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> 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 city living should enable.

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 for a week my landlady said she nearly let herself into my home to make sure I hadn't died because no one had seen me in a few days. That being said, it was also comforting to know, 5000 miles from my home and my family, that people around me cared about my wellbeing and my whereabouts.

And this is the thing those of us who live in the US sometimes forget: knowing your neighbors isn't just about being able to borrow cup of sugar when you're out. It's about knowing someone will share their generator when a hurricane has knocked your power out. It's about someone noticing when something looks off and coming over to knock and make sure you're ok. We aren't just happier when we get to know our neighbors better, we're safer.

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.

I saw this and did a double-take - I live in the neighborhood and am fortunate enough to be a part of this community. Patty, Tyler, and Luke have done a tremendous job of creating a communal bond that makes everyone feel valued & welcome.

I now know 50+ people who live within ~2 blocks from me, who've gone from "random strangers" to "friendly neighbors" that I run into semi-randomly.

This rules. I want to do it, but I know I can't personally, because I'm not awake at the hour people normally want coffee. Maybe I can figure out stoop whiskey.

Another thing that works for meeting and talking to your neighbors, and has the benefit of attaching you to people who live blocks away from you and not just the people you see getting into the car every morning, is local politics. I've met more people being engaged in local politics than I have through any other activity, including work.

My guess is that civic engagement across the United States works pretty much the way it does where I live in Chicagoland, which is that somewhere there is a message board, Facebook group, or mailing list, and you get engaged by joining it, getting the vibe, and then participating in the discussion --- it's very much (alarmingly much) like getting comfortable on Hacker News. Except you do it well and you can change laws.

When people say "you can just do things" this is what they mean. Fun article, I hope everyone reading this who wishes they had something like it in their neighborhood starts this weekend by inviting their nearest friend for coffee on the stoop.

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, you can find it in big cities too somehow.

Without knowing for sure, I’m almost certain that people in southern Italy and Greece do the exact same thing.

During COVID, the block I live on in San Francisco started doing outdoor happy hours every Saturday afternoon. People weren't traveling much then, so we had near 100% attendance of every person on the block for almost a year. I went from knowing none of my neighbors to knowing all of them quite well, and it has surprised me how much it has improved my day-to-day happiness.

Since then, we've hosted a "progressive" Thanksgiving dinner, which moves from house-to-house on the block for different courses. We shut down the street one day each year and set up bounce houses for the kids. I've made pint glasses with the name our street engraved in them, and given them to my neighbors. It's shown me that there really can be something valuable outside of your immediate family and circle of friends.

Phil, editor of the Supernuclear Substack here. I wasn't expecting "hanging out on stoops" to boot AI out of the #1 slot on Hacker News :) Glad this resonated for folks

A great way of kick-starting stoop culture is having a friend or family member live right next door.

We started a company called Live Near Friends (https://livenearfriends.com) to help people do this.

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

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.

Ah nice, you've invented southern Europe!

Seriously though, great concept and keep it going :)

I love these stories. My adult home city feels off compared to where I grew up in terms of neighborly-ness. So while I'm not a coffee drinker, I have been doing the pancake breakfast thing monthly in my front lawn/driveway for a decade, also an annual crawfish boil that is a big draw for the surrounding neighborhood (probably 300 people show up, free beer never hurts attendance)

FWIW, I live in a mid-century suburb that's now part of the urban core but also still very low density and single family housing oriented. The challenge is that there is a huge disparity of the census in a neighborhood like this. You have 90 year old people who raised their kids long ago and you have newly married folks who bought their first home. You even have some people who are just renting houses and don't really care about getting to know their neighbors. Unlike in the the newer exurb/suburbs where most people are raising family and all going through similar life phases, or in the denser part of the city where most people are single or DINKs. It's also varies alot by when you moved here, because it started out as a very affordable middle class neighborhood and is now extremely affluent with people building new construction multimillion dollar McMansions, etc. Anywho, it's been a good way to get people into a super casual setting and let them get to know each other. It certainly feels more like 'home' to me now.

I'm glad to hear a story of someone constructing a community they enjoy. And this approach does have the virtue of drawing in the kinds of people who are enthusiastically interested, rather than those who aren't.

In general, I and most people I know have largely found more fun and more sense of community in groups whose membership arises from intentional joining through some common interest, rather than groups whose membership arises from happenstance. Or, in short: you choose your friends, but you don't choose your neighbors.

This is so endearing. I've been at odds with my HOA [board] since I moved in and its a decades long tale of my community where everyone is treated poorly by our HOA.

