Neighborhood Basics

I moved to Wessyngton Road in 1989, and the only neighbors I knew at first were Kathy and Steve. Sometime after that - I don't know when - we started having neighborhood parties. I had nothing to do with organizing this; this was probably during the years when I had young children, and the ones doing the organizing did not. But I went, and I got to know them and the other women they invited. For years it was a women's thing - the guys never did anything (although there was one evening when Tom, Fernando, and Dan stood out in the street in front of our house drinking beer for several hours).

The women of Wessyngton Road still get together on a more or less regular basis. The ones who started it have moved away (Lindsey got married and now lives on some other street, and Todd and Charlotte sold their house to travel around the world, took the long way to Colorado and never made back to the eastern U.S.) but Lynsley, Kathy, Amy and I (+/-, depending on the occasion) have continued the tradition. A few years ago we started having block parties, inviting everyone on the street (flyers to every house, emails to everyone we have email addresses for) and the last couple of times I think we've had at least 30 people there. Every time I've met people I didn't know, and we've added a few new names to the neighborhood directory.

Last year Tom invited Mark, a fine guitarist who lives at the other end of the street, to bring his guitar, and the result was a nearly spontaneous emergence of guitars in the hands of guys from all up and down the street, and music that went on into the night (I know they were still there, that night, when I went to bed). This year there were fewer guys with guitars but it was still great. I love living in a neighborhood where guys will sit on lawnchairs and play guitars in a church parking lot. What could be better than that?

There was an op-ed piece in the New York Times last summer about a guy who decided, after seemingly out of nowhere a neighbor murdered his wife and then himself, that he really wanted to know the people who lived in his neighborhood. He started asking his neighbors - people he barely knew - if he could come spend a night at their house. Many of the people he asked said "yes" and that was the beginning, it seems, of many friendships. (He's now writing a book about neighborhorhoods.) His column is still on the NY Times website:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/opinion/23lovenheim.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin

That strikes me as a little drastic; we're more a potluck/block party/baby shower/winter solstice-celebrating group on Wessyngton Road. There's lots of pet-sitting that goes on on the street, though. And the guys in the parking lot, playing guitar.