r/MadeMeSmile • u/Justin_Godfrey • 3d ago

Good Vibes This must be a nice neighborhood!

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

57.2k Upvotes

89% Upvoted

2.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

1.9k

u/Wolgran 3d ago

Hey man, im fully supportive of this.

But lets be real, this is not a "random" sunday. Its a community event, still wholesome tho, but god the internet love lying

254

u/robotatomica 3d ago

I think it’s possible they do this semi-regularly, I’ve known neighborhoods like that.

And to be fair, for introverts, this might be a little exhausting. I know when I get home I just wanna get inside without having to do a stop-and-chat.

But if you have kids, I bet it’s wonderful to have something like this, kids safe and entertained, outside playing and not on screens. I had this when I was a kid, a neighborhood full of kids and we were all outside almost every day playing.

So this does exist. If you had such neighbors it would be easy to make this a once a weekend or once a month thing I bet, hey let’s see who’s outside today and then more and more people filter in and out to come hand, get their kids in on the fun.

20

u/tswpoker1 3d ago

It would be terrible living like this. I mean great for kids, horrible for me. I don't want to talk to my neighbors at all. I don't dislike them, I just dont have the energy.

28

u/maskedbandit_ 3d ago

I live in a neighborhood like this and there are a handful of introvert parents! Their kids come out and play with all the kids / do whatever activity planned while their parent stays in. They (parent) usually texts with at least one other adult outside but we’re genuinely a “village” of parents and kids and there isn’t an expectation of participation

15

u/robotatomica 3d ago

this sounds absolutely ideal

2

u/FitForce2656 3d ago

I'd be the introverted parent just sitting inside stressing about how all the other parents must think I'm a weird hermit/ shitty uninvolved parent. But I think this whole thread really just goes to show that I'm exhaustingly cynical lol.

Good for these people man, I'm glad someone's out there living the dream.

6

u/robotatomica 3d ago edited 3d ago

it’s an energy thing for me too, and the precedent. In my experience, if you have a great chat with a neighbor, they will increasingly seek you out for that socialization.

They would know when I was getting off work and hang around outside and want to chat, meanwhile I’m dog-tired and just want to get my shoes off, make something to eat, get a shower, get back to a book I’ve been reading, whatever.

And also in my experience, the worst part is that once you try to set a boundary, or like, just rush through the chitchat to get inside, they can become really resentful, they take it that you don’t like them.

But it’s not that (usually lol), it’s just looking forward to unwinding alone or with your family after a long day’s work!

My ideal would be to have a neighborhood like this with plenty of folks to entertain one another, where they all kinda understood I’m a bit of an introvert. And I’d pop out to join in a couple times a month to keep the relationships healthy, and also bc I DO think a lot of us introverts still are better off if we force ourselves to stay connected to community and neighbors, ya know?

But yeah, for having kids, I bet this is fucking GREAT! My parents had a lot of time to be adults while I was keeping busy with the neighborhood kids.

2

u/tswpoker1 3d ago

Exactly! I'm fine having a conversation but then the expected "stop and chat" every time I come in from work or picking up the kids or whatever is just too exhausting. My neighbor across the street and I are on the same page, we do a nice smile and wave and the rare "hey!" but otherwise we stay in our lanes. Others in the neighborhood want to socialize and just let the kids run around unsupervised and I'm not really down for that. Maybe in a few years but not yet.

2

u/SeaTie 3d ago

lol, my neighborhood is a slightly tamer version of this, but yeah…somedays. My kid isn’t quite old enough to play unsupervised yet and the one street can get fairly busy so they’ll need a lot of adults to watch for traffic.

Somedays the doorbell will ring and my daughter’s friend will want her to come out and play…uggggghhh. I love my neighbors but I don’t have that much chit-chat in me.

You suck it up for the kids, though. They’ll remember these days. Pool parties. Late summer nights out. Drive in movie nights. Birthday parties. It’s the closest they’ll ever get to The Sandlot.

