I Was Losing Faith In Humanity, So I Organized A Block Party
It was something tangible and positive I could do.
Monkey Business Images, Taphouse_Studios | Canva It’s summer, which used to mark the time of year when I exhaled. I grew up in San Francisco, where summer meant wind and fog, but it also meant the end of school and 10 precious, stretching weeks of freedom.
When I discovered that most working adults don’t get summer vacation — unlike my parents, who were teachers — I was shocked and appalled. But as a working adult in Portland, Oregon, summer came to mean a different kind of freedom.
Freedom from drizzle and low gray clouds, freedom from rain boots and hoods, freedom from encroaching darkness. Summer meant slow mornings and long, bright afternoons. We emerged from our dwellings like animals from hibernation, squinting against the sun.
But these days, I find, summer is shedding its formerly carefree skin, evolving into a different beast entirely. An ominous beast, fraught with disaster. Summer now means droughts, wildfires and triple-digit temperatures. It means canceled plane flights ruined vacations and stretches of time spent holed up in the house because the air outside is swollen with heat and smoke.
There is little respite these days from the relentlessness of the world.
Frothy articles about beach reads and watermelon cocktails seem hopelessly out of touch, relics of a bygone era. Don’t the authors know there are glaciers melting, wars raging, pandemics spreading, inequalities widening, murders spiking, mental illnesses rising?
It would be easier to concentrate on the beach reads if all of that were happening “over there.” No matter when you tune in, the news is mostly bad. But now there are gunshots within earshot, wildfires lapping at our feet. It’s all getting closer. It’s all closing in.
That’s why I decided to organize a block party. It’s not because I’m in denial. The futures of my children hang in the balance, but there are still days to fill. My kids still need a childhood.
What else can I give them, at the end of the day?
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I don’t particularly love attending parties, and I like organizing them even less.
In fact, hosting social gatherings causes me acute anxiety. I’m convinced no one will show up. Or that too many people will show up and grumble because there’s not enough food. Or that just the right amount of people will show up, but they will stand around awkwardly, waiting just long enough so they can leave without being rude.
All that said, I’ve always appreciated a low-key block party. Not a raucous one, thrumming with music and throbbing with crowds. But a simple gathering of neighbors in the middle of the street, hot dogs sizzling on a grill, a cooler of beer, folding chairs with cup holders, children scurrying underfoot, my own bathroom just steps away — now that is a party I can get behind.
My children think block parties are pretty much the best thing ever. Forget Disneyland. Any mention of a block party will send them both into a tizzy. They will ardently demand to know when they can once again enjoy the singular experience of playing in the middle of the street. They will ask if they can please have two hot dogs next time. What about juice?
And, most importantly: Will there be Rice Krispie Treats?
The last two block parties on our street took place well before COVID-19 and were organized by other neighbors. I showed up because I am very good at showing up. I brought watermelon.
When Covid hit, I kept waiting for a neighbor to organize another block party. It seemed the perfect way to convene in a safe and low-key way. But I heard no murmurs, and saw no flyers. We had all turned skittish, sealing ourselves inside our homes, talking to pixellated, stuttering faces on screens. Whenever I actually glimpsed a neighbor out in the wild, I made a point of mentioning how nice it would be to have another block party. They would ardently agree.
But the weekends passed. Months of Covid stretched into years. Our street remained open to traffic, empty of folding chairs and sidewalk chalk.
Finally, I said: I’ll do it myself.
I wasn’t trying to be the Little Red Hen about it. In truth, I was kind of excited to take on the challenge. I needed something to focus on. Something tangible. Something positive. Something that would help me reclaim summer.
So I got to work. After sending out an email to the handful of neighbors in my contacts and settling on a date, the first step was to apply for a permit to close the street. The anxiety that parties cause me is nothing compared to the anxiety I feel when forced to navigate government bureaucracy. But all I had to do was fill out an online form, and about 10 days later, a permit appeared in my inbox.
I made a flyer, and I used a copy machine for the first time in at least five years. My daughter chose the color — bright orange — and I took the kids to knock on doors. I figured if we knocked on 60 doors, we’d reach approximately 120–150 people, and maybe, just maybe, at least 30 of those people would actually grace us with our presence.