I've asked the board for block parties annually, and events semi annually and theyve rejected it over and over again. Meanwhile I miss this type of community that I had in every building I lived in around NYC before moving to the mountains

We live in a mid sized city in the midwest, typical city block with single family homes. Folks keep to themselves a bit - not everyone, but enough that you have to make an effort to connect with neighbors.

My son and I had the idea that we should just organize a block party. I think this was in early 2021 after covid was letting up a bit. He was 7 years old and said we should get a food truck to come.

So that's what we did. Made homemade invitations and handed them out to a couple blocks around us and sent out emails to friends.

I think we had like 75 people show up to the first one! It was great. Had a taco truck come, and the local fire station rolled the engine by for the kids.

Blocked off the street so everyone could sit together and the kids could run around without worrying about traffic.

We've been trying to do this every 6 months or so since then. Great way to meet tons of folks in the immediate vicinity and strike up some new friendships - highly recommend it.

Anarchism in action, baby! (Not "the purge" style anarchism, anarchism in the "self organizing to build nice things" style.)

Turns out that this is the fundamental nature of people. People want to feel connected. People want do to nice things for one another. Bonding and socialization is the natural state for people.

Organizing doesn't have to be hard, and often, the best organizing is just doing something visible and inviting anyone who is coming by to participate.

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, or just a beer or two at the end of the week.

I think the key is to keep things as low-effort as possible for both the organizers and the guests. One good way is to have some sort of recurring event, say movie night or drinks or whatever, happen every X day, with no coordination or input needed, just show up. Another is to live close enough together that people bump into each other and just start doing things. Even the smallest amount of planning/coordinating/etc is friction, and friction will eventually stop anything.

When you start to look at the bigger picture - relationships, aging, childcare, morals, help for the needy, etc - you realize you just want to reconstruct a mildly religious community from the pre-industrial age.

> 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.

That is not my experience at all! Growing up in Brooklyn, hanging out on the stoop was a major social scene. (Also a factor: no AC indoors, which meant going outside for cool air) Now, in the suburbs, the homes are too far apart to have adhoc convos. Also, in many places the absence of sidewalks makes walking over to others' homes prohibitive.

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 obstruction of pedestrians do not adequately address the safety hazards, disruption and deterrence to pedestrian traffic caused by persons sitting or lying on sidewalks.

> (b) Prohibition. In the City and County of San Francisco, during the hours between seven (7:00) a.m. and eleven (11:00) p.m., it is unlawful to sit or lie down upon a public sidewalk, or any object placed upon a public sidewalk.

> (c) Exceptions. The prohibitions in Subsection (b) shall not apply to any person:

> 1. Sitting or lying down on a public sidewalk due to a medical emergency;

> 2. Using a wheelchair, walker, or similar device as the result of a disability;

> 3. Operating or patronizing a commercial establishment conducted on the public sidewalk pursuant to a sidewalk use permit;

> 4. Participating in or attending a parade, festival, performance, rally, demonstration, meeting, or similar event conducted on the public sidewalk pursuant to and in compliance with a street use or other applicable permit;

> 5. Sitting on a fixed chair or bench located on the public sidewalk supplied by a public agency or by the abutting private property owner;

> 6. Sitting in line for goods or services unless the person or person's possessions impede the ability of pedestrians to travel along the length of the sidewalk or enter a doorway or other entrance alongside the sidewalk;

> 7. Who is a child seated in a stroller; or

> 8. Who is in an area designated as a Pavement to Parks project.

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 :/

Super amused that something so "deep Spain" (specifically from my region) arises in other places too:

https://es-euronews-com.translate.goog/2022/07/12/salir-al-f...

Luke reminds me of the First Follower phenomenon (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fW8amMCVAJQ).

This is cool, it reminds me of some events in my home state.

One is called Porch fest, and it is city-wide event: https://www.carmelporchfest.org/faq

Another is a community event in South Bend, IN where people collectively organized a big art/music event in backyards, that spread and covered a fairly large area. I think it was originally back yards, then someone with a large wooded property moved the event there, as it grew too large? https://www.instagram.com/yart_southbend

Also reminded of porch hangouts that happened by necessity during covid to allow socializing while masked/outdoors to reduce risk of larger groups of people gathering indoors.

I love this and I'm not trying to be a downer, but I do think it's funny that 'go outside and talk to your neighbors' is an innovative idea in 20xx

This seems so foreign for someone living in Norway. The "what kind of weirdo are you" - vibe would be so real if someone did this.

