An acquaintance of mine, poet and columnist Doug Holder, recently posed a question on social media: Have you ever been a regular, and what does that mean to you?
He was responding to an article in Esquire, “The Lost Art of Being a Regular,” by Mark Allen Burger. It’s paywalled (fair enough). Check your public library if you’d like to read it. In any event…
I realized that being a regular may indeed be a lost art, at least in the US. People my age are forgetting what it was like, and younger people never knew.
I further realized that we should probably revive this lost art, because we are entering a time when we’re going to need it.
Being a regular is a status relative to another person. It’s an earned title. You become a regular when someone else says you are, based on your interactions with them.
It’s a word belonging mostly to commerce, but it has the effect of de-business-ing business, of personalizing the impersonal. It’s a humanizing word that shifts the focus from transaction to relationship.
But what is it? How does it happen, and how does it work? I’ll tell you about my own experience.
Coffee and a Newspaper
In my home town, New York City, I commuted to work by the same route every weekday, along with thousands of other people, from Queens into Manhattan. Every morning, I stopped at the newsstand at the top of the stairs into the subway and bought the NY Times. I then went downstairs and stopped at the coffee stand in the station to get a regular coffee with milk and one sugar. I then continued down to the train with my paper and my coffee.
Beyond requesting my paper and ordering my coffee, and saying thank-you, I never spoke to anyone and barely made eye contact because that’s how we rolled in NYC.
And yet one day, I got to the newsstand, and my Times was folded and waiting for me, along with the papers of other regulars. I just had to put down my money and take it.
In about the same time period, I got down to the coffee stand one day and found my coffee waiting for me on the counter – regular, milk, one sugar, hot and fresh because the guy knew what time I’d be there.
We still didn’t talk to each other beyond me saying thank-you, which was now all I had to say.
I realized suddenly that I was part of the scene, the community. Despite the traditional New York conversation-avoidance, I was remembered, recognized. I was known to these people. If I ever went missing, those guys along my daily commute would be able to help the cops pinpoint just where and when I’d vanished.
A little while after that social breakthrough, I had another. I worked in those days in the financial district, near Wall Street. Back then, the work day was 9 to 5 with a lunch break from 12 to 1. This was universal. So every day, the narrow streets of lower Manhattan would be crammed with people arriving to work, then become empty and silent, then get crammed with people going out for lunch, then become empty and silent again, then get crammed with people going home, and then stay empty and silent overnight. (I know about overnight because sometimes my friends and I would wander around down there to decompress after getting out of the Village dance clubs, and it was just us and the rats and the ghost of Peter Stuyvesant.)
Those crammed hours were absolute madness, and the lunch rush was the craziest because the traffic was less orderly than the morning and evening rushes.
Near the office where I worked stood a hamburger and hot dog joint. It was a tiny little storefront on the corner that only cooked 2 or 3 things with 2 or 3 variations each, and it was only open for lunch. What little they did, they did extremely well, though, and the place was incredibly popular, so much so that they had to create a hyper-efficient way to process customers in the limited lunch-rush time window.
They had one line going in the double-door entrance and another line going out. You’d ride the in-line to the counter (where there were always a few crusty old dudes eating in), and place your order with the guy who would shout it out to the short-order cooks at the grill behind him. Then you’d step to your left and pay and receive your food, which would be ready and bagged in seconds because they were already cooking everything on the menu. Then you’d turn around and ride the out-line back to the street.
They gave this service to literally hundreds of people within the space of a single hour.
Now, granted, I’m a creature of habit, and I had my favorite thing that I would get from that place every time I went, up to three days a week because it was cheap as well as good.
But still – hundreds of customers on a virtual conveyor belt every single lunch rush.
And yet a day came, surprisingly quickly, when I got up to the counter, and the guy said, “The usual?”
Stunned, I said, “Yes, thanks.” And he turned and shouted out exactly what I wanted. I will never comprehend how, out of that sea of humanity all getting burgers and hot dogs, he could remember anyone’s order or face, but the man obviously had the power of professionalism.
That’s what being a regular means to me. It means being a noticed presence in the spaces you occupy and move through. It means being recognized by identity markers unique to you. Small woman with long, dark hair. New York Times. Regular coffee, milk, one sugar, 7:30 AM. Hot dog, heavy mustard, sauerkraut, ginger ale. It means being part of someone’s world enough that they add you to their schedule. They prepare for you, reserve space for you. You become part of the easy, efficient flow of their work. You are expected, and missed when you don’t show up.
Sometimes, it can be moments like the time the delivery guy from our favorite Chinese restaurant came to our apartment by mistake. He was going to another apartment in our large building, but his feet carried him to our door by sheer force of habit, and he didn’t realize it until we were all looking at each other in confusion. And then we laughed.