Did I mention I’m losing faith in humanity?
Of the 60 doors we knocked on, maybe about 10 people actually opened them. I pictured everyone else poised in their entryways, phones in hand, watching their Nest cameras and wondering what service, cause, or religious faith I was peddling. We stuffed a lot of flyers into mailboxes, stapled the rest to telephone poles, and called it a day.
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As the date approached, my anxiety kicked into high gear.
I realized we only owned four folding chairs, one mini cooler, one card table, and no shade canopies of any kind. If 100 people did in fact descend on our block, our paltry collection of party gear would be woefully insufficient.
I hit up the email list asking for cooler, chair, and canopy donations. The offers came streaming in, and I breathed a sigh of relief, until… my daughter caught Covid.
One by one, everyone in our family succumbed. It looked like maybe, just maybe, my partner might pull through unscathed, but three days before the big event, he tested positive.
The Portland Bureau of Transportation was gracious about the delay. My kids and I stuck POSTPONED stickers up over the flyers, their bright orange pigment now entirely drained by weeks of drizzle and dampness.
My partner recovered from Covid, but we had another problem. While the rest of the country sizzled in heatwaves, Portland was still a brisk, gray 60 degrees. What worried me now was that it wouldn’t stop raining.
On the big day, my weather app predicted no rain for most of the morning and early afternoon. At 2 p.m., when the party was supposed to start, the chance of rain was 70 percent. It was 70 percent at 3 p.m. and at 4 p.m., too.
I thought: FRICK.
We went through the motions anyway. My partner picked up the barricades, while I went to a restaurant supply store and bought way too much food. We walked to our neighborhood fire department. We’d learned from our prior block parties that if the firefighters were informed, they just might show up with a truck and let kids squirt the hose.
Setting up a block party, once all the equipment is in hand, is surprisingly easy. No floors to sweep, no toilets to scrub, no piles of crap to hide. As 2 p.m. approached, the clouds were still low and gray, but there was no rain. By 2:15, there was music playing, meat sizzling, children blowing bubbles, and at least a dozen neighbors chatting with seltzers and beers in hand.
I let out a long, slow breath. It was happening. At least a few people had shown up. The air was warm and comfortable and infused with laughter, despite the absence of sun. I had a hazy IPA in one hand and a Polish sausage in the other.
The clouds might be unending and the world might be unraveling. But it was summer, dang it, and we were going to have some fun.
My math had been correct — all told, about 30 people filtered through over the course of the afternoon. The rain, mercifully, stayed at bay. With the benefit of a street void of moving cars and at least a dozen pairs of adult eyes present to loosely supervise the kids, I was able to speak in complete sentences with multiple adults. I met a few new neighbors and reconnected with others.
Just as things were winding down, the fire truck arrived, and the kids lost their freaking minds. Even the adults hollered in genuine excitement.
I went to bed that night feeling full and tired in a way I hadn’t felt for a long time. Full of chips, beer, and processed meat, yes, but full in a much deeper way — the fullness that comes from connecting with other human beings. Maybe they’re not all human beings I would choose to be friends with, but they’re the human beings who live within shouting distance. And all our lives are just that much better when we have a relationship that goes beyond the occasional smile or nod.
In fact, I’ve come to believe that building community with our neighbors is one of the most important things we can do as we prepare for an uncertain future.
If and when the next disaster strikes, if and when we find ourselves once again confined to our homes — whether because of a pandemic, an ice storm, an air quality alert, or a mass shooter on the loose — don’t we want to know who has what equipment and who has what skills? Don’t we want to have pre-existing relationships? Don’t we want to have some practice organizing as a group?
A block party is not going to solve the impending apocalypse, but whatever we do to prepare for, react to, or delay the turmoil that awaits us, we have to do it together. We’re not going to solve anything sealed away and isolated in our homes.
In my humble opinion, there’s no better place to start than a street permit and a bright orange flyer.
Kerala Taylor is an award-winning writer and co-owner of a worker-owned marketing agency. Her weekly stories are dedicated to interrupting notions of what it means to be a mother, woman, worker, and wife. She writes on Medium and has recently launched a Substack publication Mom, Interrupted.