Author Topic: Front porch living

Front porch living
« on: February 28, 2013 »
Lovely Bicycl[ist] writes:

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Walking through our neighbourhood, it's always interesting to see how many people store their bicycles out on the porch. Passing one particular block, it seemed like every other house had one. Occasionally readers ask whether storing a bike on the porch is a good idea, especially in the winter months. And as usual, it depends...

Robert Frost may have been on to something when he wrote that good fences make good neighbors. Good porches make better ones.

This public/private space is a great American institution which that country's forefathers and mothers in their wisdom fought to defend. As Abigail Adams put it in a letter to John: "In the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the porches. All men would drink in the parlor if they could, and have need of a better place to get drunk."



Cultures which do not value porches are poorer for it, and have a tradition of falling into fascism and even cubism.


Sadly typical scene in Barcelona of the sort which inspired Franco to seize power

If your bicycle is welcome in your living room, as it is in many enlightened homes, the porch is equally a natural habitat which is all the better for being an ideal place to work on it and show it off when housemates tire of multitools on the dining table, oil spots on the Persian (both rugs and cats), and Home Sweet Home knocked from pride of place off the wall.



Lodged outdoors, its utility as a mode of transport and pleasure can more easily be turned into a neighborly conversation piece and indeed quiet activism tapping into that original declaration of independence.