NYC students try to revive urban stoops

Sit down. But, please, don't shut up.

That's the request from a trio of students at a New York design school who say city residents aren't taking advantage of an unnatural resource found in front of many of their buildings: stoops.

In an Internet campaign inspired by a recent class project, Chelsea Briganti, Sarah Feldman and Essence Rodriguez are encouraging New Yorkers to sit on their front steps and get to know one another.

"I think this culture of social interaction has really been declining," Briganti said. "People are so busy, too busy to interact with their neighbors, and they're not building these kinds of really important relationships."

As part of their campaign, the students posted more than 100 lime green fliers with the words "SIT HERE" throughout Brooklyn's Park Slope neighborhood, on stoops or whatever public seating they deemed suitable.

They also set up a Web site encouraging people to post comments, participate in polls (Sample question: Do you think people should socialize more with their neighbors? Nearly 80 percent say yes.) and even print their own flier.

Stoop-sitting hasn't entirely disappeared in New York. Summertime stoop sales are common, for instance, and it's not unusual to see handfuls of teenagers munching on snacks while relaxing on a stoop at the end of a school day. Still, everyone agrees the tradition is far less common than in the past.

"I distinctly remember that my mom would say 'Where are you going?' and I'd say 'I'm going to go sit out on the stoop,'" said Ron Schweiger, 61, Brooklyn's official historian. "People still do it, but not like it used to be back then. There's just too many things to do indoors to keep people busy now."

Some believe a lack of air conditioning used to drive people outside. Others, including Schweiger, point to television as one reason people stay inside. And then there's the Internet _ Web sites are in a sense the new stoops.

The students' project began a few months ago, as they were mapping the neighborhood for a class at Parsons The New School for Design. They came across an elderly man named Bob sitting alone on a stoop.

"Bob mentioned no one says 'hi' to him when he sits on his stoop," said Briganti, 24. "No one sits on their stoop anymore. He is from a generation where all the neighbors knew each other."

Inspired, the students decided to research stoop culture, or the lack thereof, for the class. Their process? Not exactly scientific.

Three groups were surveyed: the elderly, young families and "hipsters," a loosely defined group of young, unmarried people. Sample sizes were small _ about 15 to 20 in each group. And some of the interviews lasted just a few minutes.

Trends emerged anyway.

The older people recalled days when they played on stoops and held family barbecues. The young parents said they were too busy with the kids these days to sit on stoops. And the hipsters were often indifferent, and some said they preferred bars.

Though the class project ended last semester, the students have kept the Web site going. Have they seen an uptick in stoop sitting? It's hard to tell, they say.

After all, there's a little problem with persuading people to hang out on stoops right now.

It's so snowy it's hard to even find them.

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On the Net

Sit Here: http://www.freewebs.com/sit_here/