Sociologists call it the third place — the spot that is neither home nor work where a community actually happens. Abe, who runs a shop and a lounge in Texas, arrived at the same idea from the shop floor and calls it something slightly different.
Somewhere Other Than Work And Home
Speaking on Unscripted Cannabis, Abe described what he is actually building — and note he says second place, not third:
“giving people a second place to, you know, other than work, work in home to come by and hang out and just be yourself and, you know, express their thoughts whether it’s through comedy or music or, you know, whatever.”
— Abe, Abe’s Smoke Shop
He is clear that this is a deliberate strategy rather than an accident of footfall: “we’re really trying to change the culture of things” and “we’re thinking long-term here. We’re not just thinking short-term with the… sales and all that.”
Why Towns Lost Their Third Places
Abe’s own diagnosis is comparative:
“You know how like back then you could just go to the coffee shop and play cards with the guys at the shop or whatever, or like go to a coffee place and meet up with people. You know, I think America’s really lacking on that.”
— Abe
And his observation about what that costs is the part worth quoting to anyone planning a community programme: “You go to other countries and… People are happier with less because you know, it’s just more of a community type thing.”
He puts it simply: “community is super important.”
An Event As A Temporary Third Place
Our extension of his point. Most towns cannot conjure a permanent third place on demand — that requires someone like Abe to take on a lease and a risk.
What a town can do is create temporary ones. A cleanup morning is a third place with a two-hour lifespan: neutral ground, a shared purpose that is not commercial, no host and no guest, and a reason to talk to someone you would not otherwise meet.
The design detail that makes or breaks it is the twenty minutes afterwards. If everyone drops their bags and drives off, you ran a work party. Coffee, somewhere to sit, and nobody in a hurry turns it into the thing Abe is describing.
Turning Attendance Into Something Recurring
Abe’s model is repetition — “a lot of comedy, a lot of music, a lot of different events” — and he notes it worked well enough that others copied it: “it kind of became a trend after we did it.”
The same applies at community scale. A single annual event produces a photograph. A monthly one produces regulars, and regulars are what a third place is made of.
Set the next date before people leave the current one. It is the single highest-leverage thing you can do on the day.