I step through the open doorway into the 135 Café: since coming back to Toronto, the creative Trinity-Bellwoods café has become my regular place for work and inspiration mining. I have to order at the open garage window, but despite the convenience, my ritual is to walk right in and see what they have on the pour-over bar. An interesting El Salvador single origin piques my interest – between conversation about the day, I confer with the barista about what he recommending: he likes the El Salvador confirming it's clean and juicy, but recommends the Ethiopian instead. In these third wave cafes, I have come to appreciate the suggestions of the barista's - most of them excited and engaged with the different coffees they are serving. Besides I know full well I will be trying the other after an hour of work or so.

The moment is a typical one of the third wave café[MT1] : ensured quality of brew, easygoing friendships between staff and visitors that gently challenge  the boundaries between server and customer, and in effect business and community. These cafés grew out of the branded second wave coffee movement: from a place where you grab a quick pick me up, to a simple place to sit alone, and above all else its consistent quality. Third wave is creating a scene of its own in urban social spheres, making strides in the vision of community-oriented venues beyond being entirely transactional. Spaces are now being reimagined as contributions to the complex social relations, and creators of experiential hospitality through quality food and beverage. It appears that perhaps, these third wave spaces offer potential to bridge the gaps in our increasingly separated, digital lives.

Coffee in Waves

Café types in North America are described in ‘waves’: each wave builds upon the quality of coffee and the community which surrounds it. The coffee culture of North America was stunted in comparison to that of Europe which has had cafes since the mid 17th Century. The First wave in North America could be described by the post-war proliferation of Folgers-type home and diner coffee. The beginnings of a regular relationship with coffee was built into American life[1] through individual mom and pop cafés and diners. The typical second wave café, brought into force in the turn of the 21st Century, is exemplified in the successes of chain cafés (Starbucks, Second Cup etc.): the spaces are familiarly branded, and focused on efficiency of the production of drink over a social sphere. The spaces of customer and server are separated by a high bar at one side of the open space, and seating that is geared toward the individual[2], thus cutting off most informal social interactions in these spaces. [DHB2] 

The corporate atmosphere became a familiar place for a diverse collection of people globally at these recognizable branded spaces[3]. However, despite the diversity, the “branded space”[4] of the second wave café has created a business model which attracts customers through “the being with others while remaining anonymous,”[5] and the fetishization of consumption[6]. The result: a social sphere which has made it almost impolite to intermingle with disparate groups of customers and has created a standard of transactional relationships with servers to a point of impersonality.[7] This has become the social practice which many North American cafés have followed and perfected. To center itself on efficiency, the relationships to servers and the relationship to the craft of coffee making are reduced to brief transactional moments. This reduction  created a normalized and non-generative social sphere in these cafés. 

The coffee industry is larger globally than ever before because of the second wave cafe, however this movement has left out the true potential of the café as seen in other contexts. Third wave cafes, or specialty cafes, are often independent businesses with nested focus on quality, connoisseurship of coffee, and origin sourcing of coffee. In the span of about two decades, they have been able to center themselves more effectively on the social potential of the café. The rich history of the café is dotted with times when work, business, home life, leisure, and class interconnection were experienced. The third wave has begun again to nest itself in local contexts, with the addition of craft coffee and social systems to establish novel potential for collective social production. [MT3] 

Development of the European Café

  The societal contexts which the café developed within brought different social aspects into emphasis. After its initial export from Asia Minor to England, the English Coffee House proliferated in its urban centers. It came into the country at the beginning of the industrial revolution and was promoted by aristocrats to replace the pub house in public culture, and accordingly ushered in a new age of production in England.[8] Many cafés gained reputations as centers for specific clienteles: academic, political, business, etc,. and were colloquially dubbed “Penny Universities”[9].

The interiors were designed to be similar to the domestic interiors but with more robust furnishing[10]. Patrons were expected to sit at long tables and fill the seats at the table regardless of status or familiarity. The coffee houses were idealized as scenes of debate and business and are often compared to early instances of the internet and stock markets. The generative power of the café as a space angled to spontaneous connections in public..

