Across the Board: Why Bradenton Needs Its Third Spaces

When the world reopened after COVID, I realized mine had gotten very small. I had finished college, and most of my friends had moved away soon after. I wanted what a lot of people in their twenties want: to be around people my age and do something I enjoyed, somewhere outside my apartment.

That turned out to be harder than it sounds. I don't drink, and bars were never my scene. In Sarasota, I struggled to find anywhere people my age gathered that wasn't built around alcohol. Then I moved to Bradenton and found Kava Social Club.

It was the place I had been looking for: calm, alcohol-free, open late, and full of people looking for the same thing. A few of the regulars played chess. I sat down for one game and became a regular almost overnight. I kept coming back, got to know everyone, and helped wherever I could. When the club's previous director had to step down, he asked me to take care of it.

Since 2021, Kava Social Club has given us its thatched-roof back patio every Sunday and Tuesday night. In that time, we've become a US Chess affiliate with league seasons and nationally rated tournaments, and we've recorded more than 3,400 games. The number I care about most can't go on a spreadsheet, though. It's the number of people who walked in alone, the way I once did, and now walk in expecting to be greeted by name.

The sociologist Ray Oldenburg called places like this "third places." Home is the first place and work is the second. The third place is somewhere else, a barbershop, a diner counter, a park bench, where people gather with no transaction required beyond showing up. Oldenburg described them as a community's living room, where neighbors who would never otherwise meet become familiar to each other. Many of them have quietly disappeared, and I felt that absence firsthand.

Our club runs on a simple idea: we are a social club that happens to play chess. Three principles guide it.

Social first. Plenty of adults want more community but feel awkward walking into a room just to "socialize." A board gives you something to do with your hands and your attention, and conversation follows naturally over the review. Friendships and even working relationships have started at our tables. Some members come as much to talk as to play.

Stronger players teach instead of dominate. A National Master plays with us regularly and will gladly sit down with a beginner. On Tuesday study nights, I don't lecture. I ask questions, and the room works out the answers together. Club nights are free coaching and always will be. There is no membership, and there are no dues; all we ask is that you order something at the counter.

Serious when you want it. League nights group players into brackets by strength, so everyone plays someone near their level. The standard at every table is the same: respect, sportsmanship, and a handshake either way. You play an opponent, not an enemy. When you lose, and everyone loses, you're expected to sit there and work out what the other person saw that you missed.

That habit feels especially valuable during an election season, when our screens sort us into camps many times a day. A chess club won't fix that. But I've watched people who probably disagree about plenty build a weekly rivalry and then start asking about each other's families. Trust in a town is built through shared, in-person routines like these. You can't scroll your way into it.

So here's my pitch. You don't need to be good at chess, or even remember how the knight moves. Come to Kava Social Club at 540 13th St W after 8 p.m. on a Sunday or Tuesday, order something, head to the back patio, and say it's your first night. Someone will get you a game. We're 21 and over, every level is welcome, and se habla español. Details are at kavasocialchessclub.com.

If chess isn't your thing, find your version of it: a running group, a choir, a pickup game, a library book club. Then show up more than once. I know from experience how small life can get without a place like that. Communities are built by people who keep showing up to the same table.

Harold Gonzalez is the director of Kava Social Chess Club. He teaches math, data, and chess at SPARK ALC in Bradenton and is completing a master's degree in data science at New College of Florida.