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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

#61
post #58

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.

I deleted the app a few years ago because it was a drag. Glad (and honestly surprised) to hear you say they remove the racist stuff quickly, and not surprised it's mostly ads these days.

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#63
post #43

Now, even better, allow any neighbor to open a legitimate (yet small-scale and cheap) coffee shop or wine bar by-right in the garage space under their SF home.

I assume your being facetious?

I hope this commenter is being facetious.

How do you read that post and have the first thing in your head be, "Hmm? How can I monetize this?"

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#64
post #43

Now, even better, allow any neighbor to open a legitimate (yet small-scale and cheap) coffee shop or wine bar by-right in the garage space under their SF home.

I assume your being facetious?

No? Small businesses like that are what make cities great.

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#65
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume your being facetious?

I hope this commenter is being facetious. How do you read that post and have the first thing in your head be, "Hmm? How can I monetize this?"

It's not about monetizing friendship, it's about providing comfortable places where events like this can happen all over the city/country. People want this community but it kinda sucks to do (and mostly won't happen) if you're meeting up monthly on chairs in a city street. If small neighborhood pubs and coffee shops were legal to build...

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#66
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…

>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…

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 municipalities through property tax. We vacation at the same places.

We have so much in common but we put our heads down and duck into our homes ignoring our neighbors. To be honest it makes me really sick to think about. Like the internet has allowed us to live these parallel lives, highly dependent on our neighbors but completely isolated from them. We smile and nod then go to the ballots and kick our spite up to the federal level (in the US).

To me, we have the majority of our lives in common.

Social media and the political engines preys on our differences making them the focus of our interactions ignoring the fact that 90% of our day-to-day lives are overlapping and our concerns are similar: health, wealth, prosperity, safety, education and recreation.

It’s not much, but as I get older I’m making a point to slow down and talk to my neighbors, have real conversations with them, many of them fly political flags that are contrary to my political beliefs but I find out we have so much In common because we have such similar day-to-day lives and experiences.

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#67

This is such a wholesome post. It also shows how much agency we can have in our local community. It reminded me of the Derek Sivers story[0] about the dancing man and the first follower when I read the part about the first person (Luke) joining them. [0] - https://sive.rs/ff

Yes! Awesome Sivers post.

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#68
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could not disagree more strongly. I would be appalled at using an app for something better accomplished by a flyer or drinking coffee in front of my house. People live in physical space. "How do I talk to my next-door neighbor?" is not a problem that the internet should be helping with

Sure, if you have a house. I live in a neighborhood of apartment buildings. I'm always wishing I had a dog (I have cats so it's not an option) or that there was a small neighborhood park to use as a common space. It's hard to get a sense of and connect with people on different floors, or the other end of the hallway, let alone next-door neighbors, just because it's harder to see the same people repeatedly.

I think the point of the article is that you can make this happen even without an app. And I believe the previous poster is trying to make the point that an app will create an low effort impersonal engagement that brings out the worst in people (essentially all these apps will end up as nextdoor). Why not invite the next neighbour you meet for a coffee, or do what the guys in the article have been doing and take a camping chair and sit in front of the building with a coffee on Saturday morning?

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#70
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…

>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…

Every house has a front yard, and many have large front porches. And no one uses them. I'd say "anymore" but I've rarely seen them used for socializing in my lifetime. They're almost vestigial.

I remember one beautiful June Saturday afternoon cutting through a gorgeous neighborhood on my bike and amazed it was like a ghost town. All the houses with their beautiful yards on a quiet street, and literally no one outside. It was so weird.

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