Do you know the meaning behind the name of our bookstore? I didn’t know the backstory behind it until I started working here as a bookseller, so I feel it’s important to bring it up. The name originates from a theory proposed by sociologist Ray Oldenberg that says every person needs three places: first is your home; second is your workplace or school; and third is your community. A place where people from all walks of life can come together and both experience and celebrate their commonality as well as their diversity. It is a ‘third place’.

'Tis the season to express gratitude, and boy, do I have plenty of people to thank! Since April, I have been the point person for our Books to Students Fund, an ongoing fundraiser to support students across the greater Seattle area during the COVID-19 school closures. 

There was a time when I would, fairly frequently, go to see concerts alone. I lived more than an hour from Seattle then, but I would duck out of work early on a Friday and drive to see whoever was in town. I had just gone through the breakup of a long-term relationship, and was experiencing the very specific mix of scrutiny and isolation that comes, in the wake of such a thing, in a town still small enough somehow for people to know you.

With our stores closed and the future of social gatherings uncertain, our booksellers have been talking a lot about what it means to be a Third Place in the time of quarantine.

In this age of quarantine, we all have something in common. Until a few weeks ago, most of us had three separate and distinct “places” in our lives: our homes, our workplaces, and our third places – those places for, well, just about everything else. These third places are where we engage in essential social experiences, where we come together, where we meet friends, practice our hobbies, and express ourselves.

Three different activities, three different identities, built on a lifetime of habit. And for the last few weeks, they have all been reduced to one place: Our homes.