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Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

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Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#111

Post by jcdavis »

archagon wrote: post #85
jcdavis wrote: post #27

I saw this and did a double-take - I live in the neighborhood and am fortunate enough to be a part of this community. Patty, Tyler, and Luke have done a tremendous job of creating a communal bond that makes everyone feel valued & welcome. I now know 50+ people who live within ~2 blocks from me, who've gone from "random strangers" to "friendly neighbors" that I run into semi-randomly.

Just curious, what neighborhood is this?

Its roughly a 2x2 block area of The Mission (not a hard boundary to participating, but almost everyone lives in it). I won't get more specific than that in case the author doesn't feel comfortable since it wasn't mentioned in her post.

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#112

Post by [deleted] »

happytoexplain wrote: post #4
afavour wrote: post #2

> my husband Tyler and I wanted that sense of community that feels like it’s only possible in the suburbs, but we believed we could achieve this while living in San Francisco. 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. Still, a heartwarming story all the same. And yes, this is _exactly_ what…

>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 thei…

[deleted]

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#113

Post by mrweasel »

It's interesting how different people can be, and what energizes us. The coffee on the stoop seems incredibly nice, and I love that they acknowledge that the simplest events are some of the best ones. Once they start taking about "watch parties" and potlucks I personally check out completely, that's way too much for me. The less official stuff sound really great though, just sitting down for one cup of coffees time, or just a beer or two at the end of the week.

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#114

Post by [deleted] »

stronglikedan wrote: post #37
barbazoo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My 69-year old neighbour just knocks on my door at random interval and asks if I want a coffee. That is a dream of mine that I have yet to make happen.

Don't let your dreams be dreams! Go knock on their door and ask them if they want a coffee.

[deleted]

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#115

Post by ryandrake »

shanemhansen wrote: post #87
afavour wrote: post #2

> my husband Tyler and I wanted that sense of community that feels like it’s only possible in the suburbs, but we believed we could achieve this while living in San Francisco. 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. Still, a heartwarming story all the same. And yes, this is _exactly_ what…

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 be…

My suburban neighborhood is great. They have a voluntary group that you can join with a donation, and all that group really does is organize parties and events. It's not a HOA and doesn't have rules. We have a full community get-together event every two months or so, with volunteers who host at their houses. We also have once-a-year events like a community-wide garage sale event, and a car show.

I've also lived in neighborhoods where nobody knew each other. I think all we can get out of this HN thread is: "Not all suburban neighborhoods are the same."

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#116

Post by garfield_light »

neilv wrote: post #25
rcpt wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I installed nextdoor and now I actively avoid interacting with my neighbors

When they started mentioning WhatsApp, I did have the briefest thought that this could be marketing to try to replace NextDoor. There's certainly opportunity. NextDoor comments here are of mixed quality. And the NextDoor feed seems to have the ad saturation cranked up unpleasantly high. > Thus, the WhatsApp group was born. At first this was just a place to announce when we’d be out having stoop coffee, but we soon re…

> This could be marketing to try to replace NextDoor.

This is kinda funny from my perspective. In most of the world WhatsApp reigns supreme to such a degree, that advertising for it would have the same pointlessness of a Coca Cola ad. In LATAM every neighborhood, department building, workplace and school has a multitude of Whatsapp groups.

The good and functioning ones are: work related, have people that organically have become dang or are too small to receive "manual" spam / random petty fights. The "manual" spam is people sending MLM scams, annoyingly advertising their side hustles, political or religious message chains. People also will fight publicly because someone may or not have flirted with someone else's husband. Forums are eternal.

The only thing like NextDoor here is SoSafe, a community safety app, which quarantines the crazy people that see an "undesirable" taking a walk and wants to call the cops.

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#117

Post by emseetech »

tptacek wrote: post #77
jimbokun wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suburbs often have physical constraints with the way houses are laid out making this "stoop coffee" approach more difficult, if anything. Houses laid out in a way that you're more likely to drink your coffee on your back patio surrounded by a fence or hedges to avoid being seen. And even if you are sitting in front of your house, neighbors are more likely to be driving by instead of walking so not very likely to stop…

I live in an inner-ring suburb of Chicago (Oak Park) and stoop coffee would be much easier to do here than in San Francisco (where I lived many years ago). This is what my suburb looks like: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9014246,-87.791197,3a,75y,17...

Oak Park as "the suburbs" is of a bygone era. If all suburbs were like Oak Park, nobody would complain about the suburbs.

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#118

Post by dismalaf »

afavour wrote: post #2

> my husband Tyler and I wanted that sense of community that feels like it’s only possible in the suburbs, but we believed we could achieve this while living in San Francisco. 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. Still, a heartwarming story all the same. And yes, this is _exactly_ what…

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.

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#119

Post by TeaBrain »

tptacek wrote: post #108
RHSeeger wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody I know would call that street the city. In my mind, "the city" is, minimally, houses that are a few feet apart, small yard in back/front, pretty much nothing on the side. Frequently, it's 2-3 story buildings, with whole floors rented out as an apartment. That's my "least dense" vision of a city. Anything less than that (ie, full yards) falls into my vision of suburb.

That street is basically identical to most of the city of Chicago. The only difference is fewer 2-flats. https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9301849,-87.7195955,3a,75y,3...

>That street is basically identical to most of the city of Chicago. The only difference is fewer 2-flats.

The front yard space and number of driveways in the Oak Park link also stuck out to me.

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#120

Post by alabastervlog »

kwertyoowiyop wrote: post #36
neogodless wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, sig…

These days, replace “email client” with “social network.”

Social networks could just be email clients. They're not, because those are hard to put a moat around.
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