The physical infrastructure that once housed 3rd Spaces didn’t go anywhere, there’s wonderful spaces all over the city ready to usher in new social infrastructure. Our modern issue (contrary to public narrative) is not that we lost spaces themselves, it’s that we’re in a shortage of hosts/gatherers to occupy them.
We’ve lost many of the common threads that once bonded us to share a space. Beyond religion, demand for men’s clubs, civic clubs, political social groups, etc. has fallen off. They’ve been replaced by a pop-up events model housing things like book clubs, game clubs, run clubs, and supper clubs. I’m not advocating against these sorts of things, but, on their own, they are insufficient. Alone, they can’t tackle the task of bringing meaningful social infrastructure to a city. I feel strongly that platforming and celebrating them as if they can stand alone is why we have a loneliness problem.
For a community to thrive, the people in that community need to be quick to trust each other. There has to be a common life experience, routine, or general bond in addition to the physical space that brings them together with consistent familiarity. We need of a new era of hosts to identify, curate, and organize these groups.
I have reason to believe that independent financeers will deploy cash philanthropically to the ones who do this well. I’m speaking about the topic more from an anthropological lens, but if I’m right, there will surely be many sustainable businesses on the other end. Thrive Capital is early in that game. They launched a new fund called Thrive Eternal to fund the future of cultural hubs. Granted, their first investment was the SF Giants (EDIT: 5 mins after posting this, news broke that they bought the Lakers), far larger scale than anything I’m discussing here, but nevertheless exciting to see where they’re aligning their money.
“We are investing in assets with qualities that cannot be replicated by technology. Iconic franchises and cultural institutions rooted in tradition, identity, and shared experience. In a world shaped by abundant intelligence where creation scales and distribution fragments, we believe they will matter even more.”
The hardest thing to do in the community/ curation/ events world is to be hyper particular in curating an audience. Doing it well requires that audience to have a large enough body of people to pick from who otherwise wouldn’t overlap organically AND have some sort of social value to give and gain from each other (mutual desire for lifelong friendship, love, business). In the simplest terms, I am a staunch advocate for exclusivity as a means to build more intentional and higher impact relationships. Not everything is meant to be for everyone.
I hope I can inspire you with some interesting people through history who have done what I’m saying needs to be done again.
Below are 9 of history’s great gatherers of people. As you’ll read, these sorts of things have real impact on not only people’s lives, but the social fabric of cities, thought circles, and industries.
Bill Graham and the Fillmore
The music mogul and host who created the social foundation that would become psychedelic rock.
He started with San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium in 1965, initially as a way to raise money for the SF Mime Troupe (too interesting not to include). The neighborhood surrounding the Fillmore was becoming the center of a new counterculture, but its musicians, visual artists, and emerging political class lacked any sort of institution to bring them together consistently, he built it.
Graham was early to host the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, Santana, and Quicksilver Messenger Service. He made a point to book the same acts repeatedly so they could build identities in the venue. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame credits him with establishing the Bay as a center of psychedelic music, while the Skirball Cultural Center describes him as one of the most influential concert promoters in history.
In 1968, he brought the model to New York with the Fillmore East. Jimi Hendrix, the Who, the Doors, the Allman Brothers Band, Miles Davis, Led Zeppelin, etc played there (closed in 1971) Bill Graham is a great case study on creating the conditions for scattered people to assemble themselves into a culture.
He never came on teams to manage artists, market them, creative direct, or produce any of their work. He was simply the one to gather them and bring people together around their work.
David Mancuso and the Loft
On Valentine’s Day in 1970, David Mancuso invited people into his home at 647 Broadway for a party called Love Saves the Day. It was the inception of “The Loft”
His ecosystem curation was predominantly gay, Black, and Latino. At the time, it was really just downtown New Yorkers who weren’t welcomed (or protected) by many of the city’s nightlife establishments. The NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project called The Loft an egalitarian, racially inclusive, gay-friendly alternative to nightlife and a model for later queer parties and clubs.
Gay DJs and promoters including Larry Levan, Frankie Knuckles, Nicky Siano, and Michael Brody were all brought together by The Loft. They went on to be pieces in building The Paradise Garage, the Gallery, and other foundational spaces in disco and dance culture, which credited Manusco as early inspiration.
Worth noting, The Loft was known for colorful balloons draped from the ceiling and welcoming children to attend earlier portions of the night (pictured below). The club kid era came right as these children would’ve been young adults. I like to think there could be a culture connection there.
