CREATING THIRD PLACES: SLAM'S WAY
by RICHMOND RIVER RAT
Every winter my buddy Slam walks the train tracks along the river. Most people are deterred by the cold and gray, but Slam figured out a long time ago that when the trees are bare the whole landscape changes. Anything hidden becomes exposed. What he’s really looking for are abandoned summer Spots - the decaying remnants of warmer days gone by. River Spots are to Slam what truffles are to pigs. I’ve never met someone better at seeking them out. I’m not sure if he just has an eye for these things or if it’s achieved simply by volume, but I do know that when Slam says he knows a Spot you trust him. And you go.
The first time he ever brought me to one of his found Spots I was skeptical. Anyone that knows Richmond well knows that in recent years Texas Beach has unfortunately succumbed to Greek lifers looking for an excuse to day drink who don’t give a damn about respecting the river. This once coveted river Spot has become a cesspool of empty disposables and White Claw cans. It’s tragic. So when Slam told me he’d found something really cool, I didn’t believe him– but I knew he’d smoke me out if I went, so I did. This was some years ago now, before the tower was closed. When you could still take the stairs. The trail of vapes and canned cocktails starts there and continues west, but Slam had us divert. He led me onto the tracks and then east.
I was starting to lose faith in him when he hopped off the tracks and down a hidden trail into the woods. He brought us to an oasis right on the water. A log lean-to that could fit at least four people sat facing the water. In front of it was a firepit made from stones, an inner tube and a few stray logs laying around as makeshift seating. Upon one rock the words, “Pack Out Ya Trash,” had been spraypainted. I was beyond impressed. I asked Slam, “You made this?”
He said no, but he had maintained it throughout the winter months. This was how he revealed to me that one of his winter pastimes was the location and upkeep of these Spots. This was when I first coined the term “railpunk” and declared Slam the man behind the movement. He would never say this of himself and it is exactly his lack of attention to labels or aesthetics that make him the essential railpunk.
No Spot can ever be permanent - this is the nature of the River. Slam understands that intrinsically and yet he still goes through the trouble of fixing them up because he knows without this care they likely won’t even last for a second summer. Slam didn’t know it at the time but in doing this he was also protecting a rapidly dwindling essential of human life: the third place.
If you’re not already hip to the notion, like Slam wasn’t, a third place is a place that is not home or work. It is a place in which you can exist without obligation and in which status doesn’t matter. There’s real sociological theory on this topic, but you can read Ray Oldenburg if you want to know more about that. I’m trying to explain the connection between third places and railpunk –how they each beget the other. Many railpunks are born out of the discovery of freedom through third places and many third places are born out of railpunks seeking that freedom that they so crave.
It isn’t just railpunks, of course. Third places are essential to all human life and a healthy society. Naturally this means they are under constant threat in a capitalistic society. True third places are antithetical to capitalism. They are not bars or coffee shops in which you can relax as long as you buy your time. They do not exist to make money. They do not enforce hierarchy based on socioeconomic status, race, age or any of the other qualities we use to judge others. Some river rats may rag on a newcomer to the spot, but this is nothing that can’t be solved through connection.
Some of the best examples of true third places are public libraries, which are dangerously undervalued. Anyone can enter a library and use its services without payment, which is exactly why our government continues to strip their funding– to extrajudicially disenfranchise the poor and homeless. It is also exactly why they and all other third places must be protected.
Though railpunks do take it a step further. As wonderful as libraries are, you can’t smoke in them. You can’t drink in them and you definitely can’t be nude in them. None of these rules apply to river Spots. The only law I’ve ever seen enforced at one is the same one that was posted at Slam’s Texas Beach find: Pack Out Ya Trash. Or, in other words, respect the space you’re in. Other than that, get high, get drunk, get nude. Get free, man, just clean up after.
In Richmond the railroad tracks run parallel to the river throughout the whole city and probably even beyond though I’ve never ventured that far. To the chagrin of CSX they’ve become an unintentional thoroughfare connecting all sorts of third places and potential spots for them. It’s seen as a deviant activity by society at large to walk the train tracks. Deviant or hobo-esque - you know, poor. There’s very little that makes comfortable people more uncomfortable than facing poverty. Whether its theirs or someone else’s. But railpunks recognize that existing in this unregulated space is anything but a sign of an unstable society. No matter the state of the economy, humans need third places.
It takes extra work but there’s really no better space for a third place than those untamed woods between the tracks and the river. It was here, thanks to my buddy Slam, that I learned what freedom really felt like and where I learned what it means to be a railpunk. I know the hours I spend looking for logs and hauling them back to my Spot will never be in vain. Because the powers at be are not going to stop trying to take these oases from us and we can’t let them. Cultivating and protecting third places is essential to our survival and an eventual healthy society. There are many ways to do this but my favorite is Slam’s way.