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Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

supernuclear.substack.com

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Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#261

Post by rahimnathwani »

archagon wrote: post #252
jcdavis wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Cool! I live close to Valencia/17th. Was just wondering if it was somewhere in my area: the houses looked Missiony but I couldn’t immediately place them.

I'm so envious! I love browsing the books at Community Thrift, but most days I don't have time to walk that far.

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#262

Post by nickvec »

geverett wrote: post #246
nickvec wrote: post #139

Awesome article. Inspires me to try to form better relationships with my neighbors. nit: the header "Where We Today" seems like it's omitting an "Are"

good catch, fixed! thanks :)

no problem :) just curious, what neighborhood of SF are you in?

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#263

Post by bonoboTP »

melenaboija wrote: post #107

I’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…

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.

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#264

Post by mtalantikite »

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…

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.

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#265

Post by Foreignborn »

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…

San Francisco, up until covid this still happened for me too. there was a bodega like store in the mission me and other people used.

where i live now differs so that phenomenon doesn’t exist here.

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#266

Post by bryan_w »

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...

Those aren't suburbs, this is a suburb: https://maps.app.goo.gl/iS3Zi4CT1vnWkD5P7?g_st=ac

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#267

Post by aeontech »

bfors wrote: post #176
stronglikedan wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In my situation they would probably not respond, and then submit a complaint through the HOA

Maybe your neighbor is scared of the same thing happening if they knock on your door... so neither makes the first move :(

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#268

Post by mgfist »

Lammy wrote: post #217

Not that it would ever be enforced against these people (and not like I agree with the ordinance existing at all) but the “typical weekend stoop hang” seems like it would definitely be illegal by a strict reading of San Francisco Police Code §168 a.k.a the “sit/lie law”: https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/san_francisco/latest/s... ======= > Present laws that prohibit the intentional, willful or malicious obstructi…

Classic example of the hidden costs of well intentioned regulation.

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#269

Post by cjbarber »

geverett wrote: post #238

I'm the co-author of Supernuclear and editor of this post. We've been writing the blog for almost five years now, you never know what will go viral! I've spent my adult life living in Istanbul, New York, San Francisco, and San Juan, Puerto Rico. In Istanbul it sometimes felt like my neighbors knew too much about me - they would comment on who slept over (I had a lot of friends visit!) and once when I went out of town…

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

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#270

Post by mbokinala »

mtalantikite wrote: post #264
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…

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,…

I think another part of neighborhood design that influences this feeling is how walkable a neighborhood is — anecdotally, I feel like I've had way more run-ins and conversations with neighbors when I've lived in places that had grocery stores and coffee shops within walking distance, as opposed to when I've been in neighborhoods that required driving 10-15 mins to get to anything.
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