Crystal LaBeija and the House System
In 1972, she presented the first annual House of LaBeija Ball at Up the Downstairs Case on West 115th in Harlem. It’s widely identified as the beginning of the modern ballroom house system. She took the identity as the house’s “mother,” and its members took LaBeija as a shared surname.
Her success inspired houses including Xtravaganza, Ninja, Pendavis, and Dupree. The space and the community that came out of it developed culture across fashion, beauty, performance, and gender presentation in general. Namely, voguing emerged from the ecosystem before being absorbed into global culture. Honey Balenciaga is the result of Crystal LaBeija.
The house system also became a vehicle for HIV/AIDS mutual support. LaBeija identified itself as the first ballroom house to host benefits addressing the epidemic.
She created a space to house and nurture a once scattered and isolated identity class. The house had a leadership structure with intergenerational roles and an identity people could tie themselves to outside the physical space. Structure structure structure. Could not have been done via pop-ups.
Pamela Harriman and the Democrats for the ‘80s
In 1981, following Reagan’s win, Harriman created Democrats for the ’80s. Her home in Georgetown became a gathering ground for politicians, financiers, journalists, and prospective candidates to be introduced in private.
Harriman was known to study people before inviting them and used small gatherings to determine who could hold a room before making connections for them up the political ladder. Among the younger politicians she elevated was a relatively unknown governor of Arkansas with the last name Clinton… William & Mary’s biography of Harriman notes that she was among the first significant Washington figures to bring Clinton into the capital’s political network.
Democrats for the ’80s helped rebuild the party’s donor infrastructure during the Reagan era. Harriman later raised millions for Clinton’s '92 presidential campaign, and Clinton appointed her US ambassador to France in '93.
She wasn’t the first to host curated political communities, but timing was on her side with the party needing resurrecting. The social systems within the party were malleable at the time, and from the research I’ve done, her work led itself to be the inspiration behind modern political fundraising galas and donor events.
*not claiming she built community per se, just an interesting case study of a host who had an impact on a huge ecosystem. Also, look how badass she looks
Marie-Thérèse Geoffrin
Credited as an influential figure in the Enlightenment, in the 1740s, Geoffrin opened her Paris residence every week according to a strict schedule that was once famous across France. Mondays were reserved for artists and Wednesdays for philosophers. She hosted recurring Salons with an expectation that the same minds would return, debate, introduce newcomers, and continue past conversations.
Her Wednesdays attracted Denis Diderot, Jean le Rond d’Alembert, Montesquieu, Helvétius, Marmontel, and many of the leading figures behind the Encyclopédie (the monumental project that sought to collect and organize all human knowledge)
Her Mondays hosted artists including François Boucher, Carle Van Loo, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, and other members who would later build the Royal Academy. They gathered alongside wealthy patrons, many of whom commissioned work. Her salon became an informal marketplace.
Geoffrin developed a reputation for her moderation of space. She discouraged grandstanding and cut off guests who monopolized conversations. She was skilled at both attracting remarkable people but also maintaining the conditions under which meaningful dialogue could continue.
King Stanisław August Poniatowski of Poland had been a regular guest before becoming king and later modeled parts of Warsaw’s intellectual life after the Parisian salon tradition he experienced in her home.
Rei Kawakubo of Dover Street Market
DSM, co-founded alongside her husband Adrian Joffe in London ’04, curates shared space between Prada, Gucci, Rick Owens, Palace, Stüssy, Loewe, etc alongside emerging Japanese and European designers, avant-garde furniture, artists, and temporary installations.
Every few months, the stores are taken down and rebuilt. For young designers, earning space inside DSM is one of fashion’s highest endorsements. Before reaching commercial success, designers like Simone Rocha, Craig Green, ERL, Vaquera, and countless others found international audiences through Rei’s model of placing established houses beside unknown but emerging talent.
With her intergenerational curation, DSM became a gathering place for the wide-reaching fashion culture. Stylists, editors, and the art world. The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art recognized her broader influence in 2017 when it devoted its annual exhibition (only the second ever to a living designer) to Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between. The exhibition argued that Kawakubo’s importance lay not only in individual garments, but in her relentless questioning of accepted categories themselves.
Similar to Warhol’s factory, she made her place of work a gathering spot where the filter was aligned taste.
Gertrude Stein’s apartment at 27 Rue de Fleurus
Early 1900s, Gertrude Stein transformed her home into the center of the modernist movement. Every Saturday evening, artists, writers, collectors, and curious newcomers gathered beneath walls covered floor-to-ceiling with paintings. Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso, Gauguin, Renoir, and Braque hung inches apart in what was effectively the world’s first museum of modern art.
