Cafe, restaurants, and bars are what Ray Oldenburg calls the the third place. It’s a place outside of home and the workplace where you spend time hanging with you friends, socializing, and building community. These places have always been important throughout the course of our history.
According to the New York Times, in France, these establishments are having some problems.
“The bar of a cafe is the parliament of the people,” as Honoré de Balzac wrote, but it is being less frequently visited these days, especially by the young.
Not only are the French spending less, and drinking less, cutting down on the intensity and quality of the debates…
This is sad. Hopefully this trend won’t work its way to the United States.
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