Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

supernuclear.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 517 posts

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#361

Post by mrweasel »

tyhoff wrote: post #153
mrweasel wrote: post #113

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,…

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-judgeme…

> We discuss it for 10-15m afterwards

Yeah, that sounds awful. That's the great part though, everyone can participate on their own terms. Do the stoop coffee, do the watch parties, whatever they feel energizes them and brings joy.

It's such a great initiative.

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#363

Post by AStonesThrow »

MC Frontalot would approve

Seriously though, “we didn’t have to apply for permits” holds true until you blog about it and HN publishes it on Page 1 and someone contacts Public Health about your dumb electric griddle, or someone tries to monetize something and nearly succeeds.

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#364

Post by CalRobert »

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…

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.

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#365

Post by lynx97 »

jimbokun wrote: post #73
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…

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…

Haha, when I finished that paragraph of yours, before clicking on the link, I thought of exactly the scene you linked :-)

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#366

Post by DoingIsLearning »

For the non-native ESL speakers like me, a 'stoop' is apparently the steps or porch leading up to a building entrance. The lack of an actual stoop further added to my initial confusion with this new word.

Very cool! So often we complain about a lack of community. These guys really show the whole 'be the change you want to see in this world'. I also loved the concept of let's just bring a few extra chairs as an ice breaker.

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#367

Post by reverius42 »

lolinder wrote: post #329
lolinder wrote: post #182

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. This has not been my experience in the surburbs. A typical suburban home has both spaces: a front yard/patio and a back yard/patio. If any…

Apparently there's some idea that suburbs by definition don't have sidewalks and have half acre lots with oversized McMansions. If that's your definition of suburb, I take it back: I've never lived in a suburb. But I also strongly question the utility that definition for discourse like this. If some people here think that a suburb has to be the absolute worst stereotype of NIMBY living to count as a suburb and others…

There's a spectrum of density, and perhaps the sweet spot for front-porch interactions is somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. I live in a neighborhood with ample front porches and sidewalks -- and I've heard it referred to both as a suburb (by dense city dwellers) and "the city" (by people who live further out from the dense urban core). But it's easy to imagine both a dense city neighborhood and a semi-rural far-flung suburb with no front porches and no culture of interacting with neighbors.

Even the definition of "outside the urban core" is hard to pin down; I'm pretty sure you could get disagreement on whether where I live is within the urban core or not.

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#368

Post by germandiago »

happytoexplain wrote: post #28
potato3732842 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 neigh…

Another bitter stereotype contributing to the US cultural divide. I live in an economically diverse but mostly well-off white collar suburb (not in CA), and we have a strong sense of community. We walk to each other's houses on a whim, we help each other get things done, we shovel the snow for the older folks, we watch out for each other and text each other, we organize community get-togethers. I realize this is an a…

How can you label as pointlessly negative something that, in your own words, is statistically real?

Reality is what removes the bias more than anecdote, and statistics is what tracks these facts.

It would negatively biased if it was more of corner cases than not.

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#369

Post by reverius42 »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #249
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.

I agree, but if only you could convince all the NIMBY asshats in Seattle who want to live on a half acre lot ten minutes from the center of downtown.

Good luck convincing someone who lives on a half acre 10 minutes from downtown to give that up.

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#370

Post by kortilla »

Kevguy wrote: post #58
RankingMember wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is exactly that. A lot of "saw a black guy walking down the street...should I call police?"

NextDoor used to be bad about that, but they are now much more careful to remove it quickly if anyone does post racist crap. Now it seems to be 50% paid ads, 30% lost/found pets, 10% unpaid ads, and 10% everything else. Worth checking to find the owner of a stray dog or cat, but not much else.

The problem is people say the same thing without saying race. “Did anyone see this suspicious character?” with a picture from a doorbell cam of a black guy.

It’s still obviously racist to everyone but it’s not reportable or treated as such.

Post reply on HN