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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

#191

Post by Kirby64 »

floren wrote: post #49
Duhck wrote: post #48

This is so endearing. I've been at odds with my HOA [board] since I moved in and its a decades long tale of my community where everyone is treated poorly by our HOA. I've asked the board for block parties annually, and events semi annually and theyve rejected it over and over again. Meanwhile I miss this type of community that I had in every building I lived in around NYC before moving to the mountains

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.

Depending on the location, the way to dissolve an HOA is nearly impossible. You need to find out what to do with community assets (in a condo situation, this is not possible), and you also usually need somewhere between 75-100% of all members voting 'yes' (not just present voting). If it's 100% of all members, just a single uncooperative board member could prevent dissolution.

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#193

Post by tptacek »

TeaBrain wrote: post #166
tptacek wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the Chicago block I grew up on. It's less dense than Oak Park. It's easy find blocks like it elsewhere in Chicago. Jeff Park in Chicago and Oak Park are basically clones of each other. https://www.google.com/maps/@41.7099143,-87.6801127,3a,75y,1... This is really what most of Chicago looks like (modulo economic conditions in the different neighborhoods --- they're not all this upscale). It's a city of neighbo…

Wow, you weren't kidding about the relative density between those areas. I'd consider Oak Park dense compared to most suburbs, just not as dense as some neighborhoods in Chicago. I'm most familiar with the north side neighborhoods and had those kind of lots in mind, with their near non-existent front yards, with front steps right off the sidewalk, and virtually no front driveways. https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9405…

My old stomping grounds. I lived in Lakeview (incl. this block) for a long time.

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9403868,-87.6590203,3a,75y,3...

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#194

Post by numbers »

phil-lnf wrote: post #180

Phil, editor of the Supernuclear Substack here. I wasn't expecting "hanging out on stoops" to boot AI out of the #1 slot on Hacker News :) Glad this resonated for folks A great way of kick-starting stoop culture is having a friend or family member live right next door. We started a company called Live Near Friends ( https://livenearfriends.com ) to help people do this.

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

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#195

Post by tptacek »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #150
tptacek wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 is not what anyone thinks of as a suburb. It's like pretending downtown Evanston is a suburb of Chicago.

Downtown Evanston is a suburb of Chicago.

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#196

Post by wetmore »

palijer wrote: post #154
xattt wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the entire thesis of Jane Jacobs’ work: urban living works because of friction-by-design. Inadvertent interactions between people you see every day build a sense of community over time — the “sidewalk ballet”. I always wondered what she would have thought about her ideas in the context of COVID.

I think we're a long way off from the communities when Jane Jacobs lived. An except that I frequently think about, I can't even fathom in a large city in the current era, and not because technology has solved the key problem. >Joe Cornacchia, who keeps the delicatessen, usually has a dozen or so keys at a time for handing out like this. He has a special drawer for them. >Now why do I, and many others, select Joe as a…

This still happens in my experience, I've picked up keys from friends and Airbnb hosts via a local business in the past few years.

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#198

Post by bluGill »

jaredklewis wrote: post #177
happytoexplain wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Yes, but the geographic scale of suburbs just puts limits on this type of thing. “Everyone with a five minute walking me” is a very different number of people in Brooklyn vs the suburbs. Let’s say 50 vs 500? I think it’s way easier to end up on an anti-social block than in a city, where the law of large numbers draws blocks toward the average.

You only have room for a few hundred friends in your life. Sure there might be 500 people who live in 5 minutes walk - but that is too many and so you will learn to take steps to limit the number of people who will accept an open invite.

If you are a Hindu living in a small US city you will find and becomes friends with every other Hindu in the city - there are not very many and you stick together. If you move to a slightly larger small city you will discover that there are too many Hindus and it is hard to make friends with them because their friend groups are already full. (This is a real example from someone I work with, names and exact cities not given for obvious reasons)

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#199

Post by namibj »

tptacek wrote: post #143
TeaBrain wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

This is the Chicago block I grew up on. It's less dense than Oak Park. It's easy find blocks like it elsewhere in Chicago. Jeff Park in Chicago and Oak Park are basically clones of each other. https://www.google.com/maps/@41.7099143,-87.6801127,3a,75y,1... This is really what most of Chicago looks like (modulo economic conditions in the different neighborhoods --- they're not all this upscale). It's a city of neighbo…

To compare, a residential neighborhood a fifth the population of oak park, mostly pre-war and what a German would consider as "urban":

wiki, use translator: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wichlinghausen-S%C3%BCd Maps overview with borders highlighted: https://maps.app.goo.gl/fvr34T8JbLEVQLAF8 Street view of a normal street there; though I recommend 3D view for a better understanding: https://maps.app.goo.gl/QXEGChFvHciAq8Va8?g_st=ac

This is btw. 2.9x as dense as Oak Park, IL.

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#200

Post by jrnichols »

Baeocystin wrote: post #93
llm_nerd wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My suburban neighborhood here in the bay area is mostly cul-de-sacs, and on the 4th of July about half of them close off the entrance to non-residents/family, and have a collective BBQ in the middle of the circle. Several of our neighbors are musicians, so we get live music from people we know, and we all know how to cook up good stuff for the party. It's genuinely a lot of fun, and I look forward to it every year.

I see a fair amount of that here in Sacramento. People having block parties, chairs out in the driveways, etc. One of the newer neighborhoods in the area seems like it was designed with this in mine as well. '

It's been a lot of fun. We know our neighbors, people are frequently out walking, talking to each other, and so on.

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