I've been organizing a weekly morning coffee session in Astoria, Queens for the last 2 (or 3?) years. The morning coffees are connected to our local tech community's series of meetups, but they aren't hyper-focused on tech and they don't have an agenda. Just a chance to meet neighbors.

It's really been beneficial for me and my family, who aren't from here, to get to know more people in the neighborhood. These days I feel like it's a rarity to go outside without bumping into someone we know.

It's also been awesome to see friendships and even collaborations form among people in the group.

I recommend people give it a shot wherever they live. And if you're in NYC, come visit!

Rented a house with friends in sf in 2016. We created a facebook group for our neighborhood, put up signs, and very quickly had a similar experience. A few neighbors over for drinks one night, hosted a weekend bbq a few weeks later. Quickly got to know a lot of people on my immediate block. One guy fixed my bike. An older woman called me when her fire alarm was intermittently beepting, to see if I could fix it. Had a few other events through the group, they were a highlight of the year. Made it clear to me how much latent desire there is for connection / friends from your neighbors.

For the political side of this, a good next step is to have a few peoples assemblies anyone can attend, where issues are voted on.

In my ideal world, these votes would be the "law" of the land. But currently, you'd have to send the results to whatever government is in power. What is and isn't allowed in a particular area should be decided by the local community.

Your community is what you make of it. Both suburbs I have lived in were tight knit. With kids now, in my current home, I know most of the parents with kids and we have a WhatsApp group. We host occasional BBQ and play dates and when the community pool is open we schedule time to hang out and swim. That's just scratching the surface at what I see. Other suburban community Diwali, Christmas light drive through etc.

For those who have had a poor experience in the suburbs, unfortunately that is on you. The author here created stoops and you could have organized something too.

You can just do things

If you look at buildings from before WW2 in NYC vs buildings from the last few decades, one thing that stands out is the balconies. Older suburban houses are similar, with large porches prewar and no porches or enclosed porches in the last few decades. Our architecture has simply evolved out of having spaces where we can sit around and chat with our neighbors.

I admire the tenacity of the OP. If you look at the pictures, they're occupying a space that is clearly unfriendly to their goals.

In cities, I think a lot of the motivation for this change is anti-homeless sentiment: good places to hang out and chat with your neighbors are also good places for homeless people to sleep. But this contributes to increasingly isolating residents as well. It's one of the subtle ways in which the war on the homeless has negatively impacted those in homes as well.

The "New World" is re-discovering what the Balkans / Southern Europe have been doing for decades.

Ha, never knew the Dutch word 'stoep' had an English equivalent in 'stoop'!

My father was born in a small village in Guadalajara, Spain. I remember in the village my grandma and other neighbours tool their chair outside their homes to talk at the end of the day. It is great to see good things coming again. Do it... MORE.

I think it's sort of sad that this simple act of trust in your community (having coffee and exposing yourself to others) has to be over-analysed and dissected into a blog. Broadening and Deepening events, just dividing the whole act as events it feels like i'm reading a post-mortem on adobe workfront. When the true meaning of that awesome initiative remains the human need for social interaction and the need to be part of something bigger (like a community!). I feel this is poseur-ish and project-managerial to a degree even detailed oriented people will find unauthentic.

Not everyone wants to hang with everyone. The more charisma you have, the more popular you will be. I question how much this is due to people's charisma versus the norm.

Popularity is a factor of charisma and maybe looks. Not much else.

Great idea, but (as indicated in the article) there are no stoops pictured. A stoop is a series of steps that go to a second level, which makes for way better hang dynamics. Living on a block with stoops is superior to one without because people are far more likely to hang around outside when they can get some height and survey the whole block.

https://www.brownstoner.com/brooklyn-life/brooklyn-stoop-sit...

Careful though - remember what George Carlin has to say about forming groups https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7m6TSv2vtvQ

I love this concept. I live by a popular head trail, and when I do work in the garage (on my bikes or other projects), I usually keep the door open. That simple thing led to meeting many people from around the neighborhood.

I went to school in Richmond Va. Our flats had big covered porches. Summers there were brutal. The buildings were brick. While sturdy, bricks are excellent. Storing heat and releasing it slowly. None of us had AC. Porch life dominated. Everyone would sit out. Some folk had gliders. I once sat on porch as Dave Brockie strummed away on guitar working out some of his songs

It struck me that no one really did that in San Francisco. For one there are few if any big front porches. For two the damn cold evening fog chases the women inside. It took me a minute to realize the social life was at the corner boozer.

