5 ms·

Every house on the street I grew up on had a front porch and 4 to 6 people living in it. Everyone knew everyone and we did everything together. There was no o

by edw519 17y ago

Every house on the street I grew up on had a front porch and 4 to 6 people living in it. Everyone knew everyone and we did everything together. There was no organized sports; if you wanted to play you just went in the middle of the street and in 5 minutes there were 10 other kids. If you wanted to take a shortcut, you just cut though people's yards; no one had a fence. Every one of my parent's 14 siblings and my 32 first cousins lived within 10 miles. We all saw each other at least once per week. Our mailman cut our hair, our dry cleaner picked up and delivered, our principal was also manager of the local swimming pool, and we worshipped in our neighbor's basement. We knew the names of every police officer, fireman, cashier, clerk, waitress, gardner, and handyman in our neighborhood. If you ever needed anything, someone knew someone else who could help you. We didn't have google, cell phones, or cable TV; we had lots of other people in our lives all the time. In college, I lived with 35 others in a fraternity house. We didn't do a whole lot of planning. There was always someone around to do stuff with. Today, I don't know the name of a single neighbor. I don't remember the last time I lived in a house without a fence in back or with a porch in front. My nearest relative lives 1000 miles away. I know the names of exactly 2 waitresses; guess where I eat out all the time? Loneliness probably has more to do with the proximity of people in your life than all these other "factors". I don't know when things changed, but they sure have. Anyone with experiences similar to mine?

