Long live the corner cafe

The economic sky might be falling, but here I am at Starbucks in Koreatown fretting over the death of the cafe. Really. Last Sunday's New York Times had a story about the decline of traditional cafes and bars in France -- there were 200,000 in 1960 and today there are only 41,500 -- and it made my heart sink. I mean, if the French are losing the art of sitting around in public doing nothing together, what hope do we Calvinistic Americans have?

You think I'm kidding. But if the economy does tank totally, all we've really got is each other, and I fear we don't even have that anymore. Yes, you may have just spent a long Thanksgiving weekend with your extended family, but that's not the kind of togetherness I'm worried about losing. Here in the U.S., we fetishize family to the detriment of our collective civic life. Our academics mourn the loss of "social capital." They're upset that we're "bowling alone." Fancy foundations give money to bolster "civic engagement." Come on, Americans, they tell us, start interacting with each other again.

The academics and the foundations are on the right track, but there is a problem with their approach to improving civic life. They tend to want people to come together with some sort of common purpose or agenda. They are so mired in the realm of policy and politics, they don't understand that what Americans need is more nonrational, nonpurposeful interaction with people with whom they have no natural common cause.

Not that there's anything wrong with common cause. The campaign was a bright spot in social engagement, on both sides, but especially for the blues: huge rallies, armies of volunteers and high voter turnout.

But one grass-roots campaign isn't enough to turn around the fact that public life is still in steep decline in the U.S., or that we're becoming increasingly less likely to talk to -- let alone pal around with -- people who don't share our worldview or party affiliation. That's where cafes and bars and diners come in.

It's been two decades since sociologist Ray Oldenburg wrote "The Great Good Place," his homage to "third places" -- neither work nor home -- that help us get through life. "The structure of the urban, industrialized society is not conducive to good human relations," he wrote. "Its high degree of specialization brutalizes many of the relationships people have with one another. The resulting compartmentalization ... leaves individuals ignorant of the 'interests, ideas, habits, problems, likes and dislikes' of those not in their own group." Coffeehouses, corner bars and restaurants free people from "the obligations of social roles and the styles and demeanor with which those roles must be played. Here, individuals may uncork that which other situations require them to bottle up."