There used to be more places where you could sit without buying anything.
A bench in front of the post office. A drinking fountain on the corner. A library with chairs that didn't ask anything of you. A front porch with a couple of rockers, and the front porches of all your neighbors. A church basement that opened on Sunday and stayed open through the week.
Some of those places are gone. Some are coming back. Here are three short stories from both sides.
A place to sit
The plaza
The new plaza downtown was beautiful. It had clean lines. It had small trees in concrete planters. It had no benches.
The architects had been instructed. The planning documents used a phrase: defensive design. Anyone who wanted to sit was offered a chair at one of the restaurants. The chairs cost about the price of a coffee. The plaza was technically public — it was owned by a developer who had received a tax abatement for building it.
A man who had slept in the empty lot that used to be there for years was arrested in November for sitting on the edge of a planter.
What had been a place to be, free of charge — a thing every city had a hundred years ago — was now a place to spend money or move along.
The bench
A retired carpenter on a residential block built a bench. He built it from scrap cedar. He put it in front of his house, on the public right-of-way, near a maple tree that gave good shade. He did not ask permission.
The neighbors used it. A mail carrier sat there to eat lunch. An older woman from down the street walked her dog as far as the bench and then sat for a few minutes before walking home. Two boys waited there for the school bus. Once a delivery driver pulled over and slept for twenty minutes. Nobody minded.
Other people on the block built benches too. A nurse who worked nights built one with a back. A teenager built one with built-in cup holders.
By the end of the year there were nine benches on the block. The block had become, very quietly, a place to be.
A place to gather
The food court
The mall opened in 1987 with a food court in the middle. The food court had tables and chairs. People ate at the chains and then sat. They studied for the SAT at the food court. They had first dates there. They waited there when their parents were running late. The chairs were free.
Almost forty years later, the mall is closing. There is one anchor store left and a smoothie place at the corner. The food court chairs were stacked on a flatbed and driven away last spring. The food court is now a place you walk through.
There are not many places like the food court anymore. The new shopping is online or in standalone strip malls where every store sits behind its own parking lot. There is nowhere to sit in a strip mall.
What had been an accidentally public space — a place to be that the mall hadn't quite meant to provide, but had — is closed now, along with the mall around it.
The library
The library on the corner is open every day except Sunday. It is open in the rain. It is open in the heat. It is open during the boil-water notice. There are chairs. There are tables. There are outlets near every chair.
A retired man comes to read the paper in the morning. A teenager comes after school to do homework. A father comes with his three-year-old for story hour on Wednesdays. A woman who has no home comes in the afternoon to charge her phone and rest.
No one asks anyone what they are doing there. The librarian knows most of them by name. There is a sign on the door that says: come in.
The library has been on this corner for ninety-six years. Most of the people who use it have no idea it could be otherwise. They will, if it is ever closed.
A place to drink
The drinking fountain
When the boy was young, there were drinking fountains in the park. There was one outside the library and one at the playground and one in the lobby of the bank. You pressed a button and a small arc of cold water came up.
Then the drinking fountains went away. People said it was because of germs. People said it was because of vandalism. People said it was because the city was repairing the pipes.
The boy is now in his thirties. There has not been a working drinking fountain in his park for fifteen years. There is a vending machine that sells bottled water. The water is the same water as the city water, run through one extra filter. A bottle costs three dollars.
The boy buys a bottle when he is thirsty in the park. The boy did not used to do this.
The spigot
A neighborhood in a town that runs hot in the summer installed a public spigot at the corner of two streets. The spigot is connected to the city water main. There is a small sign next to it. The sign says: FREE COLD WATER. Bring your own bottle.
The neighborhood paid for the spigot with a small grant. It cost about nine hundred dollars to install. The water itself is paid for through the regular city water budget, which everyone in town already funds. The total annual cost of the spigot is roughly the cost of one streetlight.
In July, the spigot is busy. Construction workers come over from a nearby site with empty gallon jugs. A delivery driver fills his Yeti. A woman pushing a stroller fills a sippy cup. Two boys on bikes drink directly from the spigot, stepping back when they have had enough.
A bottle of water in town costs three dollars. The spigot is free. The math is simple. The simple thing is just to make it again.
The other direction
These were not luxuries. They were the standard equipment of a place. A bench. A drinking fountain. A library. A chair you could sit in without explaining yourself.
Their disappearance was rarely announced. The bench was removed for renovation. The drinking fountain was closed for repair. The food court chairs were stacked and driven away. Each happened on its own. None of them, by itself, was the headline.
But on a residential block, a retired carpenter built a bench and put it under a maple tree. In a town that runs hot, the city installed a spigot at a corner. In a ninety-six-year-old library, the door is still open.
The deciding has been done elsewhere. The benches are still being taken out. The fountains are still being closed. But the work of putting them back, where it is happening, is being done close to the ground — by people who walk past the empty corner and notice that it should have been a place to be.