Nighthawks: Third Placeless

via GIPHY

I might have learned of Nighthawks by Edward Hopper from the board game Masterpiece. This game involved auctioning works of art, and was mildly educational since the back of each game card included at least the title and author. Each edition of the game featured paintings from.a different real museum, and the 1976 edition included only works from the Art Institute of Chicago. I knew nothing about that museum that begins Route 66, nor about the college housed inside its walls, nor that my own child would eventually be educated as an artist at that college!

Wherever I first saw the image of the Nighthawks, I know where I was when I first saw the original painting. It was part of a 2007 Edward Hopper exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. I am pretty certain that something else had drawn us to the exhibit, because when I saw this on the wall, I was stopped in my tracks. And then I was drawn to it. Drawn into it. I knew not to get close enough to set off the electronic alarm, but I think I did get close enough to draw the attention of a human guard. I was mesmerized. It measures 33-1/8 by 60 inches -- large for a painting, but not as large as I remember it. I felt as if I could lean against the glass, and somehow push through it.

I never noticed, as the AIC notes point out, that the Hopper deliberately avoided any reference to an entrance. This was part of Hopper's genius in drawing the viewer into the scene, while excluding us from it. Hopper also populated the café with four individuals who were essentially alone together in this space. Years later, Ray Oldenburg and other social critics would include cafés as typical of what he called a "third place" -- neither home nor work.

Hopper's original nighthawks do not exhibit the conviviality that Oldenburg and others typically associate with those third places, but they are drawn to a place that is optional. Those on the far side of counter have no obligation -- familial, financial, or otherwise -- to be there. Engagement with other visitors is also optional, and in Hopper's glimpse it is eschewed. But clearly, it is what the visitor in the GIF above craves. I do not know when this parody was created, but it certainly resonates with the current company-craving gestalt of a world in various stages of quarantine.

NOTE: Strange as this will seem to some readers, I use "the visitor in the GIF" because it only slowly occurred to me that this is John Travolta, in a scene from Pulp Fiction. In my defense, I saw that movie only once, a very long time ago. He looks confused, and in fact this is a popular meme known simply as Confused Travolta. Thanks to students in my Spring 2020 seminar Secret Life of Coffee for helping me figure this out. During a Zoom meeting, of course.

Lagniappe

I post this parody because of the geographies it so deftly brings to mind -- the geographies of coffee shops and community in more ordinary times. I post it for the benefit of my coffee students, who mainly study where coffee comes from, but who also analyze the places it goes to.

The rest of the posts in this blog relate to cafés that were -- by definition -- open when my students or I went to visit them. In late March and April of almost every year since 2007, students have told me and each other about the third places" they have visited in their hometowns or far away.

They have tried to figure out what made them successful (which they had to be to some extent, to be open when a well-financed franchise is never more than a mile or so away) and how they fit into their neighborhoods.

Perhaps my first encounter with the original painting captivated me so deeply because it was within a couple months of the first dozen or so of these student presentations. I have enjoyed hundreds of them since then -- including reviews of cafés that are since defunct.

This spring, my students have a different assignment: they are writing about cafés elsewhere (each has been assigned a state outside of New England), because their research perforce does not include. site visit. They will be learning about the cafes remotely -- as will students in my Coffee Week summer class if we are able to offer it. In many cases, the ways that the cafés find a new role in their communities -- with some combination of curbside pickup, delivery, charitable work or virtual gathering -- will be an important part of the story they tell.

Inauguration 2021 Update 

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