DanielBMarkham 17y ago
It was mostly the same with me. We attended a church 400 yards from my house. All the neighbors did as well. The neighborhood was like a family -- if you needed a glass of water you just went in the kitchen of the closest house and got one. Nobody locked their doors because everybody knew everybody and somebody was always around checking on what was going on. Kids played outside until dark, and sometimes later, without much parental supervision. Everybody knew that everybody else was looking out for the kids. That's how I thought everybody grew up. My dad died and my mom remarried and moved off to a retirement community in Florida. They have about 1200 units which are mostly full in the winter. Everybody attends the same church, everybody participates in the same activities, everybody sits out on their porch in the evening. You're never bored because somebody is always coming by and either talking to you or asking you to participate in something. If somebody has a problem going to the store, other people drive them. If somebody has a problem cooking their meals, neighbors pitch in and help them out. When my mom died last month, there were a thousand people at her memorial service. The line of people coming by to give me a hug, cry, and offer their condolences took almost an hour. These were people who had kids and grandkids off all over the world, but for them the people in the park were their family. There is something in that experience that I want, especially as I grow older. We all spend a lot of time plugged in and wired up, but we seem to have forgotten how to sit on the porch as the sun goes down and have a good heart-to-heart talk about our lives and values. As cool as technology has become, we're missing something very important.
- heed 17y ago
  >we seem to have forgotten how to sit on the porch as the sun goes down and have a good heart-to-heart talk about our lives and values. We haven't forgotten, we've just changed the space. Like right now, in this thread we're doing exactly what you claim is missing. Whether the porch is physical or virtual isn't nearly as important as the actual sharing of ideas.
  - moron4hire 17y ago
    I somehow doubt anyone from HN is going to come to my funeral. We've created a system that allows us to select our own designer social network. With you're neighborhood, you're stuck with those people, you can't just go looking for a new physical community as easily as you can a virtual one. I think this is actually a good thing; it tends to teach a lot more patience between people.
    - heed 17y ago
      Just because you live in a neighborhood, and have neighbors, doesn't mean they'll come to your funeral either. What I'm saying is physical space might not be the core issue here. The system we've created allows more freedom, freedom to choose your communities more closely. In some cases the trade off might be less patience, and I suppose in my own case, I value freedom above possible lack of patience.
      - moron4hire 17y ago
        I think the point that DanielBMarkham was trying to make was that, in order for the general person to feel whole, they need social interaction of some kind. You don't see too many hermits in the world. This ability to select our social networks allows us an emotional escape that de-prioritizes building relationships with physical neighbors. The advantages given to automobile travel started it, and the internet has accelerated it dramatically. I think the "freedom" to choose one's community is at the core of the complete lack of reasonable political discourse these days. It's very rare to see people calmly discussing issues with each other; they segregate themselves into their like-minded social groups, seeking validation for their preconceived notions rather than searching for the truth. When your barber who has been cutting your hair for 20 years expresses a view that you find surprising, you're going to tend to have a discussion with him about it, rather than shout at him and call him names. Each community, physical or virtual, has its own unique ideology. The difference between the physical and virtual is that physical ones must necessarily be inclusive, virtual ones are encouraged to be exclusive. Without getting too sidetracked, there is also the issue of the disconnect between seeing words on a screen and knowing deep in your subconscious that your dealing with a real person. Text on a screen is really difficult to anthropomorphize and sympathize with.
henrikschroder 17y ago
"Hi. Is <my friend X> in?" There was a time, when I was a kid, that to meet your friends, you went to their house, rang the doorbell, and asked the above question to the parent of X who opened the door. Or you called them, and then their parents would answer the phone, and you asked the same question. Now, all kids have mobiles, and just call or text each other directly, completely bypassing the parents. Parents get to meet the friends of their children much less, and kids get to meet their friends' parents much less, and I think we're worse off as a society because of it.
- heed 17y ago
  >I think we're worse off as a society because of it. I'm curious, why?
  - potatolicious 17y ago
    All interactions increase the richness of your social graph, IMHO anyways. It's the difference between ordering your lunch from a human vs. tapping it out on a touchscreen and having it appear from a pneumatic chute. One of the themes I'm getting from other comments here is that modern society makes you too independent - everything we need we get from machines, and in the places where we must interact with other humans there's a corporatized formality to it that robs it of human substance. For example: Your local grocery store is probably a gigantor-chain, the person at the counter is probably running through a script of unenthusiastic niceties - a far cry from smalltalk with the grocer you see every day at the corner store.
  - lmkg 17y ago
    Not the parent, but I'll answer for myself: it's a good thing to have more people in your life in your formative years than just your immediate peers and your parents because you get experience developing more types of relationships with people. You understand how to relate to someone who is older and more experienced than you and has a different point of view than you do outside of the context of them having a direct authority over you. You also get exposed to more points of view than just your parents', which can be a good or bad thing depending on what those points of view are, but plurality on average tends to be beneficial, especially in your developmental years. By contrast, when you interact only with your self-selected peers of your own age group, your social circle becomes a bit of an echo chamber. In addition to the intellectual incest, if you don't have to deal with outsiders or people with different backgrounds or perspectives, you never figure out how to, and that's an important life skill. At the societal level, when people don't have to interact beyond their selected circle, they start becoming more insular, and that impedes the ability of groups to understand each other and communicate with each other, creating friction that can lead to conflicts and the inability to resolve such conflicts.
julsonl 17y ago