In France, the coffee house was inflected to the Continental Café and became a familiar form to those in Europe today. The coffee house was blended with the traditional French bistro and the intellectual salons of the late Victorian period. The salon was well-recognized by the intelligentsia in France: often rooms in private residences, used for intellectual conversations and entertainment of like-minded peoples; however these were necessarily exclusive to the wealthy.

These spaces were effectively replaced by the proliferation of the café. The intelligentsia was dispersed to the public, democratizing thought and philosophy, which made intellectual movements more diverse. It also meant that these movements were nested in the public sphere, not floating loftily above it. The café was a revolutionary impact on the culture of France, especially in Paris: they hosted the intellectual and artistic movements of the early and mid-19th century like the surrealists (Andre Breton and Marcel Duchamp, as well as Dali and Picasso)[11] and the existentialists (Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir) who in turn influenced the rest of the world in arts and culture.

The café became an important institution in the public life of Paris because, like the coffee house, it was able to be flexible enough to incorporate the interests and trends of its customers. For the price of coffee and cheap meals, they were allowed to spend entire days in the café. The café became a place where regulars would gather and could “hold court”[12] with their compatriots, and draw inspiration from the public surround[13]. The café operated as a restaurant as well and could be “Further, the greater overlap of public and private created newly acceptable forms of public presence, such as the lone individual who goes to the café to write, read,52 or become a sort of sedentary flâneur by ‘people-watching,’”[14]. Furthermore, the café was unassuming and informal setting which could be appropriated to the needs of its patrons: Sartre once wrote: “We are completely settled there [, at the Café de Flore]; from nine o'clock in the morning until midday, we work, we eat, and at two o'clock we come back and chat with friends until eight o'clock. After dinner, we see people who have an appointment.”[15] The café was a place of social experimentation and became a better place to spend one’s day than at home, thus blurring the lines of work, and living spaces. Aided by coffee by day, and alcohol in the evenings, the café became a place which gave the customer the ability to bend the cafe environment to their own social wants, needs, and experiments instead of being prescriptive of a certain behavior or use. This freedom created the basis for the Parisian way of life in the 21st century, which was greatly envied and exported internationally. 

In this tradition, the cafés of the third wave have finally surpassed the transactional character of the first and second wave and has become a social force once again. The cities of North America are recapturing social experimentation in their contexts.

135, as an exemplary third wave café, has become nested in the informal aspects of these historical types: it makes space for interactive work, business relations, and challenges the social hierarchy. In the informal house-like interior one can find a space which best suits their needs among the loud and exuberant front space, the quiet back, and the front and back outdoor patios. The space hosts people’s mobile work and phone calls, all in the mix of drink preparation and active barista chess games. The outdoor garden has bench seating and is a quiet escape from the city for private conversation outside of the chaos of the street. There is never a sentiment that one has overstayed their welcome and the open interaction which is fostered seems to have a disarming effect on even the most avidly isolated workers.  135 allows for new connections and friendships to occur naturally. At the core of 135 are creative individuals who seem to frequent the space to network and share ideas, or simply use it as a second living room. 

Social Production in the Café

I sit alone among friends, at the back of the café and write a little in my journal. A passer-by compliments my handwriting and we get into a conversation about journaling. I find myself wondering: is there any other place which I would be happy to speak so openly about my personal writing? A place where you could give a stranger the benefit of the doubt they’re just curious and not soliciting? Maybe that’s just the reality of life in a city like Toronto- the silent agreement that I won’t waste your time if you won’t waste mine: any interruption is an act of violence against one’s autonomy and work.