In countries where people are free (almost everywhere except the USA) you can simply open a coffee shop in a "residential district". You have these ridiculous zoning laws so at most you can drive to a Starbucks.

I'll mention a thing that I learned recently about apartment building design. We were in a building where all the unit entrances faced outward, and after several years only recognized two and knew one other neighbor's name, the guy with mgmt duties.

Then we moved to another building on the same street. This one, all the units face inward towards a courtyard. We know almost everyone by name in this building (a few from the first week!) and often share tips about what is going on nearby, or facilities, send holiday cards, etc. There's an imessage group as well.

The Outershell brand in San Francisco does this on bikes, where a group bikes across the GGB, sets up coffee, drinks coffee, in a beautiful spot in nature. Love this concept though, very accessible!

We need more of this. People are isolated, afraid, not willing to make the first move. Do it! The worst thing that can happen is you just enjoy your coffee outside, the best - read the article.

This is amazing. I am (regretfully) the introverted one in the community that watches as my wife and kids make the most of it. This is something I would love to stumble on. Great read!

At the start of Covid lockdown my group at work started having a daily "drinking alone together" afternoon Google Meet.

When that job ended, our household started drinking on our front porch in the afternoons. Soon a few neighbors started doing the same, and we got close enough (15-20 feet) to trade cell numbers. After that we would text back and forth to communicate during "distanced happy hour".

The friendships we made drinking _not_ together have lasted, and we still count those neighbors as friends...

i've walked past y'all on many occasions and thought how cool it was! I had no idea there was such a large group of you :) I'll have to swing by and say hi sometime

> The First Convert

> We met Luke a month or two after we’d been “stooping” on a regular basis. He came by to introduce himself and asked to exchange numbers so we could let him know if we’d be out there in the future, he’d love to join. At the time we didn’t realize how important this moment was for us. We’d been meeting many neighbors in passing but Luke was the first person to offer to sit with us and he wanted to know how to coordinate. In retrospect we should have been trying to get peoples’ numbers all along but hey, we were new to this!

I feel like the last sentence is a mistake. I think it works way better that they let the first person come up to them first of their own accord. If they'd been pushing for numbers from the get-go, the stoop coffee definitely would have a different feel to it. I think it's important that the first people who want to be there are people who _really_ want to be there, and thus take the initiative to initiate contact. That way you (potentially) start your group with a set of strong connections.

oh my god.

I literally walked past this group of people a few weeks ago and thought to myself "I should walk up and introduce myself because they seem like they're having a great time".

But I had to rush past.

Next time!

California people discover hanging out outside with people.

i think there's a really valuable app/site to be made that involves discovering people or handling communications literally on your block (i.e hyper local neighborhood). nextdoor is the 1.0 of this that introduced the concept but poorly, and i'm still waiting for a 2.0

i guess it doesn't have to be an app, since whatsapp can handle most of this, but there's a discovery piece that would be missing that this app can somehow handle.

Yeah that’s actually illegal in the Netherlands. “Hanging”

Amusingly, we live in a high-rise in SF and it's like what people talk about neighbourhood living. We have a Whatsapp group and people meet for ethnic festivals, borrow an egg, or sugar, or flour, or a jump start kit, or an iron. It's honestly quite nice.

It helps that you self-select for the audience by who can afford the building, just like they've done the same with their neighbourhood.

I love how people rediscovers the concept of "third place" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place). Maybe it is because we got so into technology and COVID that we have started to miss face-to-face human connections.

The format and delivery reminds me of Tree Raves: A Case Study in Social Protocols[1] - here's a series of behaviors you can implement if you'ld like to replicate this type of thing too.

1. https://prigoose.substack.com/p/tree-raves-a-case-study-in-s...

This is a real cool thing (probs the best things I have seen this week!). It's great to see our society going back to fundamentals and seeing that hanging out together in simple settings make you feel good and included. Feels like a duh moment but a very needed reminder.

A spreadsheet is not very "community". And most definitely, demanding you to suddenly allow extreme surveillence against you, and to also own a smartphone, and to also install things on the smartphone and be physically able to do so as well, is most DEFINITELY not a "community". By this definition of talking to your immediate neighbors and knowing the whole neighborhood and whatnot.

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.

I love this. I will bookmark / see what I can do once it stops raining everyday in Vancouver

I applaud the community building you've done, but the wealthy SF tech set is never beating the 'reinventing things that already exist' allegations. This is basically a block party only quiet.

