In other houses where I've lived, we used the front yard and driveway quite a bit. Also, we were younger and lived in college neighborhoods. As such, it would be like a block party most nights. Now, though, our back yard opens up to a 15 acre green space behind us, and we have killer gardens. Our front yard, on the other hand, is a freaking grassless wasteland thanks two gigantic maples that cast their shadow over it.

It's a mixed bag. I miss the community aspect of everyone hanging out in the front, but I love sitting in the backyard and forgetting that I even live in the city.

Interesting. What's nosey? They are in their front yard.

Same here. If I didn't have a front porch, I'd probably do the "garage" bit.

Why would you want to sit out back? To stare at your fence? The front is where people and stuff is.

You really think it is a social thing?

I would imagine that it is. In some neighborhoods (as you're probably seeing from the responses here), it's the norm to hang out in the front in order to socialize. They probably moved from such a neighborhood and had great times out front. I guarantee that they're hoping that other people start stopping by regularly to hang out, knock back a few cold ones, and shoot the shit. It's sort of a passive way of trying to get to know the neighbors.

My wife and I have always said that we'd like to host a neighborhood happy hour on Fridays. We read some profile of someone in one of our local papers, and they'd been doing it for like 20 years or some such. It was pretty cool.

I appreciate the feedback. Previously in my neighborhood, we would acknowledge each other and if the kids were playing outside, perhaps chat briefly with each other. This was the norm. Social niceties.

You should get yourself a nice new spandex swimsuit and join them in their kiddie pool.

Not any more.

Well, there's the possibility that they're rude ass party people. If they're jamming their music and throwing down loudly after dark, then you might have issues. If they're responsible about it, it might be fun.

When I first saw the thread, I thought of this episode of intervention that I saw where the addict kid (a gulf war vet) would go hang next door at his neighbors house and get obliterated. They were the latter partying type. They had their weight bench in the garage, various tools strewn about everywhere, and would be up at 2:00 getting sloshed loudly in a nice neighborhood. Hopefully your neighbors aren't like that.

Make no mistake: if they don't submit, they'll go. It's happened before, just not within my immediate view.

No such behavior as of yet.

I've noticed that most of subdivions here also like to do the garage thing on Halloween. Probably half of the people giving away candy just set up lawn chairs and hang out in the garage while kids come up for candy. It really makes a lot of sense because you get to meet and greet all of your neighbors and you don't have to get up every 2 minutes to answer the door for trick or treaters.

**** that noise. I'm sitting inside in the A/C.

I'm sure they're shaking in their boots, while they *gasp* stand around in their garage.