Social Claustrophobia
One seat apart on every bench if possible, a different bench is preferable.
Photo from r/LosAngeles
For the longest time, I have kept a mental list of my favorite places to just be, both domestic settings and third spaces. It is an ongoing project of mine to identify the aspects that these places share, and that I adore, but one of them has stood out to me in clarity recently: they push people together. With great melancholy, I have watched a social claustrophobia overtake many public places, and I wish it were not so, but my favorites are my remedy for it.
I have grown up with, and perennially maligned, the open concept design philosophy. Open concept, for our purposes, will be defined as designing a space to minimize the use of enclosed, primary-purpose rooms, barriers between functional areas, and maximizing the open floor space. As long as I can remember, the open concept was a selling point, like a new roof or a pool. If a house had an “open concept,” it was modern! It was fresh! It was bright! To me, it always felt empty, barren, and, oddly enough, suffocating. Truly, you can sell an open concept to anyone, but I have never been able to imagine myself living the way I want to in an open-concept house. It is this feeling I have that, when a space is designed for anybody it really is suitable for nobody. Give me a unit in an old-built house any day, and I would be happier than I ever would be in a modern open concept.
I do not, however, blame the open concept design for the social claustrophobia that saddens me! I see it as a symptom of the wider, convenience-oriented society that we live in.
Earlier, I said my favorite “places.” When I say “places,” what am I really saying? I refer not only to our homes, but also to restaurants, bars, movie theaters, music venues, galleries, libraries, anything you could reasonably call a third space. Even public transit is the victim of social claustrophobia.
Kiosk ordering, at-home options, constant surveillance, and social anxiety are all building a world in which there is hardly ever a need to speak to another person in daily life. Why would I talk to the staff when I can order on a tablet? Why would I go out to eat, or watch a movie, when I can have these things without leaving my couch? Why would I dance, when someone might be recording me? Why would I take up space in a public setting, when I might inconvenience someone by doing so?
None of this is to say that these things should not exist. Tablet ordering can help alleviate the workload when the staff are busy serving, at home options are legitimate accessibility tools for these goods and services and, though there is no good reason to record someone dancing and laugh at them, we should all be mindful of ourselves in public spaces. Be the neighbor you would want to have. However, the pendulum has swung so far that we think of our neighbors, our fellow people, as inconveniences by default. I try my damndest to avoid taking a seat next to someone on the train or bus if there’s any other option (the majority of us that ride by private car, of course, don’t have this issue. They removed themselves from the public entirely!). I am so afraid that my mere presence will give someone some cause for complaint, and maybe that says something about my confidence, but I see everyone else doing the same thing. One seat apart on every bench if possible, a different bench is preferable.
Is this all we are to each other? Are we just grating on each others’ nerves until we can lock the door and scroll ourselves away? The perfect service worker is an inconvenience to the nasty customer. The average customer is an inconvenience to the grump of a service worker. The dutiful employee is an inconvenience to the Scroogey boss. The patron is an inconvenience to the fellow patron. It seems we all only see but one dimension to those around us. Some of my fondest memories are of times when I have broken out of this dimension. When I get my customers to connect with me, when I can feel like I am sharing a space with my fellow man, the energy changes, the eyes light up, and it sticks with me for weeks.
This is all why my favorite places are my favorites. From my favorite burger stand in Sacramento (Willie’s on 16th) to my favorite bar in San Francisco (Vesuvio in North Beach), tables are small, walkways are limited, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. People have no choice but to share the same space, someone asks me if they can sit at my table, and politeness demands that I allow it, but whenever a conversation arises from that it is always a personal delight. Once we get over this separation, this alienation of neighbor from neighbor, it is overwhelmingly likely that you will meet someone new, someone perfectly pleasant, someone just like you.
I implore you, look for these places and try them out. Sometimes we just need an invite to participate to bring us out of our shell, but these days it feels like we need to be invited just to be somewhere. These close spaces, these spaces which defeat social claustrophobia, give us that invite. Compliment your bar-neighbor’s drink order, ask someone if you can sit next to them when the space is limited, and remember that everyone around you might be waiting for that same invitation you are waiting for. The invitation to exist.