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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

#91

Post by screye »

happytoexplain wrote: post #4
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…

>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…

Many Americans still think of cities as modernist concrete, interstate exits and parking lots. In this imagination, social trust is eroded by homelessness, drug addicts and variety of crimes endemic to inner cities. Unfortunately, cities that were razed for cars fit some of these stereotypes.

In fact, parts of SF match the description too. This story would have unfolded differently in SOMA. Even in safe neighborhoods, (eg: Mission Bay, Rincon Hill) large towers, 5 lane roads and 35+ mph thru-traffic discourage neighborhood vibes.

> has some truth to it in both cases, but amounts to uncalled-for negativity

I disagree. This isn't a case of 'both sides'.

Cars destroyed American cities. Then Americans moved to gated suburbs that did everything in their power to limit through traffic and therefore the destructive onslaught of cars. Suburban residents demand easy access to the city by car, but reject the car in their own neighborhood. Suburbs want to have their cake and eat it too, at the expense of city residents. In contrast, cities do not impose their wants or needs onto suburbs. The resentment by city dwellers towards suburbanites is justified.

Fortunately some cities escaped razing. Boston, NYC, DC & SF have many neighborhoods that enable wonderful stories such as this.

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#92

Post by throwaway29812 »

bilbo0s wrote: post #63
tinyplanets wrote: post #60

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?"

[dead]

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#93

Post by Baeocystin »

llm_nerd wrote: post #88
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…

Is that your lived experience of the suburbs, or just what you've been led to believe on online forums filled with both a) city dwellers, b) angsty teens? As someone who lives in the suburbs it threw me because it's so rare for anyone to acknowledge any positive of the suburbs. The suburbs are always some lifeless dystopia where we all drink away our days and wish we could visit the bodega and get a fresh baguette or…

My suburban neighborhood here in the bay area is mostly cul-de-sacs, and on the 4th of July about half of them close off the entrance to non-residents/family, and have a collective BBQ in the middle of the circle. Several of our neighbors are musicians, so we get live music from people we know, and we all know how to cook up good stuff for the party. It's genuinely a lot of fun, and I look forward to it every year.

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#94

Post by czhu12 »

Really heart warming story. My 2 cents:

The group is at a critical point now, having ~100 Whatsapp members. From what I've seen this creates a chilling effect where you inevitably end up with cliques and social cooling.

No new members will feel like they can actually send a message into a 100+ person group, while the old guard starts to use it as a notification board, rather than a real chat.

Eventually, newer members will feel too far behind the current discussions, and too socially exhausting to show up to meetups. I've seen these eventually get to 400+ members, many of whom don't live in the city anymore.

The best group I've ever been part of had a simple rule that worked amazingly: If you don't show up to an event at least once a month, you were removed from the whatsapp group. It keeps the group small, and comfortable, and it never felt intrusive to send a quick "Whats everyone up to today?" into the group chat.

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#95

Post by azdle »

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...

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".

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#96

Post by cycomanic »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #35
timerol wrote: 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 do this without an app and the previous posters point is that app encourage low effort impersonal interactions instead of the personal community you want. So every app just quickly desolves into another nextdoor. Why don't you try asking the next neighbour you see to have a coffee, or do the same as the people in the article and take a camping chair and a coffee one Saturday morning and sit in front of your building?

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#97

Post by neilv »

margalabargala wrote: post #30
neilv wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When they started mentioning WhatsApp, I did have the briefest thought that this could be marketing to try to replace NextDoor. There's certainly opportunity. NextDoor comments here are of mixed quality. And the NextDoor feed seems to have the ad saturation cranked up unpleasantly high. > Thus, the WhatsApp group was born. At first this was just a place to announce when we’d be out having stoop coffee, but we soon re…

> NextDoor comments here are of mixed quality. You're lucky, sounds like your local NextDoor community has above average (for NextDoor) comment quality...

Even before we had some unelected mentally ill person making Nazi salutes at a US Presidential inauguration, and then still handed them unprecedented powers to disassemble our government... and a whole lot of people seeming fine with that...

The signs of a populace with wildly conflicting values, a lot of anger, a lot of mental illness, and a lot of cognitive problems and knowledge deficit... has been apparent in online comments for a couple decades.

One thing with NextDoor might be that it's developed a reputation. So that many people expect that the typical post will be some alarmed retiree posting a doorbell cam photo of a "suspicious person" going to doors on their street, who was obviously delivering packages while being nonwhite. In real life, most people would minimize interaction with the alarmed person, not install an app to get more of it.

Another thing with NextDoor is that some aspects of the experience are really user hostile. Besides the ad saturation-bombing, and the user interface that could use some cleanup and straigtening-out, there's things like 2FA (for Nextdoor!). I'd love to see numbers on how many users that 2FA alone cost them, and what they got in return. A UI cleanup is possible only if it's not overruled by the people doing the ad saturation, where user confusion just means more opportunity to show ads (until those users dont' come back, and don't bring their friends, but that's someone else's KPI this quarter).

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#98

Post by bilbo0s »

nunez wrote: post #81
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…

We had block parties like this in Brooklyn while I was growing up. People would make or buy food and we'd just occupy half of the block with loud music, running around for the kids and drinking for the adults. Cars could still pass by, but they were careful and people would move out of the way. It was fun!

Pretty sure in Brooklyn, and other NYC boroughs, that is more of a cultural thing rather than a "try to create a sense of neighborliness" thing.

As a cultural thing, that type of community behavior has likely been going on for most of the past century in NYC.

But the person in the article tries to create that in a place where there is no cultural proclivity to that kind of behavior. That's actually a far more difficult thing to do.

Still, it is awesome to have it just as a cultural practice. No question.

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#99

Post by ketzo »

bilbo0s wrote: post #63
tinyplanets wrote: post #60

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?"

If you think “garage coffeeshop” is a fast track to wealth, boy do I have news!

Re: Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood

#100

Post by enaaem »

happytoexplain wrote: post #4
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…

>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…

The thing is that whether you click with your neighbours or not is pure luck and it's no one's fault. That's why you read many opposing anecdotes in this thread. When there are more local third places, there is a higher chance you will find a nice community to hang out with.
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