Driving though York, PA once after a huge snowfall people would put chaise lounges in their cleared out parking space, to save the parking from hijackers. It was too f’ing cold to be lounging though.
Front porch here, myself. It has a great lemonade porch that runs the whole length of the house and has fantastic late afternoon shade and breeze. Plus that’s where my hammock is. Baseball game on the radio + cold beer + Hammock = Awesome
We have a huge deck in the back, but it gets full blazing sun and is too hot before sunset to use even with the awning.
We’ll sometimes eat out back, but the front porch is for sitting, reading the paper and drinking. My dog is getting old and can’t walk very far anymore, we’ve replaced some of her walking with frontporch time when we sit and stare at the world together.
People used to do that here, too, but they would abuse the privelege by keeping their chairs there well past the spring thaw. It think that it’s actually illegal to reserve spots like that now.
In Britain a subset of poorer folks have back gardens but no front gardens, the front door opens directly onto the pavement. In this type of house the back garden tends to be pretty small, nonetheless, provided it is fenced off from the neighbours, it it still referred to as a garden even if it is paved and the only plants are in pots.
Also over here the first thing I think of when I think of people sitting at the front of their houses is shouty, argumentative types, drinking and picking fights. Their neighbours hate them.
The OP is correct. In depressed areas all over the US you will see people hanging on the front porch. More well off folks with the exception of lonely seniors will hang out at the rear because the backyard has the gardens, bird bathes, ponds etc and is usually a nice place to hang out.
Seven ways that the rich and the poor are similar.
Such as, both the very wealthy and the very poor are more disposed to spending the whole day in their pajamas.
I live in a house with no driveway so I park my car on the side street. The house across the street is a low-income rental. All of the tenants, past and present, without fail, have as their favorite “hobby” sitting or standing outside their front door so I usually have an audience when I walk to my car. They don’t socialize with me, they just stare at me while I’m walking. It seems low-income people are “street-level” in their mentality so instead of sitting inside and reading a book or watching TV, or relaxing in the seclusion of a backyard like suburbanites, they like to case the neighborhood.
Sociologic studies have shown a high degree of correlation between hanging out on the front porch and nosiness.
Hedges and fences around back yards make it difficult to see what the neighbors are doing.
And here I am planning, when I do ever buy a house, to put up a six foot privacy fence. I hate hanging out on the front porch for anything. I hate nosy people!
This is something I’ve often wondered about. We live in a middle-class neighborhood in San Jose, CA. Most of the neighbors own their homes, but the one directly across the street from us is a rental. Usually people don’t stay in it very long–a year at the most. But with the exception of the current renter (who I really hope stays–he’s a single nerd type, very quiet), the last three renters (families of various ethnic types–one white, one Hispanic, and one I’m not sure exactly what they were) have set up tables and couches in the garage, where they seemed to spend a lot of time. Especially the last family–every time I looked over there, the garage door was open and at least one of them was sitting at the table there.
For awhile I thought it was cultural (since the first family I noticed doing it was Hispanic and I think the second one probably was too) but then the white family showed up and did the same thing with a vengeance (they spent way more time in the garage than the other two). In all three cases I got the impression that the families were lower on the socioeconomic spectrum than the rest of the neighborhood, and I also heard rumors that the house was a Section 8 house. No idea if this is relevant to garage-sitting.
Nobody else on the street (very ethnically diverse–mostly Asian and white, with a couple of black and Hispanic families) do this. So what’s the deal? I’m beginning to wonder if the interior of the rental house smells funny, but the guy who owns it always seems to be pretty conscientious about cleaning it up when a renter leaves.
You are kidding, right? C’mon, you have to be kidding. Please?
I spend as much time as possible outside. I generally choose the backyard for a number of reasons:
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It’s fenced in, so the dog can go out there with me, sniff around, do her business, and wander back up on the porch to get a head scritch. On the front porch, she’d have to be leashed.
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The back porch is screened in. So, after the dog returns from her patrol of the perimeter, I can close the porch doors (French doors), and enjoy a mosquito-free sunset. Also, the cat is not allowed to roam freely outside, but he is allowed out on the back porch if the screen doors are closed. He can see, hear, and smell the birds and squirrels (and loves it out there), but he can’t wander out into the street to get smooshed.
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I have an eight-foot privacy fence around my backyard. This enables me to sunbathe nekkid. Can’t, rather, won’t do that in the front yard.
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I socialize with my neighbors plenty. If they are outside when I’m walking by with the dog, she will stop to visit them. Correction, she will drag my ass into their yard so she can intimidate them into petting her. When a 75-pound American Bulldog marches into your yard wanting you to pet her, you just do it.
In general, however, whenever I’ve found myself taking a walk around a neighborhood that’s swankier than mine (note: mine is not very swanky, but it’s not what I’d call a ghetto either) I notice I rarely see anyone outside. People don’t even walk their dogs in really swanky neighborhoods. I don’t know what that’s about. You never see kids playing stickball in the streets anymore, the playgrounds and parks are mostly empty most days, and I rarely see moms strolling around with their babies in strollers. On several occasions in the last couple years, I’ve been staying with friends in some suburban neighborhood and stepped out for a walk and a smoke. And not once did I encounter another person who was also on foot. Or even hanging out in their yard, or even doing actual yardwork. I’ll go back inside and ask, “Doesn’t anyone ever go outside in this neighborhood?” And the residents look at me like, “No, why?”
