Street Dinners
“It’s just the old ‘breaking bread together’ idea and it’s built our once quiet, lonely street into a place we all treasure calling home.”
Practice Street Dinners
Text the neighbors you know. (Begin with the person most likely to join in.)
Invite people to simply bring the food they already have to share. (It will not go together. That’s the beauty of it.)
Set up a shared food table. (Provide paper goods to keep it easy for clean-up.)
Enjoy a curbside meal together.
Consider a regular rhythm of Street Dinners this summer. (Invite new neighbors you meet to join you at the next one.)
Practices create possibilities. Last month, we received a reply from Jocelyn Newby to the Front Yard practice in Issue 8. “Great letter, as always! Front yard living has seriously changed the game for our street. We recently started “street dinners” bring a chair and whatever you were going to make and eat it outside together. It has been great!”
Jocelyn Newby has lived in the Virginia Village neighborhood in southeast Denver for 3 ½ years. She has three children: 7, 5, and almost 2. She has a big heart for hospitality, and she hosts people regularly in her home. But she’s seen Street Dinners, a lightweight and low maintenance practice, create connection with her neighbors. She discovered “Street Dinners” from another mother of toddlers who shares ideas on Busy Toddler.
Street Dinners are simple. Invite people to bring outside what they would have eaten inside alone. Jocelyn offered, “People want community, but they don’t want to organize it, and they don’t know where to begin.” Coordinating a block party may be a high bar to hurdle. Bringing your dinner outside to share is simple. Jocelyn texts the neighbors she knows, “Street dinner tomorrow night?”. She begins with the neighbor most likely to join in. She shared, “A companion on the street does a lot for confidence in inviting others.” The text invitation is usually less than 24 hours’ notice.
She brings out a table for shared food and provides the paper goods. Neighbors bring lawn chairs and create a safety barrier to watch the kids’ play games and ride bikes in the street. Her street has families with little children and empty nesters. The reality is most would have eaten dinner alone. Their response to sharing dinner together is always gratitude. Street dinners are a lightweight way to counter the current crisis of loneliness.
The Street Dinner Jocelyn organized last month was while her husband was away for work. Neighbors helped bring out the tables and paper goods and help return them at the end of the evening. Instead of having dinner parenting 3 children alone, she spent the evening sharing food, talking with friends, and watching her children play with their neighbors.
Street Dinners is an everyday practice. It has a low entry barrier to connect with your neighbors. We’re grateful to Jocelyn for sharing this practice with us. We want to learn from your practices too. Please share them with us! We look forward to sharing them with you.