Picasso was a regular. As were F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Georges Braque, Guillaume Apollinaire, Juan Gris, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Sherwood Anderson, Thornton Wilder, and Sinclair Lewis (I’m only familiar with some of these names, but if this is your niche I want to paint the full picture), they found themselves in the same room exclusively via Gertrude Stein. Hemingway later immortalized her gatherings in A Moveable Feast, describing Stein as one of the defining figures of literary Paris.
Stein most notably introduced Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso to one another. The Metropolitan Museum of Art credits her apartment with facilitating one of the defining artistic relationships of the twentieth century. The case study here is that movements are built when extraordinary people encounter one another repeatedly under the care of someone who understands that curation is an artistic act.
To be clear on her importance, similar to Bill Graham, Gertrude Stein didn’t necessarily invent or create anything. She didn’t paint Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. She didn’t write The Sun Also Rises. BUT! She built the thing that inspired/enabled those works.
Gordon French & Fred Moore of Homebrew Computer Club
In 1975, Gordon French invited a small group of computer enthusiasts to his garage after hearing about the Altair 8800, the first commercially successful personal computer kit. Fred Moore, a longtime community organizer influenced by Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement, helped organize the first gathering.
They recognized that a generation of technically gifted people existed in isolation. There was no institution connecting them. They used a decentralized format. They opened with announcements, then demonstrations where members physically passed prototypes through the audience, then free time for people to discuss and share knowledge.
Steve Wozniak attended the club at its inception and later described Homebrew as the first place where he found people who were as obsessed with personal computing as he was. After designing what became the Apple I, Wozniak demonstrated the machine at Homebrew before the company ever launched.
Apple’s earliest growth largely came from the Homebrew ecosystem. Paul Terrell, founder of the Byte Shop (one of the world’s first computer store chains), found Apple through Homebrew before placing the purchase order that effectively enabled Apple’s commercial business.
French and Moore also didn’t invent a thing, but they had their fingerprints on the first distribution channel for the computer revolution.
Fred Moore enforced an internal culture where people exchanged software without payment and freely copied one another’s hardware schematics. They were all moving towards the same north star of technological advancement, so he believed that’s how it needed to be. His influence became foundational to the open-source movement in Silicon Valley.
Ian Schrager & Steve Rubell of Studio 54
When the pair leased the former Gallo Opera House on West 54th Street in 1977, New York was already in a surplus of disco clubs. Rubell shined in a crowded market as a host. Every night he stood outside the entrance and personally decided who would come in.
Inside the club, every night was programmed to be stand-alone. Some had live animals, large-scale confetti, or balloon drops from the ceiling (supposedly the first to do that?) They were lovers of a performance and often brought in drag queens and acrobats, generally exiting and unexpected things. There was also a famous man in the moon prop hanging from the ceiling with a coke spoon under its nose. Supposedly coke could be ordered at the bar.
Calvin Klein, Diana Ross, David Bowie, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Mick Jagger, Michael Jackson, Elton John, etc were regulars.
The legacy of Studio 54 is built on Rubell’s door curation. He was one of a kind in his art of selection before he very tragically died during the AIDS epidemic. Schrager, who was put in jail for a tax evasion scandal that ultimately closed Studio 54, has since built and run the PUBLIC hotel in LES. The two of them are history’s best example of curating people and producing experiential before either of those two things existed as part of the zeitgeist.
This is one of my favorite documentaries of all time. Beyond just the club, it paints an incredible picture of prime NYC. Couldn’t endorse it more.
Each of these hosts built their legacies by creating a movement where like-minded people could come together, create community amongst themselves, and ultimately impact the trajectory of their own lives and the culture around them. The fallacy I’m trying to combat here is that loneliness can be defeated with a surplus of activity-based events generally open to whoever. The narrative around that model is that anyone can easily contribute to solving the problem, anyone can host, and anyone can join the game. That is not true. This shit is hard and delicate and can only be done with an obsession and great attention to detail - if the goal is to leave any larger impact.
If you disagree, ask yourself how there can be so many events and the loneliness epidemic hasn’t gone anywhere. Events alone are not the answer, we need more great hosts.
Jobs I think are interesting
Substack Writer @ 3rd Space
We’re launching a weekly hospitality and community section on this Substack. Our first few posts are ready to ship. Some of the jobs below are indicative of the new era of community that we’ve entered. We want to cement ourselves as a voice to report on trends and insights in the space. We are not hiring a ghostwriter. Our soon-to-be writer will own their output and come to all our dinners.
Events @ a16z
$221k-258k salary. You’d be working on the New Media team, which continues to hire exceptional people and pump out founder talent - most recently, Brent Liang, former TBPN and now building the explosive MTS Live project.
