book on topics related to this is "The Great Good Place" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Good_Place_(Oldenbur...

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