Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

>just lots of people occupying neighboring space and rarely talking to each other.

This is a bitter stereotype that is leveled against both city-dwellers and suburb-dwellers, and, like many stereotypes, has some truth to it in both cases, but amounts to uncalled-for negativity. Some people don't want to interact with their neighbors, regardless of whether they live in a city or a suburb. Others are sociable with their community, and express it just as well whether they live in a city or a suburb.

yup, they probably mean small town/village life as opposed to suburbs, which is what this community has come to resemble, which is what they wanted so a great success, even if the terminology was off.

As usual, the people you fill the space with make all the difference. The stereotype gets reinforced by the kind of suburbs HN people tend to live in and to have been raised in.

Wealthy white collar suburbs almost universally suck because people don't really miss out on much by not interacting with each other and people have no real problems so they tend to make each other their problems and not like what their neighbors do.

You go down the economic ladder and things get a lot better because people have enough real problems they don't give a shit about whether their other neighbor pulled permits or what the setbacks are or how long their project car/boat has sat on blocks, and they interact with each other because being friends with your neighbors well enough to share tools and trade favors is worth it.

Yes, my experience in the suburbs is that most residents hop in their cars and take off somewhere with their tinted windows rolled up, and there are no "third places" around to casually encounter your neighbours. Sometimes there will be yard sales, BBQs, or birthday parties though.

But my experience in an urban apartment building is not very different. You might encounter someone in the elevator but it's polite to keep quiet. A lot of dense townhouse neighbourhoods are built without any corner stores, cafes, or bakeries mixed in at the ground floor.

I like that this family found a way to make do without any third place at all, just occupying the sidewalk and roadside. But I'm sure it would be a lot more comfortable if they had at least a shady patch of grass!

> This genuinely threw me because in my experience the suburbs are the antithesis of this, just lots of people occupying neighboring space and rarely talking to each other.

I've found the opposite. My neighbors and I (apartment, in the city) rarely speak to each other in the city, but when I lived in the suburbs I knew LOTS of my neighbors

I came here to say the same. Sense of community in the suburbs? That has not been my experience and tends to be one of the main complaints about the suburbs.

Lol exactly. I 100% cannot imagine this happening where my parents live, in a typical US suburban subdivision. On the flip side, I can absolutely see something like this taking off on my block in Brooklyn and would just be another addition to the already established community

100% same here!

It depends on the suburb. Some suburbs are effectively just city neighborhoods in a different school district, and they have blocks and block parties. Other suburbs are nests of culs-de-sac, where you'll say "hi" to your next door neighbors but not know anybody else.

We had block parties like this in Brooklyn while I was growing up. People would make or buy food and we'd just occupy half of the block with loud music, running around for the kids and drinking for the adults. Cars could still pass by, but they were careful and people would move out of the way. It was fun!

I used to live in a suburb. I met people the same way you meet people anywhere: common interests.

A dozen or so people with dogs met at the park every day. We knew each other, watched each other's houses/pets on vacation, and sometimes did dinner or BBQs.

A few people organized a DnD group after advertising on nextdoor (which is a cesspool but only 70%).

Of course those with kids the same age often knew each other because of school or activities.

The neighborhood park had a system of "pea patches" where you could grow some stuff next to your neighbors.

There's nothing that unique all in all about this space other than there was a "third place" we all had built and took care of (the park was originally supposed to be a school that never got built so the community got it to become a park but at least half the work came from the community. The county provided some matching work).

The weird thing is people are people no matter where they are, mostly. And if you are lonely, you can go fix it.

Lots of people move from somewhere they hate so somewhere they think will solve all their problems. And they are right. Or they move from somewhere they love to somewhere that they know will be terrible. And they are right. It seems like whether you think your neighborhood is great or terrible, you're not right.

Is that your lived experience of the suburbs, or just what you've been led to believe on online forums filled with both a) city dwellers, b) angsty teens?

As someone who lives in the suburbs it threw me because it's so rare for anyone to acknowledge any positive of the suburbs. The suburbs are always some lifeless dystopia where we all drink away our days and wish we could visit the bodega and get a fresh baguette or something.