The role will plan, produce, and host dinners, leadership retreats, and multi-day summits. If you live outside of tech and aren’t as familiar with the firm, here’s a company culture letter all new employees sign. Great read.
Marketing Events Lead @ Anthropic
$320k-400k salary. Your role is to leverage events to communicate who Anthropic is. Claude continues to poach great people from great companies. Most recently, Luis Ocampo (great LinkedIn pfp) from Partiful, now on their creator marketing initiative, and Sean Thielen-Esparza from Complex, now on their comms team. Anthropic now has a higher valuation than OpenAI, take that upside as you will. Also, I hear only wonderful things about their work culture.
Events Coordinator @ Kalshi
Jake Khorozian, a hospitality kid, was hired as a 23-year-old to lead events at a once-emerging young prediction marketplace company. Now they have lots of money, and Jake spends it very well. He just did a big thing with Peggy Gou. He’s growing his team. Beyond Kalshi, he’s someone to align with in an early experiential and/or hospitality career.
Brand Partnerships Coordinator @ Smooth Media
They manage the knowledge creator economy. I’m a big admirer of their work. They sit in a class of their own, managing talent like Jack and Geno of Breaking and Entering, and Catgpt. They work with frontier brands like Meta, Anthropic, Cursor, HubSpot, Microsoft, etc. It’s a big team with big visions, sharp people and great orbit to be in. Their founder, Jenny Rothenberg, was part of the early Morning Brew mafia, and after a brief call, I can confirm she is a sweetheart. One of my friends with them, Sarah Teich, has her own org, Produce Parties. Gives you a sense of who they hire
Their team is motivated and eagerly pursuing an impactful (and profitable) north star. More people on their roster include: Joanna Stern (former WSJ journalist), Eugene Healy (branding expert), Taylor Bell (longtime business/lifestyle YouTuber), Varun Rana (tech/comedy), Matt Wolfe (AI news). Many more open roles on their page.
Brand Designer @ Bond
David Mascioni, fresh off a 15-year stint leading luxury experience at Bose, is now leading brand at BOND. If you want your design work to give you private jet access and be seen and admired across an audience of people who have private jet access…this could be very exciting
People to watch
Gaby Goldberg, 27, vol 23
Gaby has been nominated for 3rd Space from friends all over. She touches many pools of talent, almost effortlessly. I’m not sure that I’ve ever revealed how I write these, but I call who I want to write about and riff with them until I learn enough interesting stuff to frame a quick story around them (hence why there’s no Q/A format). I learned Gaby was selectively mute for 5 years as a kid, which gave her a basis for what to value and communicate as she grew into her voice. Because she was shy and socially isolated, she spent lots of time online and learned to code from editing her Tumblr blog.
At Stanford, she studied symbolic systems, a major that combines comp sci and philosophy. Her favorite classes were a combo of those two things. Specifically, exploring what it means for a machine to be intelligent, what comes after the Turing test, etc. All especially important now that we’re turning to computers for relationship advice and therapy.
Her most notable work comes from Rostra with Lulu Cheng Meservy. They’re a leading comms firm that works with companies like Eleven Labs, Cognition, Ramp, and more. See testimonials here. Gaby was her apprentice and first hire for two years. The company is built around giving founders PR tools to tell their own stories, as opposed to relying on PR outlets and public opinion. It was just the two of them for 2 years. In her time there, Axios revealed that they secretly raised a fund. The two raised a $40 million fund together.
As of a few months ago, Gaby joined the new media team at a16z, where she’ll be advising portfolio companies and investing. She took the job to work under Eric Torenberg, who created the team. She’ll operate at the intersection of media, investing, and networks alongside Eric. If you aren’t familiar, he formerly built and led On Deck, where he collected ecosystems of talent across every key startup role. He also built Turpentine, a media network of many premier podcasts, which was acquired by a16z. Gaby joined the firm to play in the biggest possible game: help companies tell their stories at the highest level, and work with the greatest technologists of our time.
Her favorite quote: “The money flows as a function of the stories” - Don Valentine of Sequoia.
Mitch Ritter, 24, vol 18
A 2024 SCAD alum from Jersey, you probably saw his work plastered across dozens of NYC Instagram pages last month after his viral photo of the NYC Knicks parade
Patrick Linehan had Mitch shooting a short he was working on for the parade. As the story goes, while Patrick ran to the bathroom. Mitch took a few casual photos. Those shots became his most viewed work and landed him follows and DMs from some of his favorite artists. Beyond the private love, he got public reposts from Ben Stiller, many Knicks players, Complex, Bleacher Report, and most recently got published on the second page of NY Mag.