Oh my. This resonates with nearly everything I'm experiencing after migrating to the US 2 years ago. I grew up in a city where most of my friends live within a 1-mile radius around my house. Those friends are still there after all these years growing up. My old home was a small apartment unit in a building where I personally know most of its tenants. Though I don't largely blame it one the US as much as I blame it on my introvert attitude, living here seems a lot lonely by comparison. Living in the suburbs, I've probably seen more squirrels outside my current residence than there are humans (quite an exaggeration, but I do feel that sometimes). Graduating from college or high school meant that most of your friends will be living in different states with a huge chance of losing contact from them afterwards. I originally thought of this as culture shock, so I'm glad even natives are experiencing this.
warfangle 17y ago
My experience is similar, but an inverse, of your own. :) I didn't have your childhood experience - my childhood was much like your current situation. I knew a couple kids in the neighborhood, but we mostly just played video games indoors (when we were younger, we would climb trees, explore the creek, or play with an extensive collection of GI-Joes). And then they all moved away, and I didn't know anyone anymore (and neither, I suspect, did my parents). Then I moved to Brooklyn. Not Park Slope, not Red Hook, and definitely not Williamsburg. I moved into what was up until very recently (in the last decade) one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the borough, and which laid claim to the most dangerous block in the five boroughs: Bushwick. I moved in three years ago, several years after the neighborhood started getting safer. It's still not that safe: you have to keep an eye on who else is on the block with you. But now there's a nice coffee shop, a delicious bistro-bar, a wine/beer bar, and a coctail/dance club within five blocks. I don't work with anyone in my neighborhood. But I know several painters, several musicians, several photographers, a puppeteer, and several businessfolk. I'm also on a first-name basis with most employees of the coffee shop and bistro-bar (who, incidentally, do all sorts of other things as well). I met the woman who cuts my hair at the bar (price? bring a six-pack of beer over) - and she does a wonderful job. One of the guys who works at the coffee shop put on a play/concert with his band at the local performance theater. A small music venue (official, as opposed to all the ad-hoc venues scattered throughout the [il]legal lofts off the Morgan stop) is opening in the next six months: I know the proprietor. I've never known a community like this. It's fantastic. I don't know of any other neighborhood in this city that can claim a community as active, as friendly, and as full of vermont transplants (I'm from the opposite direction, however).
- starkfist 17y ago
  Many neighborhoods in NYC have great established communities, it's just that the community doesn't necessarily include you.
  - warfangle 17y ago
    Very true. I believe the reason I could integrate so well with this community is due to one specific situation and a couple attributes of the community that I've not seen elsewhere: - I moved to the neighborhood when the community was just beginning - It is not based around typical cultural or ethnic norms (there are Haitian, Asian, European, Hispanic immigrants involved: this is not an affluent-white-urban group, though caucasian transplants to the city tend to be the majority) - It is not based around our job description or industry, though creative-types are definitely in the majority - It's not whether you're deemed cool by the American Apparel masses We're just neighbors. Awesome neighbors. (before this, I lived in northern Astoria - whose community was rather insular and comprised of primarily Greek individuals; there were yuppies there, but they weren't a part of nor 'invited' in to the community)
dkersten 17y ago
Since I quit my job to work on my startup, I've moved out of Dublin to cut costs and most of my friends now live a ~1.5 hour bus journey away. I head back every now and again to keep in touch, but mostly I talk to them over the internet. I do live with my little brother now and my other brother and his girlfriend live literally opposite my house, so I hang out with family a lot more than I used to. I know some of the people working in the local shops, but I don't know anyone else that lives on the street. I grew up in the coutnry, so there weren't many people living nearby, but the few other kids that did live close, we knew well. We generally let ourselves into each others homes and there was never any problems, though if we wanted to visit our friends who lived further away, we would get our parents to drive us.
dunstad 17y ago
As an 18 year old who grew up/is growing up in the suburbs, this sounds ridiculously idealized to me. I'm not saying that it is, just that it's so far from my experience I have trouble comprehending it. Anyone with experiences similar to mine?
- PieSquared 17y ago
  Hahah, same here, same here. There was a comment earlier on this thread a while back about seeing "more squirrels than humans" in the suburbs... it then apologized for the exaggeration. For my entire life, I've lived in a place where that isn't an exaggeration, and my nearest friends (people who I know well who are not my immediate family) live 20 miles away. Seems like just something a large part of our generation, especially parts of it that grew up in the suburbs, takes for granted.
zephyrfalcon 17y ago
There are obvious drawbacks though. You put a foot wrong, i.e. you do something that your community disapproves of, and within hours everybody knows about it. I am originally from the Netherlands (very densely populated), and now live in a rural area in the US. I wouldn't want to go back anymore to that kind of life. (Then again, I'm agoraphobic, that probably has something to do with it... :-)
dabent 17y ago
I am very lucky to live in the (US) subdivision I'm in right now. The situation you describe about kids playing in the street and (mostly) the yards is what we have here. Our neighbors have "parties" in their driveways and everyone is welcome. People just sit around and talk as the kids play in the yard. It's not utopia, but it's good enough that we have seriously considered the risk of moving into a closed off neighborhood when we move. We are lucky and are going to hang out here as long as we can.
- davidw 17y ago
  Sounds pretty cool - where is it? This "loneliness" aspect of the US is something that is definitely in the 'con' column when sizing up whether to move back or not.
abrown28 17y ago
Being an atheist in a strong community like you describe just sucked for me. I would prefer to pick my community rather than have it forced upon me by geography. For instance when I entered college I joined an engineering fraternity which was filled with plenty of people as bizarre as me. I think most people would rather pick their communities than have it selected by default hence the fences popped up once it became feasible to do without your physical neighbors.
malkia 17y ago
Reminds of Bulgaria - not much houses, but 8 to 12, and sometimes 18 story blocks. You take the elevator (if it works), go down in front of the block and kids were there - all day being dirty was just fun. But now, I know the names of just 3 of my neighbours, and they all happen to be old folks (65+). We have lots of young people, but we just say "Hi" and that's it. Then we go the park with our little kid, and lots of spanish speaking people (mostly mexican emigrants, I live in Los Angeles) have gathered at the BBQ and having fun. Their kids are more friendly with our kid, more giving, understanding. An american kid, much like our kid (he was born here) would always try to be individualist - not sharing much, crying sometimes for no reason, etc. I miss the good old days.