Here in suburbia in an exurb, everyone knows each other. We have regular street parties. All of the kids play games together frequently.

I live in suburbia and one of the neighbors periodically hosts coffee and pastries in their front yard. I also do happy hour at different houses. I never got this community feel living in SF for 10 years.

Dunno, I've found suburbs more friendly than the city. Someone's more likely to say hi when you're grilling, mowing your lawn or just walking around.

Urban settings have more 3rd spaces which can be good places to socialise, but your immediate neighbours are less likely to speak with you in my experience.

And having a toddler amplifies the experience since most families move to the suburbs when they have kids, urban spaces are far more likely to have young people without families.

Just not so.

My neighborhood has a tradition of summer “wine walks” even though homes are widely spaced. It’s not about place, it’s about attitude.

Would still benefit from eventually moving the initial meetup group to a green space, especially if there can be a community garden to work on (yes I realize we are re-inventing the wheel of a village)

Suburbs are typically more socially homogenous, with more institutional connections between residents (kids go to the same school, people work for the same local employer, same church, etc) with a physical environment less conducive to connectivity. City neighborhoods (again, typically) have better physical presence with neighbors that are less likely to have things in common. I think that's what the author is trying to say.

The running joke is that nobody in NYC knows their neighbors.

In a sense, you no longer need to since you now have thousands of people within about a dozen-suburban-house's distance away.

> in my experience the suburbs are the antithesis of this

I think you had a bad experience. The center of activity isn't the street in the suburbs - its schools, churches, events, etc...

I believe it's both/and.

Cities are that too dense (Manhattan) don't have the space to do "stoop coffee" or equivalent. Everybody is in a tall apartment.

The cookie-cutter suburb is too spread out and too car-dependent. You could have "stoop coffee" but your neighbors are in their cars, so don't stop to talk.

An older bedroom community, or smaller city with single family dwellings (row homes or tightly-packed detached) hits the balance - enough people on foot, enough space to spread out and not block the sidewalk.

Community is as community does.

I've lived in suburbs where I had a good idea of who lived in each house, talked to some of them semi-regularly, and kids ran around the neighborhood together every day, and I've lived in neighborhoods where everyone stays inside and nobody interacts with each other and even the few group things explicity set up (neighborhood street potluck, chili cookoff at the attached park) couldn't be sustained. I moved directly from the former to the latter, so the difference was stark.

I think it has much more to do with demographics and type of people that happen to be living there, and whether there's an existing community. The more lively neighborhood in my case was in a "worse" neighborhood with cheaper houses, while the new neighborhood was all newly build housing. We were all starting from scratch with each other, with some people maybe having a year or so more history than others (as they staged builds 5-10 houses at a time). Community is a frail thing, and needs to be tended or it will wither, and sometimes it dies before it even has a chance to flourish.

Where I currently live, in a medium-density area of town-houses (actually, pretty high-density for town-houses), seems to be the perfect density for community. I see my neighbours all of the time, just doing our things, and you say hi and chat because that's what humans do. Any more dense and you have apartments, where strangely people are more distant (even though closer) (unless effort has gone into the apartment design to get people interacting), less dense and you have a suburbia with its fortresses.

I think it's a classic "grass is greener" story. If they haven't lived in the suburbs, they might think it's got elements it doesn't actually have.

my cynical take on this is that the suburban gentrifiers appear to have replicated behaviors of the people they displaced....

It's not like communal behaviors or venues in SF/Oakland/Berkeley did not exist prior to 2025...

Ya, came here to say the same thing and I'm glad others are similarly surprised.

I do think that people who live in the most downtown of downtown areas are more similar to cul-de-sac style suburb dwellers, because there's often a similar kind of implied distance to third-spaces that people want to be in, as if taking the elevator down is equivalent to getting in the car and driving somewhere, and being elevated is like having your fenced off yard in a way, but there's so much more to urban spaces that include skyscrapers than there is in suburbs that include cul-de-sac car centric hellscapes, imo.