One of the leading theorists on frameworks for understanding social space is urban Sociologist Ray Oldenburg. He theorizes that there are three major categories of spaces we occupy: the first space of home, the second space of work, and the third space in the public. The café was an exemplary social and public space[16]. These spaces, including bars, barber shops, and salons are the “sites for genuinely ‘public’ and civic life,”[17]. The third space has several key characteristics: it requires neutral ground in a public and accessible space; it is not pretentious, barring none based on social status or requirement of formality[18]. Playful conversation is at the center of the third place, with a capacity to create a community of regulars who find the place a “home away from home”[19]. Thus, the third place can become a key aspect of people’s daily social lives and help to develop a vitality in public life and social environments. The implications of which extend beyond simply getting one’s fill of social interaction.

According to Alex Bernson, a social theorist and experienced café owner, third spaces are a necessary aspect in the development of social meaning. He extends Judith Butler’s theory of gender construction to include the creation of any social meaning. For Butler the solidification of definitions of gender identity in society occurs “through the continual repetition of identity performances”[20]. This is not dissimilar to the existential phenomenon “I create myself constantly through action,”[21]. In our repeated actions in public and private, as well as observation of others’ performances, we create a ‘gestalt’[22]: intuitive understanding of the structure and patterning of social meaning. These are continuously unfolding processes which affect spaces and the social interactions which occur within them: “the specific, nuanced social identity of a given café is constructed out of and reproduced by the stylized performances that occur within said café”[23].

This phenomenon is pervasive in many spaces which we inhabit; through the relationships of customer to server, and customer to customer tend to be in siloed separation. The corporate café entrenches these relations, and therefore is a conservative space. For this process to challenge current social norms, acting generatively toward new social structures, patterns, and performances, requires a degree of informality and comfort for the users. They must themselves experiment and, as in Oldenburg’s third space, have a fluidity of hierarchy and control[24]. The café is an ideal and safe environment for this interaction to begin, and in the third wave it has.[MT4] 

The 135 café is built on these types of social interactions. The baristas take on an active role in the life of the space: often acting as part of the overall conversation and only taking moments out to serve transient customers.[MT5]  The bar is low and sits with wide breadth in the center of the space. It is not uncommon to see some customers, usually other baristas off-shift, come and pull an espresso shot when service is slow. The life of the café is highly fluid: customers are challenged upon entering to differentiate between server and customer and to engage with the fluidity of the service. This central accommodation for nearly constant liveliness gives the space a beating heart and creates its vital social environment.

Public Privatism and Social Interaction

I see another pair join me in the back space, I instinctively move my backpack to make room, and say hello to the newcomers. After they settle in to working on their laptops, a chorus of laughter comes up from the front and all of us lean over to see what just happened. I remark “Jeez, this place just makes you want to throw your work out just to be part of it!” The newest pair were first-time customers and agreed vehemently – “It isn’t obtrusive, this place makes you feel like you’re already part of the commotion when you walk in! It’s too interesting not to want to engage.”

An important caveat to the contemporary café’s social sphere is the advent of personal digital devices. Connectivity through Wi-Fi access, cafés often offer instant connection to extant social webs which also allows for computer work. There has been some concern with this phenomenon in social science: termed “public privatism”, it is the separation from people physically around one another through online connections[25].

In a café space, public privatism effectively bifurcates[MT7]  the clientele of a café into “True Mobiles” and “Place-makers”.[26] The true mobile is “one [who] gives to another enough visual notice to demonstrate that one appreciates that the other is present (and admits openly to have seen him), while the next moment withdrawing one’s attention from him so as to express that he does not constitute a target of special curiosity,”[27] while the place-maker is open to what they have in front of them and welcomes unwarranted or spontaneous interaction. Indeed, it is why they are there in the first place[28]. [MT8] It is a question of openness to the people surrounding. The phenomena of these two is seen in Coworking spaces as well: most digital workers understand the need to be out of house[29], but also wish to respect the workers around them and thus may not engage with them. This only perpetuates the possibility of a stagnant and separated social sphere in the café which many cafés avoid by removing plugs or setting time limits on computer work.