Since taking the photo, he’s worked in Norway, did World Cup work with Nike, and worked with Puma, Universal Music, Sony Music, and Columbia Records. He’s a living testimony that even when the talent is there, sometimes it just takes some luck to catapult an artist into mainstream work opportunities.
Some answers to questions I asked him:
Mitch shoots Photos on Canon R5 and film on Contax G1 and video on Sony FX6. He endorses Eyecandy by Jacobi, Frameset by Dylan Hahn, and is betting on Kyle Anderson Okpadawan to have a quick rise into photo success in the NY scene.
Mitch has found almost all his work from his SCAD friends, he is a man of the people and loved by all.
Victor Houston, 32, vol 19
During an Investment banking stint, Victor started DJing on the side. He got most of his bookings at Make Believe, run by Jack Mcqueen, who proposed to open a spot together in 2019. Together, the duo opened Outer Heaven, a deep house and minimal techno hotspot in Lower Manhattan. I’ve lived a block away for 2 years and have never once walked by on a Friday or Saturday night without a 20+ person line.
Thanks to reduced leasing costs from COVID, they were able to sign their dream location at 191 Chrystie. A few months after, they were approached to open another spot at the Beekman hotel, where they opened their second club, Laissez Faire.
They’ve hosted Post Malone’s VMA after-party, booked events with Michael Rubin, Novak Djokovic, Leo DiCaprio, Kendall Jenner, and more. He’s also done well working with big corps like Blackstone and Goldman. Most recently, they did a full T-Pain concert for T-Mobile and Delta. Before that, Anderson Paak filmed a music video for his new single, and Anne Hathaway screened a movie there.
Six years in, Victor is building his third venue at the 60 LES hotel. Full circle, they’re opening in the same spot where Make Believe once was. The new space will build a media company similar to Boiler Room on a 7th-floor rooftop with 2 terraces + a pool, where they’ll host bigger activations. Victor believes the strongest factor of hospitality success in Manhattan is location. He’s proven himself to do the design, concepting, and programming on top. As 3 out of his 4 partners are also DJs, they invest heavily into robust sound systems.
He told me the most important hire to make is the door, he said everyone knows he’s not allowed to run the door because he’s too nice and would let everyone in. So, who gets in? The curation of the space is centered around the music, so correctly picking people who want to dance and have a good time is core to their culture. His tip is that if you come solo and treat the door staff well, you’ll get in.
Victor and co plan to continue building and scaling into a greater hospitality group. Perhaps before reconcepting a new spot, they take Outer Heaven to new markets.
Josh Mehling, 25, vol 22
Josh was closeted at a conservative Texas middle school. He didn’t like school or the friends around him, so he wasn’t involved in any extracurriculars. Instead, he spent all his time on SoundCloud and Tumblr, where he ultimately found his people. He’d grow up using all his free time to learn software of how to make music, while discovering music in the process.
He fell in love with electronic artists as a kid. Cashmere Cat and other European DJs were early inspo for him, along with The XX, who showed him queer people could make beautiful indie rock. Growing up, as a gay artist, there’s a narrative around you that the only future paths are akin to George Michael or Frankie Grande. The XX broke boundaries for him of what a gay artist could be.
Josh met his early collaborators at Syracuse. Together they’d form the band Shelly, comprised of Clairo, Claud, and Noah, who works at Universal Music Publishing. Shelly was birthed as “4 best friends fucking around in the beginning of quarantine”. A coping mechanism for their isolation was being creative together.
In their earliest work, they were just making music for fun, not to be commented on or digested. Their first two songs were made across 4 cities via group chat. Despite their success, the group hasn’t played any shows or festivals. The group's whole ambition is to be creative as friends. To date, they’ve released 4 songs. They have 2.5 million monthly listeners.
Josh recently signed his first publishing deal with Ryan Tedder of One Republic. He’s working with his best friends, including 3rd Space friends Julip and Susannah Joffe. Josh lives for collaboration. Long-term, he wants to explore a guy-girl electronic duo with a guitar and a free-form style. He’s inspired by Fcukers and Ear.
3rd Space Update
Our team is good, happy, and motivated by the work we’re doing. We’ll soon share what we’ve spent the summer moving towards
Cheers,
Jake
Wow such detail and thoughtfulness. I had no idea about Dover Street Market and the Fillmore being so community driven
Great insights on the Homebrew Computer Club. I can see how it help build the foundational culture of Silicon Valley today!
Damn this really inspired me, excited to read more of your work and follow what you’re creating.