If you move to the city from a particularly isolated suburb, please leave the social isolation where you came from, and do what you can to just be present and open to conversation, it's amazing how it feels to be connected to people that you can by on the street because you're both going to the train stop or cafe, and it's this sense of connectedness that makes the thought of moving back to my hometown quite repulsive, despite the individuals who live there otherwise being alright

Same, but I think it really depends on the design on the neighborhood, regardless of if it's a city or a suburb.

When I lived in "Brownstone Brooklyn" I had a stoop and would often hang out on it, as is common in neighborhoods with this feature. I knew tons of my neighbors, people would stop and talk to each other, etc. When I moved to Williamsburg years ago, that stopped. There are stairs that lead to my apartment, but it's not like a stoop that you'd find in other parts of Brooklyn -- they're steeper than you'd get on a brownstone and don't really encourage sitting at street level. I'd hang out on them sometimes, but then a few years back all the street lights and building lights switched to bright LEDs, making it gross to sit under them at night. But if you go to other parts of this neighborhood just a 5 minute walk away the building design is more conducive for gathering and chatting on stoops at street level, and I notice that that happens in that part of the neighborhood.

Anyway, I wish we'd consider these things when building our environment.

Depends on your burb but yes in general this seems to be the case these days.

I know all my immediate neighbors, and am great friends with one, and amiable with all the others. You just have to not be shy, I have a type A personality so not afraid to walk over and say howdy. Most people are good with small talk if you open. Not everyone wants to be your best friend and I keep that in mind, but would rather say hello than a total stranger.

Not all suburbs are built the same. My dad grew up in suburban Cleveland in the 50s, which has a bunch of some of the very earliest style of suburbs. When I have been there, and from what I remember my dad telling me, there was actually a pretty decent community there despite it being a suburb.

Personally having been there, and also many suburbs in the rest of the US, I think it's more complex than just "typical suburban problems are inherent to the suburban environment". That is to say, very early-style suburbs like Eastern Cleveland, suburbs of major cities like NYC, suburbs of smaller cities like Cincinnati, cities that are almost entirely suburban like LA or San Jose, and very old/organic suburbs like the gold coast of Connecticut are all completely different from each other.

Even within places like Cleveland or New York, the time period in which the suburb formed (50s-60s suburbs are completely different from 2000-2010's suburbs) and the circumstances of how it formed (it could be completely organic and decentralized, totally centralized in a big development project, organized as a purely residential community with hoa fees and gates and community pools/golf clubs, or organized as a natural extension to the city and include spaces for business and schools) make it so that two places can both be suburban but have very different problems.

And then of course you have demographics as a major confounding variable. In suburban Cleveland in the 50s and 60s almost every house was occupied by a nuclear family with school-aged kids, most men were actively employed (mostly unionized blue collar workers in eg steel). But the rust belt happened, people started living longer and stopped having so many kids, upper middle class people started preferring bigger houses, etc. so now that community is significantly more elderly, fragmented, and not really upper-middle-class any more despite the suburb itself not changing much. Similarly, Palo Alto is not really built that differently from many nice parts of Florida, but the culture is completely different from the physically-similar communities in Florida, because one place has lots of upwardly mobile people in tech/finance/affiliated with Stanford, and the other is a retirement destination.

I guess my point is that "suburban problems" are oftentimes just "problems in suburbs" or "a problem in that suburb" or "a problem with that kind of suburb", not "problems with suburbs in general". Suburbs can have a sense of community but their residents need to want that and make it happen.

Hard agree. Especially in widely spaced suburban/exurban neighborhoods that mysteriously lack sidewalks and have suspiciously wide roads.

Little boxes on a hillside

Little boxes made of ticky tacky

Little boxes on a hillside

And they all look just the same.

It's not just about where you live, but how you choose to show up in that space

It really depends on the suburb. American ones are mostly garbage for social interaction, but I just moved to one (Houten, NL) that is really good for this.

The key, of course, is to get cars away from people so that the streets (or bike paths and gardens in my case) are a place for humans, where it's comfortable to chat, let your kids run around, etc.

> This genuinely threw me because in my experience the suburbs are the antithesis of this, just lots of people occupying neighboring space and rarely talking to each other.

