Finding Your Local Third Place

 

Playing at an open mic in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn

By Frank Filocomo

I've written about my local pub's open mic before (see here), but I think a follow up is warranted. 

Thursdays at 8:00PM have become a constant in my life. It's when I show up at Kitty's, greet the regulars, and jot my name down on the sign-in sheet, which fills up quick. Tardy artists might have to wait until midnight to play, if at all. 

This past Thursday, I played some lighthearted swing tunes, with accompaniment from my friend John on the cajon. For those who don't know, the cajon is a drum that you sit on. For the price of a Guinness, John will be your percussion section for 10-minutes. He busted out the brushes for my two tunes. 

This is my third place, and everyone needs one. 

Third places, to reiterate, are casual, socially-leveling places outside of home and work. They are a respite from life's obligations. What's needed of you: a loose, easygoing disposition and a willingness to shoot the breeze with others. 

You can't be reticent in a third place. I mean, you can, but you'd be missing out on what makes a third place a third place. 

Being that I've become rather prolific in the area of loneliness and social isolation, people often ask me: "what is the prescription for the loneliness epidemic?" 

My response: "Look to see what your community has to offer."

More often than not, there will be a Facebook page for your town. Or perhaps someone has a blog with listings for nearby events. 

In Bay Ridge, we have a helpful site called Queen of the Click, written by a "Bay Ridge resident who makes lists and watches politicians." Want to know the goings-on in Bay Ridge? Queen of the Click is the site to check out. Every locality ought to have one. 

We're lucky to have such a helpful tool here. Every town, though, will have some resources that can be utilized. You just have to be proactive. 

Try things. Some will stick; some won't. The key is exploration. 

So, what are you waiting for? Go find your third place. 

Field of Dreams Is a Conservative Film, Actually

By Troy M. Olson

What true American wouldn't want to play catch one more time with their father?

"I experienced the sixties."

"No, I think you had two fifties and went right on into the seventies." 

This exchange during a school board meeting between Annie Kinsella, the wife of protagonist Ray Kinsella, and a woman intent on the removal of books from an Iowa public school district, and much of the plot of 1989's Field of Dreams, is meant to put the 1960s generation on a pedestal of moral righteousness. I do not fundamentally disagree with this take recently from Jack Posobiec about its intent. 

Field of Dreams was written for former 60s radicals to tell themselves how great they are even though they sold out. Love the baseball parts but the rest of the plot is so self-serving and dumb

— Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) May 14, 2026

However, like with 1994's Forrest Gump, one of my favorite genres is the "accidental conservative or traditional values" film. 

Yes, the film was written by a radical or from the ranks of Hollywood's liberal class, yet its conclusion, themes, and takeaways end up being decidedly conservative, whether they were going for that or not. 

The fundamental conservative values of the sport of baseball have been well established by conservative commentators like George Will. I don't have to rehash them here. But the rest of the plot and scenery of Field of Dreams is very hippie, radical, and steeped in 1960's main character lore. 

"Oh my God! You're from the sixties."  For every reference, there is a derisive comment about the decade that follows. There is a disillusionment that has set in to the decade's true believers that I predict will soon happen with many of the fellow travelers of our current era. 

The 1960s radical son who wouldn't have a catch with his father merely serves as a precursor to the magic flight that takes shape at the end of the story. The son does play catch and reconcile with his father, and even gets to do it when they are both young. 

The reclusive writer, Terence Mann, a loosely-based stand-in for the real life-J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye), takes a magic flight of his own by seeing exactly what Ray and his family get to see, the baseball players from the past like Shoeless Joe Jackson playing right before them. His dream is presumably fulfilled just as the people are coming to the middle American farm in Iowa and the end credits are rolling, as he is off-screen eating popcorn next to Shoeless Joe and watching the Brooklyn Dodgers play at Ebbets Field. 

Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams

Then there is Moonlight Graham, the small-town Chisholm, Minnesota doctor who told Ray, and the audience, that if he had only gotten to be "a doctor for five minutes, now that would've been a tragedy." When this film was released, free agent salaries in baseball were beginning to truly explode, and we were just a half-a-decade away from the 1994 players strike which drove a dagger through the heart of America's pastime. The message: being a small-town doctor with generosity of spirit is greater than having an extensive page on baseball reference. 

Then there is even the closest thing the story has to an antagonist. The brother-in-law who represents the interests of the bank and wants to foreclose on the loan and therefore, end the field of dreams. By the end, he too can see the players. This is a story about belief, about familial and spiritual reconciliation 

The film is littered with conservative and return-to-tradition messages in the end, and the hippie wife Annie is increasingly losing the argument today against the big meanie conservative school board activist in the public imagination. America doesn't want to ban The Boat Rocker, it just questions whether explicit and sexual material should be available in a K-12 school. Considering America's so-called "banned book list" is entirely made up of the most available books ever, more and more people are catching on to this sort of gaslighting. 

Field of Dreams, Forrest Gump, and a whole host of films made in the late 1980s and first half of the 1990s all have one thing in common: these conservative-in-message films written by Hollywood liberals were being made when the baton of leadership in the culture was transitioning from the Greatest Generation to the Baby Boomers. 

In the next decade or so, a similar transition will be taking place from Baby Boomers to Millennials and the surrounding generations. It has already started, but it will accelerate. 

