On the front porch, the desire to be neighborly butts up against the desire to be left alone. The very first thing Joanna Taft and her husband did after they bought their house in downtown Indianapolis in 1991 was decorate the front porch. The 1898 Victorian had been abandoned for seven years, so adding a porch swing and setting out a seasonally appropriate gourd was a quick win. That no one had any intention of sitting there was beside the point. ?Here I bought a historic home with a front porch, and I thought I was supposed to decorate it,? Taft says. She and her husband hung out on the back patio, the way Taft did at her suburban childhood home.
Then, in 2007, new neighbors in the Herron-Morton Place neighborhood invited them to do some pregame tailgating on their front porch. Everyone loved it so much they did it again. And again. Soon the event had its own name ? porching ? and a weekly time slot on Sunday afternoon. ?People would send an email or text saying, ?Porch" 3 p.m.,?? Taft says. ?Now I literally porch every single Sunday from three to 5:30. It?s this really meaningful rhythm that has enriched my life.? Taft and her small circle of neighbors were unusual in urban Indianapolis. The porches were standard issue on 19th- and early-20th-century houses downtown, but it was like everyone had forgotten how to use them. Like Taft, people decorated their porches with a few chairs or a flowerpot, then took the party to the backyard. Perhaps not coincidentally...