This post and the comments here are genuinely interesting to me, because it shows how much people have different experiences in "suburban" and "urban" living. That, in turn, puts a whole new spin on everything I read about NIMBYism and urban development and whatnot. People don't even have a shared basis for what a city or suburb is and totally different experiences in each, so it calls into question how well we can even agree on or communicate what we want!

Personally, having lived over (urban: Manhattan, Boston, suburban: Houston-ish, Chicago-ish, rural: California, Missouri), I tend to agree that suburbs are the sweet spot for knowing your neighbors to some degree. In my Manhattan apartment, I lived in a tiny studio crammed into a building with tons of other people who I never met. In my rural living, people were mostly too far apart to mingle. In my suburbs, we were "friendly" with people about 6-7 houses in either direction, and front or back.

I live now in what I'd call a suburb (along this street: https://maps.app.goo.gl/7VfBtjzq3fMJRGXL9), and there's lots of people frequently "going for walks". There's not that much to walk _to_ but people are generally pretty active when the weather is nice, and so you run into your neighbors a fair bit. I'd say I know by name the families (so, multiple people) of about 10 houses in my near vicinity, and have the cell phone numbers of a handful.

I love this stoop coffee idea, and am going to have to try it here with my wife and kids.

So I live in a big city in the beltline area around the core and the problem is it's a car culture and we all have detached garages. This means a big majority never use their front door, they enter their garage via the alley and go in the back. The suburbs typically have garages at the front and people who are driving to work are likely to leave and return at the same time so this increases the odds of bumping into your neighbor.

The equalizers: dogs and younger kids. Dog walkers seem to fall into 2 camps: friendly and most definitely not friendly; the former give you lots of chances to have a casual conversation. Young kids are likely to be playing out front too.

I'm sure other cities have this too, but we have an annual neighbor day that only takes a little bit of effort and bravery to kick start this sort of community: https://www.calgary.ca/events/neighbour-day.html?redirect=/n...

>This genuinely threw me because in my experience the suburbs are the antithesis of this, just lots of people occupying neighboring space and rarely talking to each other.

I've lived in both settings, and my own experience has been a mix. In the (walkable) suburbs I've lived in, I've connected with my immediate neighbors, strength of connection rapidly dissipates with distance. We are friendly, occasionally have a BBQ or meal together, and lots of random chats while going for a walk or doing yard work.

When I've lived in cities, it's been a much larger and more active community where the connection is less about proximity of our homes, and more about being in the same place at the same time since our daily errands and living were generally on foot. For those and the simple reason of small homes, we were more likely to meet somewhere or do an activity. I was also FAR more likely to run into someone I knew in my city than I was in my suburbs.

I now live in a suburb and it’s plenty social. We baked cookies and took them to every house up and down the block when we moved in and we greet new neighbors with treats when there’s turnover. We also exchange holiday cards and cookies every year. We either know or recognize most people within a few blocks and we have become friends with a few families that also have kids the age of ours whom we met at the neighborhood park. Suburbs can be great!

Happy reader for a while. For HN readers, if you want to have a setup where you live near friends and/or family, check their posts: https://supernuclear.substack.com/archive?sort=top

> they would comment on who slept over

> landlady said she nearly let herself into my home to make sure I hadn't died because no one had seen me in a few days.

You sound way less bothered by that than I would be. I'm annoyed just reading it.

Greetings from Istanbul. Unfortunately what you describe in your blog post sounds impossible to me in (at least many districts of) Istanbul. The only place to "socialize" in a neighborhood is to sit at coffee shops.

Thanks for your work - too bad I started reading the article and as a popup appeared over it, I had to close it.

>isn't just about being able to borrow cup of sugar

this in particular is interesting to me because you used it to illustrate the minimum level of neighborly engagement, but I think many of us don't even reach that level. I for one would never think of asking my neighbor for cooking ingredients; in fact the idea of going over and knocking on their door for any purpose is almost inconceivable to me unless there was a medical emergency.

Not saying my mindset is right or even healthy, but that's how it is. There's a lot of work to be done.

This seems unnecessarily harsh toward people who like to travel.

