Article should be titled 'The Lost Civic Life of Mom and Pop Stores'- no kid making $4.50 an hour is cultivating a third space atmosphere at Blockbuster, whereas any Mom and Pop place can do that, no matter what they sell.

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steveBK123 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I was thinking about the loss of local shops a lot recently. There's definitely a confluence of factors at play, and it's not just price economics vs online & big box.

One thing I think is that theres just never enough time. Everyone is so over-scheduled. The white collar work day really has expanded vs what I remember my dad doing 30-40 years ago. There's more two income households than in the past. Parenting is far more active for both parents than it's ever been, and kids are being shuttled between events all weekend.

Most local shops are not open past 5pm or at best 6pm, and often closed Sunday. Who is off work by then to stop by?

Easier to click buy on amazon, and stop by the big box store after dinner Saturday open til 9pm for anything you need sooner.

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bix6 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Was just talking with an older colleague about this. Work used to end Friday afternoon. The amount of emails I get (and send) over the weekend means there is truly never any off time.

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liveoneggs 2 hours ago | parent [-]

reading and responding to those on the weekend is your choice

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bix6 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah that’s a privileged point of view. You lose clients if you aren’t responsive enough.

	▲	blitzar 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah that’s a privileged point of view. You lose your job if you aren’t responsive enough.

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afavour 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It isn’t, really. If it’s the expected norm in your job then there’s a real chance you’ll lose your job if you don’t do it. And particularly the kind of jobs market we see today that’s a real risk.

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threetonesun 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't think that's really what we've lost. Blockbuster was a third space not because of its staff, but because it was a place you could say "meet me here" and hang out looking at movies with no (or very little) expected monetary output. Same as arcades in the mall, or cheap matinee movies. A better framing might be where would a teenager, today, say "meet me here" to their friends. I think you'll find there's many fewer around you today than there was 20 years ago.

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everforward 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That doesn’t match my experience if your bar is really as low as “won’t throw you out for not buying anything”.

Obvious anecdata, but within an easy walk or bike radius of me (a couple miles) there are 3 public libraries, something like half a square mile of parks, a few public basketball courts, a few public tennis courts, a public baseball field, a bar over the baseball field that welcomes children (it’s one of the veterans things and has board games and what not), at least a dozen other businesses that don’t care if you buy anything, and your usual litany of Walmart kind of places that can’t be bothered to track who is buying and who isn’t.

I don’t have any issues finding places to hang out for free, and I use them, but they’re pretty sparsely used so it’s not as 3rd space as it used to be.

Eg I walk my dogs most mornings, and I rarely see more than 1 other person at the park or dog park at 7 or 8am.

It feels to me like 3rd spaces are disappearing because people don’t use them, rather than people don’t use them because they don’t exist.

	▲	pseingatl an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Consider yourself very lucky if your public libraries are not daycare for the homeless.

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pimlottc 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Definitely, and renting a video itself was often a communal activity. You'd be hanging out with your friends or family and get the hankering to see a movie, so you all pile in the car together and see what they had. You'd argue back and forth about this movie or that movie, and you had to be flexible since your first pick might not be in stock. Strangers would give you suggestions or you'd see what was recommended by the staff. Lots of times you'd end up taking up something completely different than what you had planned.

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pseingatl an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

We are unfair to teenagers today; give them no place to go and then we feign surprise when they act up. According to Harper's, there's a 20% decline in kids playing baseball--their noses are in their iPads. You can't take children to the mall because malls are dying. Too many parks are places where bad things happen. I don't know what the solution is.

	▲	xp84 12 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Not only that, the tween years used to be when you developed the skills of independence that you'd hopefully more or less be able to use to be a teenager. A 9 or 10-year-old would have permission to walk or bike around the neighborhood, to and from school, maybe to a nearby shopping center or corner store... Today they're kept under lock and key for that whole time since we're afraid of having the cops called on us for "unsupervised children walking" by insane people. Teens don't even know how to bridge the gap between "fully chaperoned child" and "adult" so when they are unsupervised they get into trouble, and when they become adults they are so unconfident they do things like choosing college not because they have a passion for a subject, or for learning, or a career interest, but because when you're enrolled in college they arrange your life's schedule and assign you a living space without you having to handle any of the complexity yourself. Great job, Gen-X parents.

