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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

#431

Post by red-iron-pine »

glitchc wrote: post #149
dm03514 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experiences of living in suburbs for 30 years, I’ve seen the default is to ignore neighbors. I don’t really get this. Our communities have so much in common and so much overlap, we shop at the same stores, go to the same parks, get stuck in the same traffic, our kids are at the same schools,our neighbors care for us medically, teach our kids, maintain our dwellings, work on our cars, and contribute to our local…

Part of it is politics. Totally correct about everything in common, and yet in the multicultural fabric we call society, politics could be vastly different: Neighbour 1 cares about Trump, neighbour 2 about Ukraine, neighbour 3 is focused on Palestine, neighbour 5 about public transit, while I might not care about any of those. All of them are going to seek like-minded people who are unlikely to be their next door nei…

knowing them =/= agreeing with them.

only the most onerous of neighbors are going to launch into tirades about politics before getting to know them anyway. these people will already have their giant TRUMP flag on the lawn.

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#432

Post by red-iron-pine »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #21
jjice wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why's that? Never used the app. Is it just a lot of negativity and you get negative vibes from them?

It exposes you to the mental illness of some people, like the kind of person who will make a thread asking if anybody knows this new runner they saw jog by their place because it's very suspicious and it's making them very angry that someone would jog down their street. Or bicker about street parking. Or people who post on social media in general, like to talk about politics or fake outrage over nothing or the weird…

> It can get in the way of a foundational part of the social fabric: being able to assume your neighbors are normal, nice people.

if my neighbors are weirdos I'd like to know, and in what sort of ways

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#433

Post by sequoia »

QuantumNoodle wrote: post #427

This is great! As a renter that is priced out of the market where I want to live/work, the greatest obstacle I've seen to long term communities are "transplants" or those who live for a few years and move. It is difficult living in a community where the overwhelming majority of your neighbors are all cycled in 5 years. We've found "transplants" are effectively anonymous :/

You can create a community in a neighbourhood like this. Five years is a pretty long time. People will come and go but if you spend even an hour per month with neighbours and other people reciprocate, it will build a community that transcends individuals coming & going. Think of a university campus: community forms there in far fewer than 5 years through regular casual interactions.

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#434

Post by sanmon3186 »

tinyoli wrote: post #6

Ah nice, you've invented southern Europe! Seriously though, great concept and keep it going :)

I am Indian. Not sure if this is because there are too many of us but except for part of cities these days, social connections like these are normal.

I have at least a dozen neighbours, I can walk in (uninvited), have tea and gossip. And not all of them are necessarily my friends. Some are.

Pretty much everyone I know has their little neighbourhood circle like this.

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#436

Post by throwway120385 »

alistairSH wrote: post #397
CalRobert wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Offering to make them multimillionaires in exchange for the land so you can build apartments should work

Except for the neighbors who will likely block that apartment build-out via any means possible.

Do they actually do that here, or are you just saying that?

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#437

Post by skeeter2020 »

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…

So I live in a big city in the beltline area around the core and the problem is it's a car culture and we all have detached garages. This means a big majority never use their front door, they enter their garage via the alley and go in the back. The suburbs typically have garages at the front and people who are driving to work are likely to leave and return at the same time so this increases the odds of bumping into your neighbor.

The equalizers: dogs and younger kids. Dog walkers seem to fall into 2 camps: friendly and most definitely not friendly; the former give you lots of chances to have a casual conversation. Young kids are likely to be playing out front too.

I'm sure other cities have this too, but we have an annual neighbor day that only takes a little bit of effort and bravery to kick start this sort of community: https://www.calgary.ca/events/neighbour-day.html?redirect=/n...

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#438

Post by throwway120385 »

volkk wrote: post #10
rcpt wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

i think most of the types of people you'd want to hang out with aren't posting on nextdoor

Yeah -- my partner and I moved to a small island in WA and this is so intensely true that I feel it to my core. Nextdoor attracts mostly vain self-promotion where we're at. Where we move to after this, I'm going to get on their Nextdoor and make a list of names of people who post there regularly, and when I meet them in real life I'm going to avoid them as much as possible.

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#439

Post by ghaff »

BurningFrog wrote: post #418
ghaff wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the context of a lot of discussions here, Jacobs also seemed to believe in community driven development. Yes, she helped stop some highway development that many people here would (mostly rightly) hate. But a lot of people here would also consider her a NIMBY--even a fairly strong one--for supporting the right of communities to drive their own development whatever outsiders might desire.

The hostility to outsiders is usually also part of the community spirit...

I’m not sure it’s so much hostility to outsiders as such, as we like things mostly the way they are and we won’t appreciate if you come in and agitate for big change.

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#440

Post by jen20 »

lolinder wrote: post #331
azdle wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no official definition of what the "the suburbs" means, but when people say that they usually mean "areas that follow a post-war suburban style of development". Think culdesacs and no sidewalks. The area you linked looks to me more like an older "streetcar suburb", which I think most people would just call "the city".

> but when people say that they usually mean "areas that follow a post-war suburban style of development". Think culdesacs and no sidewalks. Define people? When most people I know say suburb they mean this: You're far enough the urban core that you probably have to drive to get to shops and jobs, but close enough to the urban core that you don't pass through farmland to get there. Some suburbs are like what you descr…

I believe the colloquial definition has changed substantially over the last ~100 years in the US. As a concrete example, Travis Heights (part of Austin) was initially advertised as "Austin's first suburb", but is very much inside the city core today. In the UK, this is true of places like New Malden or even Wimbledon, which were as-built not part of London and were referred to as "suburbs", but are categorized that way by approximately no-one today.
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