In 2016, the Supreme Leader of Islamic Republic of Iran made a series of controversial lectures, warning against the cultural encroachment in the space of private language academies. This study investigates the dynamics of private English language academies in Mashhad, Iran, employing spatial theories from Henri Lefebvre, Michel de Certeau, and Turner’s concept of liminality, alongside the data gathered through participant observations and online interviews with educators and students. The findings indicate that these academies initially capitalized on spatial resources within certain upscale streets of Mashhad, which influenced the social space of these areas to create a foreign vibe that was also desired as a space of English language education. Lefebvre's theories on the production of space and de Certeau's ideas on spatial practice highlight a dialectic between the establishment of language academies and the intricate ways individuals navigate these environments, fostering perceptions of sophistication, education, political freedom, and authenticity. The relationships of location in the city, shape, age and availability of buildings, regulations and (mis)managements at the office of different presidents since the 1990s, Harasat and Locations Police as the disciplinary arms of the municipality, social norms of Urf as a normalizing power, the learners attending in different generations and familial backgrounds and social classes make these spaces hypercomplex in the way they are administered and navigated on the part of the academies’ authorities and the English language learners. I demonstrate how attending these private language academies has caused social mobility for the average middle-class student whose access to spaces and groups would otherwise not have been possible. I will also discuss the freedoms available in these classes and how they are produced, expected, navigated, negotiated, and reproduced in the milieu of policing and Urf. Through this exploration, the study illuminates the multifaceted ways in which private English language academies in Mashhad serve as sites of social, cultural, and educational negotiation and transformation, creating everyday experiences that help the individuals feel they are away from a completely Iranian society, i.e. in a liminal space between Iran and abroad. Thus, the space of these private academies maintains a divergence from what the educators and students experience in the national-curriculum education and the ideals of the Islamic Republic for educational spaces.