the rest of America sits on porches, but in summertime in New York City people sit on stoops. they’re front-row seats on life here. the city-version of the old-time rocking chair. it’s where you people-watch, and hear stories, gossip, and some good rumors.
we don’t have stoops where I live but other sections of Brooklyn do. yesterday afternoon I hung out on one in Bed–Stuy with my friend Zoë. we go there a lot. the people who live there don’t mind if you want to sit and eat a sandwich or something, so long as you’re polite and friendly and clean up after yourself.
sometimes I bring my guitar and it’s like this little stage. sitting there and playing music can feel very old school, like Sesame Street.
we sat close together there for hours staring into the open fire hydrant where these kids who have nowhere to go were getting wet and cooling down.
a man who lives there, an architect, told us that stoops were not made for hanging out in nice weather. they were made for floods. which is curious because sitting there in the heat gazing at the hydrant gushing 1,000 gallons a minute I felt safe.
by around 7pm the light started coming in really, really lovingly.
there’s an intimacy to sitting quietly in the early evening and simply listening to the people and cars that pass by, and not being able or wanting to respond or needing to respond to anything.
on the surface, sitting on the stoop isn’t all that appealing. the hard, cracked concrete, the smell of vehicle exhaust, horn honking, the pushers who walk by — there’s a lot to take in. but it’s a lovable experience if you interpret and accept it that way.
if you’re willing to negotiate those imperfections, and see the concrete steps fully as a mixture of both good and bad, the time spent sitting there becomes one thing and has one complete character, like the city itself, like people themselves and life itself, and you can love it and hate it, and that’s okay, and if you do, that’s an achievement of love.
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