[keiferski]

I don’t think true third places really exist in the Western world anymore, at least on a large scale. If you read about the history of coffee houses in Vienna or in Istanbul, they were entirely different from the commercial-product focused coffee shop of today. In such places, the coffee was almost an afterthought, secondary to the social life that went on there.

The heyday of the coffee house was the turn of the nineteenth century when writers like Peter Altenberg, Alfred Polgar, Egon Friedell, Karl Kraus, Hermann Broch and Friedrich Torberg made them their preferred place of work and pleasure. Many famous artists, scientists, and politicians of the period such as Arthur Schnitzler, Stefan Zweig, Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt, Adolf Loos, Theodor Herzl, and Alfred Adler.[15] Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Leon Trotsky and Josip Broz Tito were all living in Vienna in 1913, and they were constant coffee house patrons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viennese_coffee_house

Ottoman era coffeehouses democratized education across all stratums of society. Because individuals from a variety of backgrounds gathered in these coffeehouses, illiterate or low literacy people could sit alongside educated individuals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_coffeehouse

I’m not sure such places could exist in a world with smartphones and to-go drinks.

[dzonga]

smartphones - it's only consumption of information not filtering of information that would be allowed by discussion.

hence why we've so much misinformed citizenry.

Thanks for the links