My third place is the local hackerspace. This has been the case since 2010, except, perhaps surprisingly, for the few years when I lived/worked in silicon vall

My third place is the local hackerspace. This has been the case since 2010, except, perhaps surprisingly, for the few years when I lived/worked in silicon valley. Weirdly, hackerspaces don't seem to work the same in silicon valley. Everybody is too busy at their tech job to have any energy left to spend free time building stuff purely for fun, and real estate is too expensive to allow for affordable memberships. When I went to the local hackerspace, the few people there were busy working on their own startup and nobody was talking to anybody, they weren't there for fun, they were there to work. Noisebridge and Ace Monster Toys were better, but too far away (SF and Oakland, respectively) to be convenient. In other places I've been (Texas, Virginia) hackerspaces seem to work a lot better as third places and be more fun oriented. I chalk this up to less intense work environments and cheaper real estate.