Love Note #93: Tracy Levesque watches Philly in all its glory from her stoop in Queen Village

Today Eyes on the Street continues our Philly Love Notes collaboration with this appreciation of Philly’s stoop culture and the community bonds it fosters.

Love Note #93: Tracy Levesque watches Philly in all its glory from her stoop in Queen Village

• Favorite Spot: The Stoop
• Neighborhood: QSOX – Queen Village South of Christian (I’m trying to coin a new Neighborhood Acronym 🙂
• Address: 900 Block of South Bodine Street
• I am: Web designer, business owner, aspiring green real estate developer and amateur Ruin Pornographer.
• Years in Philly: 24
• Current Home: QSOX

There are so many things I love about this City — Center City Pretzels, Belmont Plateau, The Whispering Benches near Memorial Hall — it was hard for me to pick one. I came to realize the thing that brings me the most day-to-day happiness is Philly’s stoop culture. I live on a little street connected to other little streets and hanging out on the stoop with neighbors is an almost daily occurrence in the warm weather months.

I’ve lived on my block for 13 years and I have sat on my next-door neighbor’s stoop and watched little kids grow into teenagers. I’ve watched the process of kids learning to yell “CAR!” when a car is coming and then teaching it to the little kids when they have grown up into big kids.

Nearly all of my neighbors know each other and we have spent countless hours talking, laughing, eating and drinking on the stoop. We’ve played Rock Band and watched movies and Phillies games projected onto a wall at night. We’ve wheeled out BBQs and pulled chairs into the street for spontaneous block parties. Last Halloween we cooked and handed out S’mores to trick-or-treaters. And for our 6 year old’s birthday we closed down the block and turned it into a homemade sprayground.

Recently me, the wife and the kid went on our first family vacation in years. The day after driving back from our roadtrip I hung out with neighbors on the Stoop and it felt like the best day of vacation. It made me realize how incredibly lucky we are to live on this great block in a great neighborhood in this town I absolutely love.

All photos by Tracy Levesque.

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Philly Love Notes is a collection of reminders. There is too much in the city that is forgotten or overlooked. Philly Love Notes seeks to rediscover those places — to remind the city, and us, that it is loved.  Want to share your favorite spot? Drop Philly Love Notes an email with your idea.

Eyes on the Street has teamed up with Philly Love Notes to feature especially plannerdly love notes about places in Philly on this blog. So far we’ve shared love notes about bikes at Rittenhouse Square, a walk through Ed Bacon’s greenways, a twofer about Penn Treaty Park, Drexel Park, Wayne Mills, and where the Reading Viaduct meets Noble Street. 

This piece originally appeared on Philly Love Notes on October 22, 2012.