[…]can a sex shop be a third place, either in the original nine-part definition of the term or in its simplified evolution?

Carol Queen,  Good Vibrations staff sexologist and curator of the Antique Vibrator Museum, hesitates to call Good Vibrations—a San Francisco-based sex shop—a “third space.”

“If there’s only three spaces—which of course there aren’t, there are more than three—but if there are only three kinds of space, I think it’s actually really problematic to think about third space as an economic entity,” she tells me. “I don’t wanna live in a culture where I have only one other alternative to go out and relate to my life, and it has to be going into, you know, shoe stores.”

But for some stores, providing an IRL space for their community actually comes at the cost of their bottom line. Take Toronto-based co-op Come As You Are; whose Kensington Market location is actively losing money. Worker-owner Jack Lamon describes the balancing act of financial stability and meaningful work.

“When our lease ran out and our landlord wanted us out, we went online only and for the first time realized, ‘Oh, this is actually a really profitable business if we have no physical space,’” Lamon says. “But it’s meaningless. It’s so hollow and meaningless. So because we actually did have a little bit of cash, you know, we could have actually paid that out to ourselves, or invested in or whatever, but we were like, ‘No, let’s reopen the shop.’”

Come As You Are has hosted in-person workshops on sexual education, healthcare and more; but having a space where people can just exist sometimes makes the most impact, particularly for underserved communities.