Working individuals have become a staple of the contemporary café, especially with the advent of digital work. Nigel Wang, in his other more corporate café, Carbonic on Baldwin Street in Toronto, saw the culture of the café being unduly stifled by reliance on digital work. He’s tired of the impersonal culture which his first café exemplified, despite its success as a business. He was aware of the social numbing he experienced in his other space as anonymous students came and went, remaining on their computers without interest in interacting with the people around them. So, he opened 135 for the express purpose of conversation and connections. He wanted to capitalize on the unique quality of the café to be a space where people can come together.

In the cafe's informality, anyone can find a space which best suits their needs. Many people are working and engaging passively in the conversations which surround them. The back space is often populated by “public mobiles”, however the exuberance at the front draws their attention. They become “place-makers'' and are not the center of the café’s social life, but part of it. The garden and bench seating are a beautiful escape from the city for private conversation separate from the front of house. Like coffee houses, one does not feel that they have overstayed their welcome: the open interaction allows for new connections.

In the intermixing of the space of a house-like interior, it has affected the type of worker who comes into the café regularly, or at least changed the relationship people may have with the space and the public within it. It is the inverse to the impersonal comfort which one feels with a branded space like that of Starbucks: familiarity is not made through stripped down, efficient spatial arrangement but by the attraction to the intermingling of customers and baristas to the point where the culture is barely even transactional. There is a new community which has emerged from the café which takes advantage of its nestedness in the south end of Ossington Street. This makes 135 a destination unique among the cafes in the area.

The Cafe as a Generative Space

The café has blurred Oldenburg’s three places by creating homely environments in which social interaction and work are fostered. It has thus opened any possibility of aesthetic combination or specialization for the degree to which a specific café takes on any of the three spaces’ characteristics. In this way, the café also allowed for generative social interactions which can bridge the gaps in antisocial public life which is created by overly branded and controlled space.

Therefore, there are two routes which cafés can take: first, the corporate, efficient, non-spaces which we may find ignore local conditions in favor of global familiarity with their branded space. The second is nested, contextual, and varied based specifically on the users; certain cafés can become a medium for individuals to experiment and establish new ways of being among others; this being closely aligned with Oldenburg’s third place but has now come to include aspects of the other two.

Conclusion

Many third wave café spaces have these characteristics in varying degrees. The variance is an important aspect of the experimentation which the café allows for. There is a place for everyone in some sort of café; however, the pitfall of the café is when scalability and profit replace nestedness in the communities which it is trying to enhance. Rigidity of social interaction begins once the cafe trades a generative social atmosphere to entrench a brand, a certain and fixed lens through which patrons are asked to perform within.

The café can be a breeding ground for social meaning unique among other public programs. Breaking the delineation between public, private and work spaces is the key to generating novel relationships between people and space in urban life. In a time of increasing change in our cities due to technological integration and changes in work-life relationships brought on by the global pandemic, there is again great need for social dynamic construction and critical discourse, all of which can be fostered in the space of the café.[MT9] 

My caffeine high begins to dissipate, and the baristas are starting their cleanup. As the night fell, I felt the warmth of the café envelop me, I felt at home, like I could just go upstairs to bed. The customers slowed, the last ones came in a while ago chatting with the baristas over evening tea in low voices. The day was done, but I enjoyed the transient challenging moments, making me feel part of something new, something generative, something decidedly human.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

[1] Manzo, John. 2015. “‘Third-Wave’ Coffeehouses as Venues for Sociality: On Encounters Between Employees and                    Customers.” Qualitative Report 20 (6): 14. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2015.2141.

[2] Bernson, A. C. 2011. “The Social Space of The Café: How Service and Physical Design Condition Social             Performances.” Wesleyan University. 49. https://doi.org/10.14418/wes01.1.1662.

[3] Jones, Hannah, Sarah Neal, Giles Mohan, Kieran Connell, Allan Cochrane, and Katy Bennett. 2015. “Urban             Multiculture and Everyday Encounters in Semi-Public, Franchised Cafe Spaces.” The Sociological Review            (Keele) 63 (3): 644–61. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-954X.12311.