My non-swanky neighborhood is crawling with constant foot traffic. I’ll see some teens bouncing a basketball down the street headed for the park. Or some kids with their pool noodles, headed for the pool. Lots of moms with strollers and babies, and sometimes even a dog or three leashed to the stroller. Lots of middle-aged white women walking rescued pit bulls. People walk to the grocery store with their recyclable bags. People walking to the church around the corner. Head up the road a spell where the yards are bigger, and where people can afford to hire someone for lawn service and you just don’t see as many humans outside. The OP has deduced that they are in their backyards. I have deduced that they’d rather gnaw their own feet off than spend 15 minutes outside. Where there’s like, bugs and fresh air and stuff out there. Why take the chance of possibly damaging your perfectly manicured yard that you paid thousands per year to have made perfect?
In the neighborhoods that are less swanky than mine, I see people hanging out at the corner convenience store or gas station, or just hanging on the sidewalk at certain intersections that seem to be gathering places. Doesn’t appear that anyone is up to no good in particular, it looks to me like it’s a cultural thing related to social structure. Maybe not every welfare recipient can afford a cell phone and cable :rolleyes: so they go outside and you know, talk to each other. Like in the old days. When people knew their neighbor’s names. There’s one semi-ghetto-ish neighborhood that I drive through on my way to the gym. I see the same people hanging out in the same general areas every day. Some people recognize my car and have taken to waving at me. (They get a friendly smile and wave back.)
So let me ask you. How would you classify the neighborhood you live in? Swanky or not swanky or more ghetto-like? And how many of your neighbors do you know their names? (FTR: I know the names of every resident on my block and most of their dogs’ and cats’ names as well. I have scooped up more than one errant, lost critter and carried it home – because I knew the neighbors and knew where the dog/cat lives. I just “rescued” my neighbor’s bitty little Chi the other day. She came right to me. Also, my dog found my neighbor’s missing cat – dead in the storm drain – a few weeks ago. 
I had to go deliver the news that Bob the Cat had been located.)
There’s only one family in our neighborhood that hangs out in the front yard. We call them the Hillbilly Neighbors. They park their lawn chairs out in the front, sit there and stare. For hours and hours.
I hate it because we live in a cul-de-sac and there’s no way I can walk my dog without passing by them. They stare at me while I walk past, and every now and then my dog decides that this is the perfect time to take a big dump- right as we’re passing their house. I can’t stand it the way they stare at me pointedly while I pick up dog shit with a baggie. After all, does anyone like being stared at while handling feces?
I do everything I can to try to encourage my dog to take a dump in the back yard beforehand, to save it until after we pass the hillbilly house, but he seems to prefer that spot. I guess he likes an audience.
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Our neighbors own their house, the interior has new floor coverings and paint. I don’t get it, the wife sits on the couch watches the street.
To the west from here is West Virginia. Lots of folks put a couch on their front porch, along with the fridge. That’s how you can tell when you’ve crossed the border.
Having lived in both upscale and lower middle class neighborhoods - the only time I sat on the front stoop was in the lower class neighborhoods and that was to socialize with the very friendly neighbors. In my upscale neighborhood most of our friends live outside the immediate neighborhood so you won’t run into them out front.
I would move, if I could. Yuck.
We sit in our garage all the time. We rarely sit in the back. Lots of our neighbour are out-and-about, too. (In fact, I actually plan on any outing on the weekend taking an extra half hour or so of chit-chatting with the neighbours.)
The funny thing is we are in a fairly ‘poor’ townhouse complex that borders a very expensive a swanky part of town. When you cross the border of our complex, it’s like a ghost town. No people outside. No kids playing. It’s weird.
The best part is that I can afford the nicer part of town but actually like it in my little complex. And we get all the advantages of being in a good school distrcit with good shops. All because the government decided 40 years ago that there should be a diversification of the residential buildings built here.
Po’ folks sit in they front stoop ‘cause iffen they sit in they back, they neighbors come in the front an’ steal all they stuff whilst they sittin’ in back. Also that way they kin do some laundry while they’ sittin’ and also get some work done on they cars.
But seriously, I live in a neighborhood that was once po’ (full of what were optimistically called “starter homes”) and now, thanks to pop-tops and scrape-offs, is a lot more upscale. What I’ve noticed is that my neighbors in these big houses put a little scenario out front, which usually involves a wrought-iron bench and a couple of wrought-iron chairs, and maybe a wrought-iron table with a pot of ivy on it. Sometimes a water feature nearby.
Nobody is ever going to sit in those chairs except the neighborhood cats, in the middle of the night. The real socializing goes on out back, on the deck.
So why? Why do they do this? Because it just looks so cozy?
Also, many of my neighbors have hot tubs. In four years I have seen ONE neighbor use the hot tub, ONCE.
And, the boat? Next door? It hasn’t come out of its parking place in two years.
They probably think I’m weird, too. And nosy.