by edw519 17y ago

DanielBMarkham 17y ago

It was mostly the same with me. We attended a church 400 yards from my house. All the neighbors did as well. The neighborhood was like a family -- if you needed a glass of water you just went in the kitchen of the closest house and got one. Nobody locked their doors because everybody knew everybody and somebody was always around checking on what was going on. Kids played outside until dark, and sometimes later, without much parental supervision. Everybody knew that everybody else was looking out for the kids. That's how I thought everybody grew up. My dad died and my mom remarried and moved off to a retirement community in Florida. They have about 1200 units which are mostly full in the winter. Everybody attends the same church, everybody participates in the same activities, everybody sits out on their porch in the evening. You're never bored because somebody is always coming by and either talking to you or asking you to participate in something. If somebody has a problem going to the store, other people drive them. If somebody has a problem cooking their meals, neighbors pitch in and help them out. When my mom died last month, there were a thousand people at her memorial service. The line of people coming by to give me a hug, cry, and offer their condolences took almost an hour. These were people who had kids and grandkids off all over the world, but for them the people in the park were their family. There is something in that experience that I want, especially as I grow older. We all spend a lot of time plugged in and wired up, but we seem to have forgotten how to sit on the porch as the sun goes down and have a good heart-to-heart talk about our lives and values. As cool as technology has become, we're missing something very important.

heed 17y ago
>we seem to have forgotten how to sit on the porch as the sun goes down and have a good heart-to-heart talk about our lives and values. We haven't forgotten, we've just changed the space. Like right now, in this thread we're doing exactly what you claim is missing. Whether the porch is physical or virtual isn't nearly as important as the actual sharing of ideas.
- moron4hire 17y ago
  I somehow doubt anyone from HN is going to come to my funeral. We've created a system that allows us to select our own designer social network. With you're neighborhood, you're stuck with those people, you can't just go looking for a new physical community as easily as you can a virtual one. I think this is actually a good thing; it tends to teach a lot more patience between people.
  - heed 17y ago
    Just because you live in a neighborhood, and have neighbors, doesn't mean they'll come to your funeral either. What I'm saying is physical space might not be the core issue here. The system we've created allows more freedom, freedom to choose your communities more closely. In some cases the trade off might be less patience, and I suppose in my own case, I value freedom above possible lack of patience.
    - moron4hire 17y ago
      I think the point that DanielBMarkham was trying to make was that, in order for the general person to feel whole, they need social interaction of some kind. You don't see too many hermits in the world. This ability to select our social networks allows us an emotional escape that de-prioritizes building relationships with physical neighbors. The advantages given to automobile travel started it, and the internet has accelerated it dramatically. I think the "freedom" to choose one's community is at the core of the complete lack of reasonable political discourse these days. It's very rare to see people calmly discussing issues with each other; they segregate themselves into their like-minded social groups, seeking validation for their preconceived notions rather than searching for the truth. When your barber who has been cutting your hair for 20 years expresses a view that you find surprising, you're going to tend to have a discussion with him about it, rather than shout at him and call him names. Each community, physical or virtual, has its own unique ideology. The difference between the physical and virtual is that physical ones must necessarily be inclusive, virtual ones are encouraged to be exclusive. Without getting too sidetracked, there is also the issue of the disconnect between seeing words on a screen and knowing deep in your subconscious that your dealing with a real person. Text on a screen is really difficult to anthropomorphize and sympathize with.

