Third Space
During our last Saturday in Baltimore, my husband and I invited our friends to join us at the 32nd Street Farmers Market for a goodbye gathering.
We set up at one of the round wooden tables in Waverly Commons with chocolate chip cookies. Friends came and went. Ruth stopped by with her husband Hasan. I met her through Story Seeds, a story gathering project I facilitated at the 32nd Street Farmers Market over the course of three years. Clif, a frequent Farm to Face customer, arrived at the end of the market as usual. Michelle and Jen brought the whole barangay. In all their years living in Baltimore, they had never visited the Market, and they eagerly tried the Thai curry, sticky mango rice, and cold pressed juice.
More than saying goodbye to individual people, on that day I needed to say goodbye to the Market, the place that had made Baltimore feel like home the past four years.
The feeling of “at homeness” is one trait of a third place, as Ray Oldenburg defines in The Great Good Places. Distinct from the first place (home) and the second place (work), a third place is an “informal meeting place.” Oldenburg writes that these three places need to be distinct from each other and honored for their unique role in creating a “good life.”
“You don’t have to make an appointment to meet anyone at the market. You can just show up and be.” This reflection, shared by a community member at a Story Seeds stand, reflects a key component of a third place.
Status is “checked at the door,” as Oldenburg writes, meaning that celebrity chefs like John Shields can be seen sorting peaches and apples at Black Rock Orchard alongside Barbara, who is filling her basket to make a cobbler for church. As Barbara rattles off all the things she wants to capture on her Story Seed, a stranger sees her husband’s Rouses Markets tote bag, a grocery store in New Orleans. The stranger is from New Orleans and is excited by this shared home.
Of all the characteristics Oldenburg describes, I think novelty distinguishes third places from other communities. As he writes, “…the activity that goes on in third places is largely unplanned, unscheduled, unorganized, and unstructured. … It is just these deviations from the middle-class penchant for organization that give the third place much of its character and allure and that allow it to offer a radical departure from the routines of home and work.” For Johns Hopkins University student Sara Kaufman, the 32nd Street Farmers Market offers an anchor point, a break from the academic grind, and a place to “take a deep breath.”
Every person who shared a story with me through Story Seeds has a unique relationship to the Market. These stories point to a final characteristic of third places which I’ll highlight: appropriation. People take ownership when they consider a place “theirs,” often describing it in the first person (i.e. “This is our home market”). With that ownership, they’ll fight to protect and preserve it.
Story Seeds was about deepening personal investment in the community through storytelling. By asking people to reflect on their connection to the market, I hoped that they would see it as a shared space they belong to and want to sustain. Out of all the activities I led at the Market, physically creating Story Seeds proved most effective. People saw the seeds on the bulletin board, and they wanted to be a part of it.
This essay is a condensed chapter in Megan Lovely’s forthcoming memoir, Parking Lot Magic, to be released in Fall 2025. Learn more and receive updates about the book, including the release of pre-orders.