I’m lying in a grassy field, tucked away in the folds of Prospect Park—belly-down, feet swinging in the air. I hear birds chirping, and the warm air soothes my skin. I feel like I’m nestled in the rolling hills of a bucolic meadowland, somewhere far away from New York City. This space allows me to escape from the bustle of the city, while still being deeply in it.
I flip over onto my back and daydream while watching wispy clouds drift across the blue sky. A sweet, minty aroma flavors the air around me, snapping me back to reality. I realize that the clouds I had been romanticizing are actually being produced by a bright green Elf Bar, exhaled from the lips of lovers on a blanket about 20 feet away from me.
My daydream bubble has burst, but I smile to myself as I look around and notice the several other blankets where people have created their own little spaces, spending time—doing nothing, doing something. I love the idea of intentionally embracing the act of “doing nothing,” unapologetically taking time and space to detach from the to-do list and the toxic relationship with productivity that so many of us have. Especially in a busy city like New York City, even just resting on a park bench and watching the clouds can feel like a radical act.
But if I wanted, I could also do something. I could finally finish that book that’s been collecting dust on my dresser. I could gossip with the girls, I could get 10,000 steps on my iPhone Health app. I could run a half marathon! Or I could journal under the shade of a tree. The possibilities held in Prospect Park are limitless.
Prospect Park is an example of the “third place”—what American geographer Ray Oldenberg defined as informal public gathering places where we spend time outside of our “first” places (homes) and “second” places (work). This includes libraries, cafes, bars, and parks. Third places can even be a digital place, like a group chat with your friends, as long as it is a space where you spend time connecting to your community. Third places play important roles in society, like strengthening cultural connections and facilitating political demonstrations. Third spaces like Prospect Park are a social infrastructure that knits individuals into communities.
However, Oldenberg also notes that third places usually tend to be “individual commercial entities”—small local shops that provide a service and space for their community (who are also paying customers), like bars and cafes. In simpler words: most third places cost money. You must buy a coffee to sit at the cafe; you must purchase a beer to meet a friend at a pub. While there are still many free third places like public libraries and community gardens, socializing without spending money is still challenging. Many free third places are not accessible for long enough hours, and not appropriate for all social uses. For example, most of New York City’s community gardens close in the early evening, and going to the library to socialize with your friend group is not only, well, weird, but also can be a nuisance to others trying to work.
In New York City, one of the most unaffordable cities in the world, where the prospect of paying rent on time and covering the weekly grocery expenditure is daunting for so many—the act of simply hanging out outside of the home and work is increasingly difficult. Many young people feel anxiety about not being able to participate in social life because they cannot afford to spend money on drinks and food with each outing. Even worse, because spending money for socializing is so normalized, we can often confuse our financial anxiety with social anxiety, leading us to feel guilt for not going out. This financial insecurity leads to isolation and should be blamed on the high cost of maintaining a social urban lifestyle, not on ourselves.
I resent the idea that we must assume the role of a consumer to enjoy and engage with the people and places of our communities. Third places should make us feel connected, happy, and excited—not more stressed and broke. This is why free third places like Prospect Park are so precious. Every New Yorker should have the right to deeply accessible and vibrant third spaces where they can participate in their community, to share common interests, to organize, to rest, to heal, to do nothing, without participating in the cultures of commodification surrounding much of the urban social fabric.
Prospect Park is not perfect—like many other urban green spaces, it has a history of driving gentrification in the surrounding neighborhoods. It is not easily accessible for the many BIPOC and low-income communities of Brooklyn who lack green spaces in their own neighborhoods. I often think about how so many of our most adored green spaces are there because of conflict-driven, and violent, processes of displacement. Like the development of Central Park in New York City—only there for us to enjoy because the city used eminent domain to acquire the land under what used to be Seneca Village, the first neighborhood in the city to be founded by free Black Americans, and flatten the neighborhood, entirely dispersing its inhabitants.
Though Prospect Park did not displace such a large and concentrated community like Central Park did, I sit with the tension that even the precious third places I consider “free” were actually paid for at an insurmountable cost by the displaced predecessors, though that reality has been buried away under generations of urban life.
Yet still, while holding space for multiple truths at once, Prospect Park is a third place where many of us today can enjoy at no cost, liberated from the transactional chains of commercial third places.
Sure, going to the park is not that deep. Yet why does intentionally deciding to opt-out of the $37 spent at a bar that gentrified Washington Ave, and opt-in to spreading a blanket and cheese over crackers at the park feel like an act of rebellion against the capitalist status quo?
But what if we choose to make it that deep? Can going to the park reflect a framework of thinking that encourages us to opt-out of financialized third places—giving us agency to reclaim our attention, money, and time?
In a world where our ability to show up as consumers defines so much of our social lives, third places like Prospect Park can help us embody a pattern of liberation. Our ability to inspire, expand, and care for ourselves and our communities is much more important.
Meet you at Prospect, around 3 PM?