Understandably, right now the culture is not too kind to the legacy of the baby boomers, but for the elders, the children, and the squeezed and stressed out generations in between, I hope the rising political coalition and rising generation takes a long hard look every spring and summer at the true message behind this 1989 classic rather than writing it off. And I hope we make some new Capra-esque magic of our own, because our culture sure could use it.

Whether we agree or get along or not, what true American wouldn't want to play catch one more time with their father? And even if you cannot or do not, you can always revisit the times you did through the magic flight of America's great game of baseball.

Troy M. Olson is an Army Veteran, lawyer by training, and co-author of ‘The Emerging Populist Majority’ available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Target. He is the Sergeant-at-Arms of the New York Young Republican Club and co-founder of its Veterans Caucus. He has appeared on CNN, CBS, and OAN. He lives in New York City with his wife and son, and is the 3rd Vice Commander (“Americanism” pillar) of the first new American Legion Post in the city in years, Post 917. You can follow him on X/Twitter and Substack at @TroyMOlson

We Need to Get Serious About the Loneliness Epidemic

 

By Frank Filocomo

22-year-old YouTuber Jett Franzen has been living alone in a basement for the past seven months.

In an unusually candid - albeit, somewhat concerning - YouTube video, Franzen, who has nearly 200K subscribers on the platform, goes into detail about his struggles with loneliness and social isolation.

"I get, on an average day, zero interaction with other people."

Anyone can see that Franzen looks tired, drained, and depressed. In the background of the shot is a small, dimly lit, cluttered basement. Miscellaneous boxes are strewn across the floor. 

Franzen is, by all means, very articulate and appears to be quite intelligent. Still, there's an emptiness behind his eyes. He is monotone and thoroughly unenthusiastic. 

While he explicitly says that he didn't upload this video with the intention of soliciting sympathy or pity, Franzen is clearly hurting. 

Humans, he says, "crave connection."

His isolation, however, something that he admits is largely "self-inflicted," has become "an addiction."

He's come to prefer the safety of a "controlled environment" over the uncertainty of the outside world. 

When you opt to stay inside and forgo social engagements, you eliminate the risk of awkward or potentially anxiety-inducing interactions. There's no question about that. At the same time, though, reclusiveness deprives one of life's most joyous moments: laughs over glasses of beer at your local pub, first dates, get-togethers with your friends, and other little and seemingly trivial timestamps in life that give us purpose, belonging, and camaraderie. 

Franzen, I'm afraid, is not alone.

Zoomers are easily the loneliest generation. 

His video, which, to date, has accrued nearly 600K views, has a comment section replete with users expressing similar sentiments. 

One user wrote, "I’m literally living the exact same life, completely isolated no friends no job.."

Another posted, "I understand.  I'm only here because my parents haven't given up on me.  Being human is pretty f**ing hard for me."

This is a problem that isn't going away. We better start getting serious about it. 

Post-Liberalism, or Just Common Sense?

 

By Frank Filocomo

I don't care for labels. 

We have enough isms as it is: liberalism, libertarianism, conservatism, paleoconservatism, centrism, radical-centrism, and on and on. 

In vogue now: post-liberalism. 

Post-liberals fancy themselves real conservatives, rather than socially liberal Republicans who only care about deregulation and lower taxes. 

They believe that Reaganism is passé. 

Post-liberals say that their time has come. 

But, as I've argued in this very blog, post-liberalism is nothing more than a re-packaging of social conservatism, Rick Santorum style. 

Now, don't get me wrong, I admire a lot of so-called post-liberals. Some of my favorite writers and thinkers include Patrick Deneen, Yoram Hazony, Phillip Blond, and other kindred spirits. 

I am, at least on paper, a post-liberal, too. 

What does that mean? 

Well, I believe that...

• while trade liberalization has undoubtedly had some economic benefits, we ought to have a robust industrial policy that will reshore American manufacturing jobs;
• social obligation should come before individual desire;
• we should be governed, not by reason alone, but by historical empiricism;
• and that the sexual revolution has profoundly and negatively impacted the family unit. 

I am, of course, leaving many important bullet points behind here, but this is more or less my world view. 

As R.R. Reno wrote in a recent article for First Things:

Is it far-fetched to think that liberalism and its strong emphasis on the individual have played a role in bringing us to our present, unhappy condition—and offers little guidance about how to reverse course and chart a path toward a society more likely to protect human dignity and sustain a ­culture of freedom? 

The answer is, of course, no. No, it's not far-fetched to say that the excesses of liberalism have worked to our own collective detriment. Liberty without order leads to decadence, profligacy, and overall moral decay. Plain and simple. 

The answer is not a Leviathan, nor is it authoritarianism. Rather, the solution is balance. That is, balance between liberty and social order. It is the communitarian way. 

But, why give this a new name? Post-liberalism honestly just sounds pretentious. No need for a new label. 

I say we call it Americanism. Or, perhaps, the Western way of life. We don't need to reinvent the wheel here.

To be sure, I'm guilty of using labels myself. I often say things like "communitarian," or "small-c conservatism."

Perhaps those terms are not always helpful. Instead, I'm going to make it a habit to say: "I'm an American and product of Western Civilization. I am grateful for this awesome inheritance, and for my ancestors before me. I want to preserve what we have here, and help those around me."

That's human-speak. Something that a lay-person can understand. 

No more isms. Just common sense.