>while the old guard starts to use it as a notification board

It sounded to me like that’s been the intention since it was started. The in person meetings are the point and the whatsapp group exists to facilitate that.

Not coincidentally about the size of a US infantry company...

Often noted in other contexts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number

I think things could also 'creep' in the other direction where the group communication becomes overwhelming. The article mentions that someone actually sold an item through the WhatsApp group. My worry would be that the WhatsApp group becomes and meetings turn into Craigslist, where it's people looking for dogsitters and Buy Nothing posts.

The point, if I have one, is that editing and saying no, especially with the technology, will help the group stay together. In person, obviously, neighbors can talk about whatever they like.

In my opinion a broadcast/newsletter would be the better fit for group communication.

> The group is at a critical point now, having ~100 Whatsapp members. From what I've seen this creates a chilling effect where you inevitably end up with cliques and social cooling.

The way to minimize this fear is by encouraging members to send welcoming messages to those new to the community. Celebrate the growth instead of fearing the unknown.

> No new members will feel like they can actually send a message into a 100+ person group, while the old guard starts to use it as a notification board, rather than a real chat.

If new members are made aware that sending a message to the group is perfectly acceptable, then there will be trepidation.

Much like what I am doing here to what I assume is a group exceeding 100+ members.

The WhatsApp group isn't the point though, seems largely secondary. This would continue to exist with or without the group.

> The group is at a critical point now, having ~100 Whatsapp members. From what I've seen this creates a chilling effect where you inevitably end up with cliques and social cooling.

I'd like to see an analysis of how and when group chats get so big they start to die.

Your neighbours are likely absolutely game for stoop whisky.

My neighbours do this from time time, a tradition started during the pandemic.

Use some cones to block off a parking spot. Set up some chairs and a table. Hang out and have some drinks in the evening and catch up on the neighbourhood gossip.

You 100% can do stoop whiskey! Or simply hanging outside with whatever beverage. My block in Brooklyn has a lot more stoop whiskey than coffee but also has a really strong neighborhood feel (and whatsapp chat). I feel lucky to have moved into an already vibrant community but also believe anyone can create this anywhere.

If you figure out stoop whiskey, let me know. I'm all in for sure on the idea.

The real magic seems to be less about the coffee and more about just showing up consistently and being visible

My uncle does thirsty Thursday every week on his porch in his small town. People bring beer from all around.

It definitely works.

> Maybe I can figure out stoop whiskey.

You can figure it out. You’ll also figure out how much you actually want to do it vs. how much you like the idea of doing it.

Just curious, what neighborhood is this?

These people are anarchists! No really, they are. The stoop coffee to "It takes the hood to save the hood" pipeline is real.

could I please just browse live near friends without logging in? signing-in/signing-up feels like too much effort to just browse

pff wish i knew abt this last year!

Getting to know your neighbors is an essential part of building a safety net, too. It makes us healthier and happier!

I remember seeing a documentary or a video clip of this being followed. I don't recall whether or not it was in Spain, but it was definitely a Spanish-speaking village. That clip came to my mind when I read this post.

>Sadly, this has mostly disappeared, but I think it’s a good example of how the sense of community in Spain differs from that in the U.S.

The first part of your sentence disagrees with the second

I’m also from a small town in Spain, ~600 people.

And while it’s not as popular as before it’s still going strong in summer.

I’m Catalan so we call it “la fresca”, translates to “to the fresh air”.

In my street, ~5-10 people, my mother and some neighbours still do it.

The way towns are build in spain facilitate that, single houses but no garden. We live door by door.

So if you want to be outside you are by definition accesible.

Before TV people used to also be a lot in the balcony just chilling and chatting with people passing by.

This is my street in google mapa in case someone is interested:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/?link=https://www.google.com/maps/@4...

Also used to be very common in Hungarian villages, basically houses would have benches in front of the fences facing the street and people would hang out there in the afternoon. As a kid I remember watching the cows get herded back from the field while sitting there, people biking and saying hi, on the way to and from the store etc.

Nowadays this is mostly dead even in villages. Old grannies watch daytime TV Turkish soap operas, younger folks are on their phones, they anyway work in the nearby towns etc.

Yes! Awesome Sivers post.

