Cultural Question

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Clarissa

August 27, 2014

Here is an interesting cultural phenomenon I have observed now that I live in suburban America. People spend a lot of time in their garages. A LOT of time. The garage doors always stay open and there are people pottering inside.

The strangest thing people do is roll up the garage door, put some folding chairs facing the door, place a cooler between the chairs, and just sit there, people-watching.

This wouldn’t be a surprising thing to do if it weren’t for one thing: all of the houses here have porches. Good shaded porches that often have some really cool porch furniture (cushioned arm-chairs, etcetera) on them.

So what I don’t get is why people choose to sit in an open garage that smells of gas and has an ugly concrete floor and is filled with all sorts of junk instead of doing the same thing on the porch.

Does anybody know the answer? Is this a regional thing?

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21 responses to “Cultural Question”

Dreidel

August 27, 2014

You obviously live in an insane region of the country. Here in Arizona, nobody sits in his/her garage, ever.

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1. Clarissa
  
  August 27, 2014
  
  Do the garage doors just stay closed then?
  
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Dreidel

August 27, 2014

Yes, unless a car is being driven in or out. All of the houses on my block except mine have three-car garages, but none of my neighbors has three cars, so 1/3 of their garage space (glimpsed as they’re parking) is invariably used as a storage room.

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Shakti

August 27, 2014

I’m picturing a bunch of guys doing this. Am I right? I remember the garage being open so people could “work on their cars” or use their power tools or wash their cars or mow the lawn or set up for the yard sale. If you sat on the porch you wouldn’t have any of those pretexts and you couldn’t watch people coming home and going to work or kids playing out in the street. The garage is adjacent to the basement door which is where the man cave is.
Or at least that’s how it would be in suburbia; people didn’t hang out in the garage to people watch in my childhood neighborhoods.

Nobody does this in Florida because it’s hot and there’s no basements.

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1. Clarissa
  
  August 27, 2014
  
  Yes, it seems a very make thing. Your explanation is very profound, thank you!
  
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  1. Dreidel
    
    August 27, 2014
    
    Well, there’s a difference in leaving the garage door open when you’re actually utilizing garage equipment, and when you’re idling sitting down spying on your neighbors. I don’t think the two situations are necessarily related.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      August 27, 2014
      
      I think it’s what Shakti says:”I’m about to use the equipment!” I’ve been doing something similar all evening today: spread my books all around myself and stayed watching TV for hours. But at any point I knew that I was in the process of being just about ready to start working! 🙂
      
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TomW

August 27, 2014

I’ve seen this phenomenon a few times and I don’t understand the phenomenon. But I think you want to say “puttering about” not “pottering”. If they were all getting creative with with clay, which is what “pottering” suggests, I would think you had landed in a great and wonderful neighborhood.

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1. Clarissa
  
  August 27, 2014
  
  You know, it’s not a typo. I was completely sure it was “pottering.” Interesting! Of course, I know what pottery is but “to potter” isn’t a verb that exists on the basis of “pottery”, is it?
  
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  1. cliff arroyo
    
    August 28, 2014
    
    Maybe it’s British? I think it either exists there or some local pronunciations sound a lot like ‘pottering’ rather than puttering.
    
    British people do very strange things to vowels, strange, unnatural things….. brrrrrrrr
    
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  2. cliff arroyo
    
    August 28, 2014
    
    I was right, ha ha!
    
    http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/potter_around
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      August 28, 2014
      
      I originally learned the British version of the language and it keeps seeping in. Thank you, Cliff Arroyo.
      
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  3. TomW
    
    August 28, 2014
    
    Thank you, Cliff Arroyo! I spent several months in the UK and worked with several British people in the US, but I never heard (or never noticed) that usage.
    
    “to potter” doesn’t exist as a verb in US English, but if it did exist, I would assume it had something to do with pottery.
    
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Vic Crain

August 27, 2014

OK. kids. Really. The front porch is typically off a hallway or living room, which some adult wants to keep clean for company. The garage is off a mud room, laundry or kitchen, with close access to a bathroom, and is where men and women who enjoy the outdoors work on projects. Kids will be using toys out of the garage (bikes, skateboards, etc.) and if the family has a basketball goal set up, its usually in that area as well. Sitting there, you can monitor something in the wash or the oven and junior quite easily. This is true in the North, Midwest and Southeast, but not in areas prone to excessive heat (e.g., Arizona). Who wants to sit out in 120F? Who wants to play out in that temp?

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1. Clarissa
  
  August 27, 2014
  
  VERY interesting. But it isn’t really 120F, is it? It’s 98F where I am and it’s already intolerable. But it’s very high humidity here.
  
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  1. Dreidel
    
    August 27, 2014
    
    Actually it does occasionally reach 120F here in Arizona, and I LOVE IT! That’s the perfect temperature for swimming in the backyard pool in the afternoon, when the backyard (being on the eastern side of the house) in is the shade, and the water is a cozy 85 degrees.
    
    Arizona is as close to heaven as I expect to ever get. I remember what the four seasons meant — mow the lawn, rake the leaves, shovel the snow, fight the floods — and you unfortunate Easterners can keep them!
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      August 28, 2014
      
      Please, I’m not an Easterner. I’m a proud Midwesterner. 🙂
      
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rogerburt

August 28, 2014

First question. Where is “here” for you? I grew up in New York. Not happening there. I live in Maryland. Not typical. Here on Maryland’s Eastern Shore black people sit in front of their houses. White people sit out back. Blacks sit in front because for hundreds of years that is where they did business out of their homes. Not so for whites. You are likely seeing a socio/cultural phenomenon. Yes, weather will affect it but we are social animals and if one family starts doing something, others may pick it up. I do a lot of political, door to door work. One subdivision will have one lifestyle. Another may have a different style. Leslie White, the father of cultural anthropology nailed it. Cultural diffusion and contagion.

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1. Dreidel
  
  August 28, 2014
  
  My sincere apologies, Clarissa! (But you’re still east of Arizona.)
  
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karivasblog

August 28, 2014

I will say that I detest this practice and refuse to spend quality time in my garage. I know people who have their graduation parties in garages! My garage door stays shut at all times unless my husband is home. We have an ongoing battle about this. He leaves it open all day. One time at a previous residence, the police knocked on my door and told me to leave my garage door shut because people had been stealing from garages. Why on earth anybody would ever hang out in a garage is beyond my understanding.

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Jon

August 30, 2014

As a fellow mid-westerner, it’s probably a regional socio-cultural thing. The prior owners of our house used the garage as extra party-space (it’s a nice garage), complete with a net “door” over the opening to keep bugs out. We use it mostly for storage/project work.

A few decades ago (gah, I sound old!) people sat on the front porch to let neighbors know they were available to have you come over and socialize. Today’s society unfortunately favors isolationism more than it used to. Particularly in suburbia. Today people barely know their next-door neighbors, much less people down the street. It’s sad.

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