All Our Third Places
Whether you’re in and out in 30 seconds or you stick around for hours, anywhere that you’re a regular becomes a “third place” in your territory.
Third places, a concept developed by sociologist Ray Oldenburg, are spaces for free, informal, social interaction, additional to home and work. It’s your coffee shop, pub, park, bookstore, basketball court, hair salon, etc. I argue they can also be transitional spaces on routes we travel frequently, turning the route itself into a third place. Here’s a free article about the importance of third places by Ray Oldenburg and Karen Christensen in the UNESCO Courier.
Being a regular at a place grants you a certain emotional ownership of it. Something about it is now yours. Your paper, your coffee, your lunch, your time slot. Eventually, you might even have your table by the window, your pizza combo added to the menu with your name on it.
The day I became a regular at the news and coffee stands granted me ownership over my commute. That route became part of my home turf. I could relax and enjoy my morning that little bit more. I felt comfortable enough to look around and begin to recognize other regulars I shared it with, who also ceased to be strangers just by dint of being seen every day.
Has that ever happened to you?
Has a barista anticipated your order? Maybe your favorite Thai restaurant knows how spicy you like your drunken noodles. Is there a shop you spend so much time in that when a newbie asks for help, you take care of them before revealing that you don’t work there? Do you see the same joggers and families at the park every Saturday, and do they see you?
How many such third places do you have? Probably fewer now than before the pandemic. Covid cut us off from so much that was regular about our lives, but it was just the knock-out punch. It was already getting harder to become a regular before that disaster.
Our digitized, virtual, automated world yaps endlessly about connection and community, but it doesn’t want us to go anywhere or meet anyone. We save our coffee order to the app, but the app won’t anticipate our arrival or remark on our absence. The worker won’t connect our face to our cup. We’re responding only to the apps, not each other.
One-click ordering. Frictionless payment. Contactless delivery. These “conveniences” scrub the humanity out of our habits. They’re bad when we need them, as during a plague, but worse when we don’t.
Supposedly, eliminating all that interactive friction will free up more time for “quality” socializing. Really, though?
I mean, your commute is your commute. Is it better to make that daily trip with people to help you fuel up on the way out and wind down on the way back, or to do it in a bubble of invisibility and isolation?
And how will we do all this quality socializing when the work day is longer and more exhausting than ever? How much of that freed-up time gets spent doomscrolling before collapsing into bed?
Here-Place, Now-Moment
One of my regular haunts.
When you leave your home, how many faces do you recognize, and how many might recognize you? Do you know which dogs belong to which houses on your street? Do you have a personal map of businesses and amenities along your various routes, favorites that you use again and again?
If you needed to beg a favor, or drop out for a couple of hours, or you were being followed by a suspicious van, where would you go? What haven or check-in spaces do you have, where you are “one of us”?
That’s what community is, our “us.” The We of We the People. It’s our extended home where we do all our regular stuff among our regular faces. We belong because we are participating members.
To be clear, I’m a hardcore introvert. I hate chatting, smiling, sparkling. I love silence and solitude. But even those who read books at ballgames are present. We recognize and are recognized. None of us has to perform a particular way to be part of the “us.” We just have to show up often enough to be a regular.
The Age of Convenience is failing us. We need those passing, superficial relationships with all their frictions. We must re-humanize our ordinary, daily lives.
We do that, first, by getting out of the house, and then by de-automating all those pesky little tasks we’re told are such a burden.
Turn your eyes from your phone to the person doing something for you. Order online but go to the local restaurant to pick up your meal in person. Say thank-you.
Choose your favorite businesses, services, amusements where you live, where you work, along your routes, and make a habit of stopping in rather than adding another app. Use your commons – parks, beaches, libraries, transit, etc. You part-own the damn things, after all.
Pop the bubble. Put the phone in your pocket. Be present in the here-place and now-moment. Little by little, you’ll start feeling the “us” around you. You’ll hear the music and languages. The dogs will learn your scent, and you’ll learn your neighbors’ roses and holiday decorations. You’ll collect arcane, insider knowledge of all your places. You’ll start thinking of your street, your shops, your station.
And before you know it, you’ll be surprised by someone greeting you with, “The usual?” followed by, “Didn’t see you last week.”
And then you’ll be a regular.
Note: The essay above contains 2,022 words which, according to western numerology, reduces to 6. The number 6 represents love, partnership, and community. In tarot, the sixth Major Arcanum is The Lovers, while the sixes of the minor suits represent various forms of shareable benefits. The 6 of Swords, an easing of burdens and difficulty. The 6 of Wands, victory and leadership. The 6 of Cups, relationships, memories, and simple joys. The 6 of Pentacles, sharing and mutual aid.
Please note also, this essay is 100% human-made by me. No AI was used in the writing or the art, all of which are my original creations. – Jen