Was just about to write.

My 69-year old neighbour just knocks on my door at random interval and asks if I want a coffee.

* I had an 80 year old neighbour as well, but she got sick and moved in with her daughter.

Yeah I'm like, you know who's good at hanging out on the stoop, poor people (Southern US). It's a little funny that's all.

I am Indian. Not sure if this is because there are too many of us but except for part of cities these days, social connections like these are normal.

I have at least a dozen neighbours, I can walk in (uninvited), have tea and gossip. And not all of them are necessarily my friends. Some are.

Pretty much everyone I know has their little neighbourhood circle like this.

If everyone is treated poorly by the HOA, you should be able to get them together and dissolve the HOA. Read the documents, there should be a procedure for dissolution.

Are you an owner? the hoa is not the board - it’s the entirety of the home owners who can vote and amend any rules at any time with enough momentum and support.

You say the 'watch parties' are too much, but these are actually the events that are the best. They are at 8p, people come over when their kids are in bed, we have 4-10 people show up, everyone's in their sweat pants, and we watch a TV episode. We discuss it for 10-15m afterwards, and we generally part ways.

It's such a low-effort and small event, and it allows people to get into other people's homes in a low-judgement way. It's been one of the more successful events at getting neighbors to become friends with each other.

Does this get covered in the post, "in front of neighbours drive" then one is covered by 5, no?

or by the abutting private property owner;

Classic example of the hidden costs of well intentioned regulation.

THIS. To paraphrase Napoleon: For having a real community, the people are to the housing geometry as three to one.

You can create a community in a neighbourhood like this. Five years is a pretty long time. People will come and go but if you spend even an hour per month with neighbours and other people reciprocate, it will build a community that transcends individuals coming & going. Think of a university campus: community forms there in far fewer than 5 years through regular casual interactions.

I think this is something very general, houses in Romanian villages have benches in front of them where people used to gather like this, in the summer this was somehow the norm, less now, but it's still happening. One of the other options was either the bar or probably church.

Yeah was going to see, he's the real MVP.

Germany as well.

If you do it too often, you won't get a representative picture of the entire community just those who have both time on their hands and either an ax to grind or are somehow very invested. This is a very typical failure mode. The people who are extremely active in such matters don't have an average personality profile. You know what I mean if you've ever used Nextdoor. Also if there are constant meetings and votes, regular people won't know when something important is being decided. It's a typical trick to hide important stuff among lots of other minor things to overwhelm the regular working person and make it impossible to track what's going on. Make the votes frequent enough to be able to course correct if people are dissatisfied, but rare enough so that people can know when they really need to focus on this topic. Maybe choosing a mayor and local representatives every 4 years is too rare, but I also wouldn't want my neighborhood decisions to be captured by some small clique of "in-crowd" who invest hours and hours into getting things there way and obscuring what's happening.

Introduced into English most likely through Nieuw Amsterdam / New York.

I was reading this and thought to myself that I would have stopped at hanging out on the stoop and getting to know my neighbors that walk by. I don't want to yuck their yum, but as an observation, it does seem highly performative and overly organized. Almost like they are trying to proof this out to sell to other communities and eventually make money off of: "buy our community building platform for $20 a month".

They explicitly mention this in the article.

Based on other comments in this thread it sounds like this takes place in SF’s Mission neighborhood — among other things, the warmest and least foggy area in the city!

I wonder about how to do this in my own, much chillier neighborhood… guess getting started in the summer is a big key (the author hits on the broadening/deepening event split re: weather)

Funny, in countries where people are free (everywhere except your city in Poland) you can use an electric leaf blower to clear your stoop of leaves so neighbors can sit with their coffee.

Insert joke that every app eventually evolves into an email (or chat) client?

More seriously, what differentiates your idea (or hope of execution) from NextDoor, and how would the app improve upon WhatsApp or other messaging clients that might already be ubiquitous? (I'm in the U.S. and sadly WhatsApp is not even close to Ubiquitous - but SMS/MMS is.)

Overall how would having to install an app, create an account, sign up, find contacts, etc. improve upon the connections the original article formed through in person meetings in shared space, and the communications they did with an existing communications app?

