Okay, I know I acted silly about this, but the fact that there is 1 singular year round roller skating rink in the city of Philadelphia home to 1.6 million people is kinda fucking horrifying when you think about the broader implications of it.
We live in a society without access to third places and those that existed in the past are dying or dead. There aren't cafes on the corner anymore, they are illegal to open with current US zoning laws, there aren't cheap movie theaters anymore, skating rinks are dying out, community centers have been getting shut down or under funded for decades, apart from parks and libraries there are literally no places that people can exist in withoutbeing expected to spend money.
How does a society function without leisure, is not pleasure and happiness what we live for and yet in the capitalistic system, we have destroyed every option people have for recreation without spending because we as a society place profit above all else, and that is tearing away at the societal fabric as we can barely deal with it.
The current loneliness epidemic is a direct result of how we have taken away places for people to exist and replaced them with places to spend money at, you don’t try to meet new people while shopping for clothes or furniture, you avoid others. We complain children and teens don’t go outside but we have totally removed every single thing for them to do that isn’t digital