[4] Steigemann, Anna Marie. 2017. “Social Practices in a Café: Community through Consumption?”    Geographica Helvetica 72 (1): 45–54. https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-72-45-2017.

[5] Bookman, Sonia. 2014. “Brands and Urban Life: Specialty Coffee, Consumers, and the Co-Creation of Urban                   Café Sociality.” Space and Culture 17 (1): 85–99. https://doi.org/10.1177/1206331213493853.

[6] Steigemann, Anna Marie. “Social Practices in a Café: Community through Consumption?” 45–54.

[7] Bernson, A. C. 2011. “The Social Space of The Café.” 1-233.

[8] Pollan, Michael. Caffeine. Audible, n.d.                                                                                        Accessed through audiobook form.

[9]  Bernson, A. C. 2011. “The Social Space of The Café.” 1-233.

[10] Bernson, A. C. 2011. “The Social Space of The Café.” 1-233.

[11] Roe, Sue August. “At the Birth of Surrealism in Montparnasse, 1913.” Literary Hub, August 18, 2019. https://lithub.com/at-the-birth-of-surrealism-in-montparnasse-1913/.

[12] Bakewell, Sarah. At the Existentialist Café. 12.

[13] Bakewell, Sarah. At the Existentialist café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails with Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone              De Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and                        Others, 12. New York: Other Press, 2016.

[14] Bernson, A. C. 2011. “The Social Space of The Café.” 39.

[15] “The Flore: A Café for Poets, and Then Philosophers.” Café de Flore in Paris, 2013. https://web.archive.org/web/20150924064530/http://www.paris-bistro.com/english/histoire_flore.html.

[16] Manzo, John. 2015. “‘Third-Wave’ Coffeehouses as Venues for Sociality: On Encounters Between Employees and                    Customers.” Qualitative Report 20 (6): 14. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2015.2141.

[17] Manzo, John. “‘Third-Wave’ Coffeehouses as Venues for Sociality.” 14.

[18] Myers, Pete. “Going Home: Essays, Articles, and Stories in Honour of the Andersons.” Google Books. 37. Google. Accessed October 22, 2021. https://books.google.ca/books?id=ja_1AwAAQBAJ&pg=PA37&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false.

[19] Myers, Pete. “Going Home: Essays, Articles, and Stories in Honour of the Andersons.” Google Books. 37.             Google. Accessed October 22, 2021.                                                                                                                          https://books.google.ca/books?id=ja_1AwAAQBAJ&pg=PA37&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false.

[20] Bernson, A. C. 2011. “The Social Space of The Café.” 12.

[21] Bakewell, Sarah. At the Existentialist café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails with Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone De Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Others, 6. New York: Other Press, 2016.

[22] Zwicky, Jan. The Experience of Meaning. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2019.

[23] Bernson, A. C. 2011. “The Social Space of The Café.” 12.

[24] Myers, Pete. “Going Home: Essays, Articles, and Stories in Honour of the Andersons.” Google Books. 37. Google. Accessed October 22, 2021. https://books.google.ca/books?id=ja_1AwAAQBAJ&pg=PA37&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false.

[25] Hampton, Keith N, and Neeti Gupta. “Community and Social Interaction in the Wireless City.” 831–50.

[26] Hampton, Keith N, and Neeti Gupta. “Community and Social Interaction in the Wireless City.” 831–50.

[27] Hampton, Keith N, and Neeti Gupta. “Community and Social Interaction in the Wireless City.” 831–50.

[28] Hampton, Keith N, and Neeti Gupta. “Community and Social Interaction in the Wireless City.” 831–50.

[29] Bilandzic, Mark, and Marcus Foth. 2013. “Libraries as Coworking Spaces: Understanding User                                 Motivations and Perceived Barriers to Social Learning.” Library Hi Tech 31 (2): 254–73.            https://doi.org/10.1108/07378831311329040.