A Testing Ground for Community

IF THE SWELTERING heat were not enough to dampen the midsummer soul, D.C.’s metro system has shut down portions of its train lines for long-overdue repairs, leaving us retreating to our homes—and, if we’re lucky, our porches: the outdoor living rooms of a city.

Summer is a time when lethargy reigns, especially here in the humid semi-South. Unlike in the North, where frigid winter inculcates an obstinate determination to prove that weather won’t hold us back, the South is a respecter of heat. Come August, everything s l o w s  d o w n.

There’s no better time for porches than in a humid heat, when sleepy hospitality reigns supreme. Summer is the season for public myth-shaping, when private dreams and tweeted ideologies collide on the street with other humans and the full cacophony of life lived outside.

Our systemic ills are most visible in the summer: residents suffering from water shutoffs, police brutality committed and pardoned, an education system that affords some children elite summer camps and denies others a glimpse of the outdoors, the merry-go-round of ads reminding us that “summer” is skin-deep and buyable. So is our hospitality most visible—music drifting from one door to the next, neighbors sharing an extra lemonade.

In earlier decades, houses were designed for life to happen just off the street. So the living rooms of most houses in D.C. are in the front—kitchens, studies, and bathrooms in the back or on another floor altogether. The dream of safe ensconcement away from the unpredictable intrusions of neighbors or vendors is unique to suburbia—in urban design, proximity is power. Front porches, just slightly removed from the chaotic spontaneity of summer streets, are both cachet and a basic necessity—permeable culture containers waiting to capture the overflow.

And in D.C., a city with skyrocketing rent and booming population, affordable housing is difficult to come by. So having a front porch means regular congregations, planned and unplanned. We often can’t control who, or what, comes onto our porches—being “around” means being part of community, in all it entails.

Many such collisions of myth with reality have for me happened on a porch—a slightly more private public, and a testing ground for community. My current porch frequently hosts artists and musicians, a happy carousel of friends and strangers sharing common pursuits.

But several months ago it also provided cover for an attempted assault, when an aggressive stranger followed a flatmate up the stairs onto the dark landing. It gave us a view into the grove across our street as police removed two homeless people from their hideout. As the weather heats up, citywide petitions are landing at our door with greater frequency, as are reminders to vote for wise and just representation.

Who we welcome to our porches determines the narratives we will pay attention to and remember. And this is in rather important contrast to our public squares such as Twitter, devoid of social contract or codes of behavior; and our tightly-curated environments such as Facebook, a newsfeed of mirrors to our own opinions and experiences.

Summer is a nostalgic season, and this is a nostalgic year—a reminder of the brittle, bitter limits of wishing for a time in which a very particular few of us would feel comfortable. We long for the narratives that we can imagine ourselves fitting into, and those narratives grow more complex the more we see and engage with the community right outside our door.

Who is on our porch matters.