Somewhere in this borough tonight, a person will pay $19 for a cocktail on a rooftop with a view of New Jersey, while the best seat in the city sits empty ten feet from their front door. I am talking, of course, about the stoop.

The stoop is a perfect technology and we treat it like a hallway. It is a front porch, a theater balcony, an office, a bar, and a neighborhood intelligence service, all built from brownstone and requiring no reservation. It costs nothing. It has never once had a 45-minute wait. Its only cover charge is saying hello to people you would otherwise pretend not to see.

I grew up on a stoop on Lincoln Place, where my grandmother conducted forty years of diplomacy from the third step. She knew which kids needed feeding, which marriages were wobbling, and which landlords deserved the full force of her eyebrows. None of that information ever appeared on an app. All of it held the block together.

So here is my proposal for what remains of summer. One evening a week, take whatever you were going to consume in front of a screen and consume it on your steps instead. Bring a radio if you're feeling ambitious. The neighbors will notice. The block will notice. That's not a side effect. That is the entire point.