henrikschroder 17y ago

"Hi. Is <my friend X> in?" There was a time, when I was a kid, that to meet your friends, you went to their house, rang the doorbell, and asked the above question to the parent of X who opened the door. Or you called them, and then their parents would answer the phone, and you asked the same question. Now, all kids have mobiles, and just call or text each other directly, completely bypassing the parents. Parents get to meet the friends of their children much less, and kids get to meet their friends' parents much less, and I think we're worse off as a society because of it.

heed 17y ago
>I think we're worse off as a society because of it. I'm curious, why?
- potatolicious 17y ago
  All interactions increase the richness of your social graph, IMHO anyways. It's the difference between ordering your lunch from a human vs. tapping it out on a touchscreen and having it appear from a pneumatic chute. One of the themes I'm getting from other comments here is that modern society makes you too independent - everything we need we get from machines, and in the places where we must interact with other humans there's a corporatized formality to it that robs it of human substance. For example: Your local grocery store is probably a gigantor-chain, the person at the counter is probably running through a script of unenthusiastic niceties - a far cry from smalltalk with the grocer you see every day at the corner store.
- lmkg 17y ago
  Not the parent, but I'll answer for myself: it's a good thing to have more people in your life in your formative years than just your immediate peers and your parents because you get experience developing more types of relationships with people. You understand how to relate to someone who is older and more experienced than you and has a different point of view than you do outside of the context of them having a direct authority over you. You also get exposed to more points of view than just your parents', which can be a good or bad thing depending on what those points of view are, but plurality on average tends to be beneficial, especially in your developmental years. By contrast, when you interact only with your self-selected peers of your own age group, your social circle becomes a bit of an echo chamber. In addition to the intellectual incest, if you don't have to deal with outsiders or people with different backgrounds or perspectives, you never figure out how to, and that's an important life skill. At the societal level, when people don't have to interact beyond their selected circle, they start becoming more insular, and that impedes the ability of groups to understand each other and communicate with each other, creating friction that can lead to conflicts and the inability to resolve such conflicts.

julsonl 17y ago

Oh my. This resonates with nearly everything I'm experiencing after migrating to the US 2 years ago. I grew up in a city where most of my friends live within a 1-mile radius around my house. Those friends are still there after all these years growing up. My old home was a small apartment unit in a building where I personally know most of its tenants. Though I don't largely blame it one the US as much as I blame it on my introvert attitude, living here seems a lot lonely by comparison. Living in the suburbs, I've probably seen more squirrels outside my current residence than there are humans (quite an exaggeration, but I do feel that sometimes). Graduating from college or high school meant that most of your friends will be living in different states with a huge chance of losing contact from them afterwards. I originally thought of this as culture shock, so I'm glad even natives are experiencing this.

warfangle 17y ago

My experience is similar, but an inverse, of your own. :) I didn't have your childhood experience - my childhood was much like your current situation. I knew a couple kids in the neighborhood, but we mostly just played video games indoors (when we were younger, we would climb trees, explore the creek, or play with an extensive collection of GI-Joes). And then they all moved away, and I didn't know anyone anymore (and neither, I suspect, did my parents). Then I moved to Brooklyn. Not Park Slope, not Red Hook, and definitely not Williamsburg. I moved into what was up until very recently (in the last decade) one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the borough, and which laid claim to the most dangerous block in the five boroughs: Bushwick. I moved in three years ago, several years after the neighborhood started getting safer. It's still not that safe: you have to keep an eye on who else is on the block with you. But now there's a nice coffee shop, a delicious bistro-bar, a wine/beer bar, and a coctail/dance club within five blocks. I don't work with anyone in my neighborhood. But I know several painters, several musicians, several photographers, a puppeteer, and several businessfolk. I'm also on a first-name basis with most employees of the coffee shop and bistro-bar (who, incidentally, do all sorts of other things as well). I met the woman who cuts my hair at the bar (price? bring a six-pack of beer over) - and she does a wonderful job. One of the guys who works at the coffee shop put on a play/concert with his band at the local performance theater. A small music venue (official, as opposed to all the ad-hoc venues scattered throughout the [il]legal lofts off the Morgan stop) is opening in the next six months: I know the proprietor. I've never known a community like this. It's fantastic. I don't know of any other neighborhood in this city that can claim a community as active, as friendly, and as full of vermont transplants (I'm from the opposite direction, however).

