Fun times, fun times …

So Dani got dragged on Reddit because she doesn’t know how to use Reddit and had the very audacity to be excited about her little corner of the warehouse that she hoped to fill with people like her, who work from home or have kids and houses that despite loving they need a break from that isn’t a bar. People who need to do their admin shite one day a week and want to do it where they can have a chat and a laugh and actually know the people around them. I told her not to fuck with the internet since she’s been off social media for years and it’s a poison pit of the worst people the world has yet produced. An amplifier for the shittiest, most uninformed opinions. But hey, she has never once listened to me, so why start now?

I told her that there are two types of people anyway, and the ones we want are probably going to have to be found in person, and the ones we don’t are too far gone in the modern mindset to even comprehend what this is, or realise that there are 13,000 square feet of really great shit just off to the left. That it is a whole half a city block of community and culture and a break from the bullshit.

They call them “third spaces” now, because intensive labelling is a neurotic obsession in the modern era. Nothing can just be normal, nor mundane. It must be interesting and different and make people feel special. The youth are discovering walking around or hanging out with their friends or not having their phones out at all times and then coining terms for these activities like they have not ever been conceived by mortal minds, let alone existed since we were still apes. Marketing and advertising (and politicians and city officials and influencers and corporate values posters) are so relentlessly full of shit that nothing means anything anyhow.

Regardless, that is what DO NOT START was designed to be. A “third space” or an informal community centre, “the spot” where all your friends and acquaintances are always at, a very large mom and pop establishment, etc. Terminology is irrelevant to a thing’s existence. “It is what it is,” to borrow a phrase.

The entire concept and execution are literally foreign to modern Americans, numbed by commodity, convenience, and hyper-accelerated culture. Everything is supposed to be corporate and slick, funded by a “development group” or outfitted floor to ceiling with whatever tile/lightbulb combo Pinterest already has 49,377 photos and an “aesthetic label” for. But of course for a large number of people all the good things, and all the things that prove out over time are diametrically opposed to that entire ideology (and it is an ideology; perhaps a pathology at this point).

Vertigo Music hasn’t changed more than a countertop since 2004 and remains the best and most lauded record store in the tri-state area. Half the Mexican taco joints in town are just two people and a couple little kitschy/sentimental items next to a used cash register in a room that looks like a garage. The bars we all grew up in (okay, not everyone grew up, but you get the idea) almost all still look exactly like they did when Reagan was president except now they have a vape machine in them somewhere looking wildly out of place. And all of them were started by people. Just normal people who wanted and were willing to make the kind of place they wanted to see. Things made by real people reflect the people who made them. Things made by corporate drones look like they were stamped in a plant. And each thing is looking to find its people, and each is relatively unpleasant to the other camp. But nobody seems able to contain their disdain and just let people do their thing.

To do with your hands. To bring people together. To inspire them, and let them explore their actual desires and pursue their weird little dreams. That’s what living is. This cycle of work/consume/decompress/therapise/disconnect/repeat is clearly unhealthy, and antithetical to actual freedom. I wanted to make something that seemed lacking, or lost. I wanted to find and connect all the people who shared that feeling because more real, living people together come up with the best ideas, and have the willpower and the determination to actually bring those ideas to life. Defeated, dead-eyed people just want everything done for them, and are so entitled that they feel confident talking shit if its not exactly how they want it, despite not lifting a finger to make it happen.

And since we were speaking of terminology, the desire to change definition and/or meaning rather than behaviour is also part and parcel of the modern malaise. For instance, outside the U.S. “co-working” was created by self-employed people who couldn’t see the benefit of leaving their home office/garage and getting a brick-and-mortar establishment for things that didn’t need it, but were still unhappy with being isolated. So they came together and made spaces where they could share the cost of an “office” and turned those into eclectic, friendly and interesting mishmashes of the things they both wanted and needed. Where they could collaborate, meet new people, and maybe spend their workday in an environment that made them happy instead of miserable. America, of course, made it an industry. A pre-packaged replacement for the offices that now sit empty and unusable by anything other than identical mega-businesses because they are unsuited to any other purpose. The former office drones all got grounded during COVID and started looking for people to provide the social aspect that was probably the ONLY valuable part of soulless middle-management, and a new “market” was born. And in record time it has been standardised, codified, and sold back to the people who hated it in the first place.

So you can pay to go to a faux hotel lobby with Edison bulbs and a nice wee Keurig, right? And it is “supposed” to have all the amenities and exact chairs that you somehow “expect” and in some cases demand, instead of growing organically from the desires of the people actually using it, which is just the desire for a place to accomplish what you need to to keep the Netflix streaming package active, which is just a veiled cry for some conversation and maybe a laugh with a stranger, which is just the equivalent of admitting “I’m lonely and distractible and this job makes me want to blow my brains out” which of course is just “I’m lonely” with extra steps.

But we’re not lonely. Over here we have each other, and more every day, and we are all working to make it better in the ways we are individually or collectively able. And for that, the sky’s the limit.

I knew it wouldn’t be for everyone. Nothing is or ever can be. The difference is that I’m a quality over quantity guy. I’ll merrily take 100 real, living people with spines and purpose, ideas and interests, than a million of the shuffling, little zombies that think having to go into the gas station and talk to a cashier for twelve seconds is an inconvenience and a burden and have apps that turn their lights on and off like the fucking Clapper from 1987.

Those are not my people, and this will never be for them.

But my people are out there. They’re arriving every day, with their ideas and their excitement and in some cases an anvil and a caulk gun or two (did you know people have anvils? Me neither).

If you want to be around people who inspire you to do more and be better, then come on in. If you want everything handed to you and think that there is “a way” that things are “supposed to be” then hey … there’s a whole soulless, depressing world out there for you, actively trying to crush the one we’re trying to build. And in that not-so-little battle, my money is always on the real people, who always persist underground somewhere, creating and innovating and growing while the rest of you wither and forget how to actually live.

But we’ll leave you alone because we’re not paying attention to you in the first place. You’re human background noise. Walking static. Show us the same courtesy, eh? It’s the golden rule after all.