I could not disagree more strongly. I would be appalled at using an app for something better accomplished by a flyer or drinking coffee in front of my house. People live in physical space. "How do I talk to my next-door neighbor?" is not a problem that the internet should be helping with

Vermont has something sort of like this called Front Porch Forum. It's something I would like to see tried elsewhere.

The most important part, no matter if it's email, Nextdoor, WhatsApp, is that we can use it to disperse information quickly, and then get off the platform and meet up in person. Our stoop coffees are broadcasted via WhatsApp, and then some people tell their immediate neighbors via text, and then people show up.

I really don't. Every attempt at an online local community just ends up gathering gigakarens, racists, and complainers.

It seems so obvious now that social media as an entire concept is rotten and that the best way to connect with your community is to actually go outside and talk to people face to face.

In Dutch: https://www.politie.nl/informatie/mag-ik-met-mijn-vrienden-r...

Legally it’s still the exception, the municipality has to make it illegal (although I imagine it happens far too often). But hanging in front of one’s house is legal and actually quite common, at least in Amsterdam, much more so than in for ex. Belgium.

Like you see people put benches or even picknick tables in front of their house, which has no garden or clear separation with the pavement. The houses in this street have a back yard, so if you sit down in the front it’s also to be able to hang out in a social space, do people watching and say hi to your neighbours:

https://www.google.com/maps/@52.351001,5.0003965,3a,57.6y,52...

>It helps that you self-select for the audience by who can afford the building, just like they've done the same with their neighbourhood.

Heavens forbid we have to break bread with one of the poors.

Did you mean to imply that you only prefer to associate with people that have around as much money as you?

Why is that easier with affluent people?

This comment comes across a little dismissive, but this was my exact thought.

What if the people doing this were of another socioeconomic class and were drinking malt liquor? Or even if not imbibing, just smoking a black and mild.

Very interesting thought experiment.

I assume your being facetious?

Yea, one of the problems of USA zoning laws is that very small scale retail/food service businesses are not allowed in the middle of a block. In other more walkable/urban density places businesses will pop up where you can get a coffee and it's not on a "business street". It's where people actually live and gather.

Still normal in a lot of places that are not big cities.

I grew up in a small village in the arse end of nowhere, in the 80s/90s. Even there and then it was a rarity for people to engage with their neighbours, beyond saying hello. Being the precocious child that I was, I invited myself to their homes for snacks. But I was alone in that. In some (many?) places, people just want to be left alone.

You don't choose your neighbours, much like you don't choose your family. Sometimes you luck out, and sometimes you're fucked.

I've been thinking about this throughout the day and I'm not sure that I agree that Signal is a good candidate for this kind of communal group.

Firstly, Signal doesn't have a way of separating topics. Sure, you can have multiple groups that are loosely linked together but it's not really seamless.

Secondly, Signal's permission controls are lacking. Let's say you have a Signal group dedicated to posting meet-up details. You'd only want to allow trusted participants to be able to post. This can be done in Signal by making it so that only admins can send messages. However, admins can strip other admins of their role which means one rogue user can ruin the group.

With that said, I completely agree that WhatsApp really isn't ideal from a privacy standpoint. I especially dislike the fact that any participant can find out the phone number of anyone else.

I'd personally prefer something like Matrix for this purpose but onboarding strangers onto Matrix just sounds like a real nightmare.

It's likely the path of least resistance. Many people have whatsapp and it's far preferable to sms. Significantly fewer people have heard of signal, let alone have it installed. And privacy literacy, for a neighbor group chat?

good catch, fixed! thanks :)

This is so Scottsdale.

At 6pm? At 7pm? At 8 am?

"A small porch, platform, or staircase leading to the entrance of a house or building."

- Google

I read this article and was pleased not just with the community development, but with the spread of the word "stoop" all the way out to the West Coast.

It's a Dutch word brough over in the New Amsterdam era that was originally mostly confined to New York. It has the same etymology as English "step":

https://www.etymonline.com/word/stoop

Are you white?

It's people gathering for coffee. We can't talk about the apocalypse at the dinner table every night.