starkfist 17y ago
Many neighborhoods in NYC have great established communities, it's just that the community doesn't necessarily include you.
- warfangle 17y ago
  Very true. I believe the reason I could integrate so well with this community is due to one specific situation and a couple attributes of the community that I've not seen elsewhere: - I moved to the neighborhood when the community was just beginning - It is not based around typical cultural or ethnic norms (there are Haitian, Asian, European, Hispanic immigrants involved: this is not an affluent-white-urban group, though caucasian transplants to the city tend to be the majority) - It is not based around our job description or industry, though creative-types are definitely in the majority - It's not whether you're deemed cool by the American Apparel masses We're just neighbors. Awesome neighbors. (before this, I lived in northern Astoria - whose community was rather insular and comprised of primarily Greek individuals; there were yuppies there, but they weren't a part of nor 'invited' in to the community)

dkersten 17y ago

Since I quit my job to work on my startup, I've moved out of Dublin to cut costs and most of my friends now live a ~1.5 hour bus journey away. I head back every now and again to keep in touch, but mostly I talk to them over the internet. I do live with my little brother now and my other brother and his girlfriend live literally opposite my house, so I hang out with family a lot more than I used to. I know some of the people working in the local shops, but I don't know anyone else that lives on the street. I grew up in the coutnry, so there weren't many people living nearby, but the few other kids that did live close, we knew well. We generally let ourselves into each others homes and there was never any problems, though if we wanted to visit our friends who lived further away, we would get our parents to drive us.

dunstad 17y ago

As an 18 year old who grew up/is growing up in the suburbs, this sounds ridiculously idealized to me. I'm not saying that it is, just that it's so far from my experience I have trouble comprehending it. Anyone with experiences similar to mine?

PieSquared 17y ago
Hahah, same here, same here. There was a comment earlier on this thread a while back about seeing "more squirrels than humans" in the suburbs... it then apologized for the exaggeration. For my entire life, I've lived in a place where that isn't an exaggeration, and my nearest friends (people who I know well who are not my immediate family) live 20 miles away. Seems like just something a large part of our generation, especially parts of it that grew up in the suburbs, takes for granted.

zephyrfalcon 17y ago

There are obvious drawbacks though. You put a foot wrong, i.e. you do something that your community disapproves of, and within hours everybody knows about it. I am originally from the Netherlands (very densely populated), and now live in a rural area in the US. I wouldn't want to go back anymore to that kind of life. (Then again, I'm agoraphobic, that probably has something to do with it... :-)

dabent 17y ago

I am very lucky to live in the (US) subdivision I'm in right now. The situation you describe about kids playing in the street and (mostly) the yards is what we have here. Our neighbors have "parties" in their driveways and everyone is welcome. People just sit around and talk as the kids play in the yard. It's not utopia, but it's good enough that we have seriously considered the risk of moving into a closed off neighborhood when we move. We are lucky and are going to hang out here as long as we can.

davidw 17y ago
Sounds pretty cool - where is it? This "loneliness" aspect of the US is something that is definitely in the 'con' column when sizing up whether to move back or not.

abrown28 17y ago

Being an atheist in a strong community like you describe just sucked for me. I would prefer to pick my community rather than have it forced upon me by geography. For instance when I entered college I joined an engineering fraternity which was filled with plenty of people as bizarre as me. I think most people would rather pick their communities than have it selected by default hence the fences popped up once it became feasible to do without your physical neighbors.

malkia 17y ago

Reminds of Bulgaria - not much houses, but 8 to 12, and sometimes 18 story blocks. You take the elevator (if it works), go down in front of the block and kids were there - all day being dirty was just fun. But now, I know the names of just 3 of my neighbours, and they all happen to be old folks (65+). We have lots of young people, but we just say "Hi" and that's it. Then we go the park with our little kid, and lots of spanish speaking people (mostly mexican emigrants, I live in Los Angeles) have gathered at the BBQ and having fun. Their kids are more friendly with our kid, more giving, understanding. An american kid, much like our kid (he was born here) would always try to be individualist - not sharing much, crying sometimes for no reason, etc. I miss the good old days.