Man, I'd like to do this. My suburb doesn't have much foot-traffic though. I do my best to greet the neighbors, and sometimes chat up people at the coffee shop. Time constraints are a factor when it comes to socializing, as a parent to toddlers.

This is amazing! A few folks on my block in the lower haight started doing something similar during Covid. We’ve met some long term neighbor friends this way that we otherwise may have never met.

Love to know that more of this was going on in the city.

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.

My old neighborhood had "Front Porch Fridays" where neighbors would gather in front of someone's house and have a pot luck with cocktails. It was very popular.

Getting an outgoing dog has a similar impact. Suddenly on every walk our dog wants to meet their dog and we know neighbors we wouldn’t have otherwise. Even more so than our kids and their neighborhood playmates.

Porch monkeys? :D

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"

Sorry if it's been said already, but "stoop life" has been a thing in inner cities for... well, forever. It's more common with underprivileged communities in inner cities, so I can see how more affluent people would "suddenly discover" that hanging out on their stoop helps create community. In my experience, where the two intersect, it's usually the more affluent people pissed off that less-affluent (or perhaps "more culturally diverse"?) people are hanging out on the stoop. I've lived in DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and NYC, in multiple neighborhoods in each city, and I assure you, "stoop life" is everywhere, except on the wealthier stoops. But it doesn't have to be that way.

Another thing that helps create community is stoop gardens. People will stop and gather round a stoop garden to marvel at what's being grown. Neighbors will lean out their window to yell a hello at a stoop gardener. I can't recommend it enough.

When you travel to most other countries this kind of community is present. Warms my heart that it’s finding its way to you.

I live in the suburbs on a busy road. The road is literally a dividing line between the village. One which means we only interact with the neighbors on the other side when there is a car accident.

This used to be completely normal. It was caled being neighborly.

If you can change a neighborhood, you can change a city.

This is so cool. I just moved to the Bay Area, and I know that if someone invited me to such an event I would be thrilled!

Burning Man morning vibes, walking to a neighborhood camp for good coffee and meeting some new friends. Love it.

Small world. I’ve run by the stoop coffee and their pancake parties in SF many weekends.

Love seeing the details behind this intentional community building (:

Sitting on the street of SF, for the whole day just like that? How many times have these people been mugged?

the Arizona version of this is the snowbirds who use their garage as their outdoor living room and social area

I love this and you're inspiring me to copycat on our little street in twin peaks.

If anyone is interested in this, visit (or move to) Spain. Valencia and Madrid is full of experiences like this, even for foreigners/expats.

Jesus even reading this makes me uncomfortable. I am glad for city anonymity and solitude forever

Brrr this is horrible stuff of nightmares you guys advocate for. I want to escape my neighbours not having to meet them each time I go out

Ideally we would even push notify button before walking out in a way that we don’t meet each other at all. People are disgusting, terrible and not to be trusted. least you need is more of them

How do ppl do this if they have a 9-5?

i'd love to participate in this where i live (not organize, just participate) but sadly it rains almost every single day and i doubt people would show up

I know this is offtopic but why are people pushing Whats App? They could have used Signal just as well. Privacy literacy seems to be neglected so so much.

Douglas Rushkoff would certainly approve. Go Team Human!

Connection doesn't need to be complicated to be meaningful

this is very common in my city, Catania (Sicily)!

Nice. By the way what’s a stoop?

The whitest thing I've ever seen

Eh sorry for being curmudgeonly but the themes are just not attractive to me. Pancake party, dips party, coffee, all those task assignments are just not doing it for me. It doesn’t have an interesting edginess to it like the fraternities and their secret rituals or dedicated niche fanatics like stamp collectors or D&D. It’s all so pastel and milquetoast.

I just feel the need to point out how ridiculous the lack of socio-economic diversity appears to be in these images. California and the Bay Area specifically is suffering and this kind of privileged whimsical time-killing project comes off as insanely tone-deaf. To me at least. Just my opinion as someone born and raised in that city.

There were towns and cities BEFORE cars

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMJaMy-0ChA

You can also wave to your neighbours passing by in their cars.

They discovered sipping espresso with friends and neighbors. Weird. But Substack gained some clicks I guess.

They do this at UCSF in mission Bay too, such a great idea

What a shame to fit all those people in a space that could have been better left for one person to park their SUV. /s

I can't help but feel we've failed as a society, that we seem to focus more on money than things like this. So much misery in the world.

So hanging on the sidewalk is cool if non-homeless people do it?

TIL what a stoop is.

this is peak vietnamese culture