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
Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood
201–210 of 517 posts
Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood
#202Earlier 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…
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/QXEGChFvHc…
Yes, I agree, Oak Park could be a lot denser; that's what I'm working on.
Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood
#203I’m from a small town in Spain, about 800 people small, and this is what everyone would do every night during the summer, each group hanging out in different spots with different gangs, lol. It was just a way to chat with your neighbors. 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. And this feeling isn’t limited to small towns…
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...
Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood
#204My father was born in a small village in Guadalajara, Spain.
I remember in the village my grandma and other neighbours tool their chair outside their homes to talk at the end of the day.
It is great to see good things coming again.
Do it... MORE.
Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood
#205> 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…
Community is as community does.
Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood
#206Phil, 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.
pff wish i knew abt this last year!
Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood
#207> 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…
I don't think it's "just" a stereotype. There's a lot of literature around how American suburbs are designed to be isolationist. The most obvious example is how much more difficult it is to meet your neighbors when you have to get into your car for every slight errand (FWIW, I've lived in all densities--I'm not some urban chauvinist).
Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood
#208> 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'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.
Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood
#209At the start of Covid lockdown my group at work started having a daily "drinking alone together" afternoon Google Meet.
When that job ended, our household started drinking on our front porch in the afternoons. Soon a few neighbors started doing the same, and we got close enough (15-20 feet) to trade cell numbers. After that we would text back and forth to communicate during "distanced happy hour".
The friendships we made drinking _not_ together have lasted, and we still count those neighbors as friends...
Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood
#210> 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…
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.