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triceratops 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Malls still exist. As do public libraries, community rec centers, gyms, and pools.

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autoexec 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Malls have been in decline for decades. Public pools barely exist anymore either. (https://www.poolmagazine.com/pool-news/america-is-losing-pub...). If you're in a wealthy city you probably still have a decent community center. Libraries are probably the most common space avilable, but they are also under constant attack by republicans. In wealthy cities you can find all kinds of services there. Smaller libraries will have some areas for reading and meeting.

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triceratops 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> Malls have been in decline for decades

People voted with their wallets.

> public libraries are under constant attack by republicans

Voters get the services they vote for.

All of us are to blame.

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autoexec an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> Voters get the services they vote for.

It's hard to feel bad about a small backwoods town of idiots who vote to shut down their public libraries (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/book-ban-lgbtq-jamestown-michig...) but there are efforts on the federal level too (https://www.ala.org/faq-executive-order-targeting-imls). Right wing nutjobs all over the country have been threatening library staff and calling in bomb threats and we can't vote them out

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jimbokun an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

True but not very constructive.

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triceratops 15 minutes ago | parent [-]

Pointing out the cause of the problem is not constructive?

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xp84 8 minutes ago | parent [-]

If I'm having a problem with a server and you commented "Former sysadmin was dumb and lazy, so they misconfigured it" (and you're correct) is that constructive?

I think we mostly all agree that we as a society caused the problem, but we can't go back and undo that. Constructive would be coming up with ways we can, given the past did take place, improve things going forward.

	▲	triceratops 5 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I disagree with your analogy. I'm pointing out specific mistakes in the former sysadmin's misconfiguration. And also that the misconfiguration can be rolled back. We can vote for politicians that fund projects and facilities for general use and welfare. We can congregate more in the malls and community centers and bowling alleys (and churches too, if that's your style), that we still have. The loss of community isn't irreversible. Yet.

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threetonesun 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Malls barely exist, at least compared to the way they did 20 years ago. I wasn't arguing all third spaces are gone, but even of the ones you did note I'd bet in most communities their funding/availability has decreased in that time period.

	▲	triceratops 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Malls barely exist, at least compared to the way they did 20 years ago Presumably because people spend less money there than they used to. > I'd bet in most communities their funding/availability has decreased in that time period. It's one of the tragedies of our age. The inability to fund anything for the common good.

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pseingatl an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Malls are dying. Many are closed. Public libraries are daycare for the homeless and parents are afraid to leave their children. Your other options may be well-run, but all suffer from a lack of funding and staffing. Pools aren't a year-round thing, even in the South.

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msisk6 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Whenever I see these sorts of stories I think about the civic life we're missing out on by not socially gathering with our neighbors to hunt down woolly mammoths with sharp sticks so we don't all collectively starve to death.

The way things are going maybe we'll get back to those wonderful days. ;)

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bix6 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Sounds a lot more fun to me than sitting in front of a computer all day.

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Cthulhu_ 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Availability and legality of wooly mammoths aside, what's stopping you? Pointy stick hunting sounds like a great weekend activity.

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criddell an hour ago | parent [-]

A bunch of families in the town I grew up in bought a fairly large cabin together in northern Ontario they just called "the hunting camp". My family wasn't involved but I got to go up there quite a few times as a guest of my friends.

In theory, the adults were hunting or fishing (although not with pointy sticks). In reality they were smoking, drinking, playing cards, screwing around on the little boat and atvs that were there (three wheelers!), and telling lies around a campfire. Us kids were pretty much on our own the entire time. We too were smoking, drinking, and screwing around on the boat and atvs.

So I agree with you- pointy stick hunting is a great weekend activity.

	▲	xp84 7 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		God, that sounds like absolute paradise. Either as a kid or a grown-up.

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pimlottc 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Places don't need to be curated to have value as civic spaces, although it certainly helps. Seniors hang out at the local McDonalds, car modding enthusiasts gather in strip mall parking lots, singles meet at the dog park...

Any place you have to physically go to provides a chance for social interaction. To debate your friends over what movie to pick, to comment on your neighbor's selections, to ask a clerk for a recommendation. Are these pretty slight? Sure, but life is made fuller by these minor brushes, and you never know which ones will unexpectedly bloom into something more.

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liveoneggs 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

half the article is nostalgia for the blockbuster job