The end of interest-based 3rd places is one of the many things contributing to the compartmentalization / socioeconomic bubble of modern society.

People used to frequent in person things like specialty retailers, arcades, hobby clubs, religious groups, etc. When you meet real life people in person based on shared interests, you make connections across socioeconomic groups.

I just don't see nearly as much of this in todays society as 20+ years ago.

People with kids sometimes experience this via all the activities they take their kids to, but even there a lot of kids activities have become economically stratified. Instead of playing in the local $50/year rec baseball league, there's tiers of travel teams to meet any budget.

It's a societal problem, mainly in the West. Many cultures around the world don't have this issue.

When I was living in Iran, we didn't need a hobby club to meet people, you just picked up the phone and everyone came over. I have vivid memories of going on trips with 5 cars filled with people

When I went to Peru with my wife to meet her extended family, it was very similar. Heck you can just randomly talk to people and meet them. At 9PM, the streets are exploding with people in Arequipa or Tehran.

The biggest difference is that in the West, people have the idea of "personal space", which doesn't really exist in some culture. People are seen more as one, rather than many. Of course this has its own downsides, but I suppose nothing is perfect.

> People with kids sometimes experience this via all the activities they take their kids to

This is something welcome I didn’t expect to come from parenthood. Like many others I had thought to myself “how do you even make new friends in your thirties?!” and then once I had kids… bam. New friendship groups.

For us the local park and playground are a great equalizer in terms of economic stratification. But when the weather turns bad it rears its head again as people head to $50 a go trampoline parks and the like.

Public school is another unifier, of course. I’m in NYC and our preschool was very obviously not a reflection of the neighborhood or city around us. But once my kids entered the city-funded Pre-K they started to meet a ton of kids from different backgrounds. It’s very different from the childhood I had but I’m very glad my kids have it.

Yea, agreed completely here.

I spent so many hours at our local mall with my friends growing up. It had an arcade, a movie theater, book store, game store, place to eat. Our parents could just drop us there for hours. Skating rinks and bowling alleys were also a solid option.

It's one of the things that make it worth the time investment to follow sports, even if you're typically not interested in it. Getting people together to watch the game, go to games, tailgate, etc is huge.

Putnam's "Bowling Alone" (2000) is about this, and it is something that has been in decline since the 1950s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone.

The internet has largely replaced / substituted this, which has been a mixed thing. Like minded people in smaller niches have been able to find each other online for example, much more than IRL, and much more at long range / internationally. It's made the world a smaller place, at the cost of knowing people closer to home.