The kitchen is only the cool spot because you're in it

Ten years ago, I was living with two flatmates in a big Parisian flat. Once or twice a year, we organised a party, which gathered up to 90 people, a number we were rather proud of. During those parties, there was a consistent, yet slightly annoying pattern for us as organisers: the best discussions were bound to take place in the kitchen, rarely in our big living room, where we were concentrating our efforts to entertain the party with food, drinks, and music.

You see, the kitchen was the room where smoking was allowed. Its door had to stay closed as much as possible, so that the smell of cigarettes and the cold from the wide-open window wouldn't spread to the other rooms. Smokers went there to smoke, usually accompanied by someone, even a non-smoker. People would start talking in the main area and one of them would eventually say something along the lines of: “I’ll go for a smoke, want to join me so we can continue this conversation?”

From the hallway one could hear the laughter, the noise, the loud voices, the liveliness of the kitchen. The living room, in contrast, was more about small, quieter groups, background music, and discussions that weren’t easily overheard by other guests.

The small kitchen, packed with ephemeral groups, encouraged people to talk to each other, even if they had never met. They would overhear someone say something, react to it, and start a discussion. They wouldn’t have done that so easily in the living room, and the result was that the kitchen was the “place to be”, despite the toxicity of the air, the noise, and the cold draught that could make you ill the next day (some guests would never set foot in the kitchen for those exact reasons).

To summarise, the living room was the familiar place to sit and chat with people you already knew: it was a great way to spend time with friends. The kitchen was the crowded space to talk and meet new, weird, interesting people: it was the social network lubricant. Both rooms managed to coexist, and in many ways were codependent.

Now suppose the kitchen fills with kooks, bigots, and racists, and that the loudest, biggest jackass of the party never seems to leave that room. You can be sure that more than a few guests will now try to avoid spending more time there. Some of them will stop smoking for the night, and some tenacious smokers may end up starting to use alternative smoking rooms.

The kitchen ends up with fewer people and becomes a less interesting place for most of the guests. Meanwhile, the new smoking rooms never really manage to replace it as the “place to be”. Why? Because smokers and non-smokers alike now spread across several smoking areas, and none of these new rooms becomes lively enough to matter.

The kitchen also remains the default: a lot of guests keep going there despite everything, out of habit, comfort, and because it is easier for them to ignore or tolerate the bigots than to face the smokers in the other rooms, who now resent them for having spent time in the kitchen and for not helping to make their new smoking room cooler.

As the party organiser, I think it’s fine if people want to smoke and therefore spend time in the kitchen: they are free to do so. And what kind of party would it be if it was a non-smoking party? I think it’s cool and understandable if people want to avoid it altogether — the more the merrier in the living room — and I’m OK with some going to the bedroom or balcony to smoke: next time I’ll try to avoid having bigots at my party.*1

What I find to be not so cool though is people encouraging other guests to take up smoking. It’s also not cool to advertise the kitchen as the best part of the party, or worse, the only good thing about it. It’s not cool either for the most interesting guests to share their latest news and cool stories only with people in the kitchen.*2

Maybe the most interesting guests going to the kitchen to smoke or to chat is what makes the kitchen a cool place to be. Maybe they are missing the big picture when they claim to go there because that’s where it’s the most fun. The kitchen is only the cool spot because they're in it.

Maybe by contributing to making the kitchen the de facto place to be at the party, some guests are normalising the behaviour of the bigots and, even worse, rewarding them with their presence.

Maybe this can make the other guests — the ones who refuse, rightfully, to deal with bigots — feel left out. Maybe this kind of behaviour can be interpreted as saying that to have a good time at a party, you either have to be OK with bigots and toxic smoke, or be a bigot and/or a smoker yourself. If some guests don’t seem to understand that this is unfair, this is when they will start to disappoint me.

I am affected, not because you have deceived me, but because I can no longer believe in you.

I stumbled upon this great quote recently, by Friedrich Nietzsche and I thought it matched this topic quite well.