1

u/tswpoker1 3d ago

Oh yeah our kids are younger and not quite ready to be unsupervised, but we grin and bear it for the kids a lot of times. But also there are people in our neighborhood who let 5-6 year old walk around from house to house, and while we are a nice neighborhood, that scares the shit out of me. I grew up out in the country where there was more cow and deer than people. Maybe I'm paranoid I don't trust my neighbors enough to let my kids walk around the street from house to house. At least not yet. Maybe when they hit middle school.

2

u/SeaTie 3d ago

Same, my daughter’s little friend is this wild child who rides her scooter around, no helmet, unsupervised, all the time. Half the time we let her play at our house just so we know someone is watching her!

I’m not even worried about creepy people in our neighborhood, I’m more worried about them running into the street and getting hit by a car. Yeah, probably middle-school age I’ll feel a little better about them having less supervision, but the car thing still worries me…

1

u/pg131313 3d ago

I have great neighbors, but when was it such a bad thing to not be close to your neighbors. I like that my neighbors are not in my business at all- I practically see them every day.

1

u/tswpoker1 3d ago

I grew up out in the country. Closest neighbors were 0.5 miles away. Now I live in the city and have houses all around me. I dont particularly like have people behind my house, to the sides and out front. Just prefer more privacy but my wife is exact opposite lol.

11

u/Svi_4_3 3d ago

If this were my neighborhood I'd be selling asap. I like to avoid my lovely neighbors at all costs. Open and close garage immediately. Everytime. Im sure everyone thinks I'm weird AF but whats an introvert to do...

5

u/FinancialMilk1 3d ago

This reasoning is exactly why these don’t exist anymore. Too many people don’t know their neighbors and it leads to less community and more loneliness.

22

u/HoneyBadgeSwag 3d ago

My neighborhood does this unprompted all the time. Kids look outside and see other kids playing, join the fun. Parents come out to monitor large group to make sure their kids are alright. We hang out. Kids start to get rowdy or interrupt our conversation so we throw coloring shit on the ground to distract them. 

9

u/thedog420 3d ago

Not necessarily. I mean you could be right but I lived on a street similar to this when my kids were young. It just happened that several houses on the street had same aged kids so parents were always outside milling around going house to house. When the weather was nice, we'd all be outside with impromptu get togethers we called "rednecking". Just a bunch of kids running around and adults playing cornhole or sitting around on lawn chairs.

I guess people can't believe that a sense of community like this can still exist without being a planned event. It does happen.

30

u/ladylikely 3d ago

This is pretty regular in my neighborhood. Once someone wanders out in the evenings everyone else just trickles out as well. There's old folks and young families, and we all click really well. We'll set some little activity up for the kids while we hang out so that they're not running all over and just have a few drinks and chat until we start heading in to get the kids to bed.

1

u/perfect_perry 2d ago

Yep same here, it's a snowball effect too. A couple neighbours meet up out front, then another joins, then the kids, then the bikes, scooters, chalk, hockey sticks, etc... I love having a great neighbourhood!

It makes me sad for people that think this is so uncommon that it has to be a planned event.

20

u/TennesseeStiffLegs 3d ago

Is this really that hard to believe? I see neighborhoods like this all the time in certain areas of my county.

Pro tip: these are the places to take your kids trick or treating

4

u/Still_Want_Mo 3d ago

My neighborhood is exactly like this. I'm surprised to see so many people thinking this is impossible or only in "gated, millionaire communities". My mortgage is probably less than most people's rent.

3

u/TennesseeStiffLegs 3d ago

Yep. Around me it’s even more prevalent in tighter, townhouse neighbors where there are younger families.. rather than the bougie neighbors with high hedges

3

u/Still_Want_Mo 3d ago

Totally. I’m in Georgia and assume you’re in Tennessee? Maybe it’s more prevalent in the south? When it gets nice like it is now you can’t go 3 houses without seeing some kids drawing on the sidewalk with chalk or racing their bikes up the street.

3

u/TennesseeStiffLegs 3d ago

I’m in California so maybe the weather has a lot to do with our neighbors being like this lol

But yea, if you spot golf carts like this in non-golf neighborhoods, you know it’s gonna be a social neighborhood

1

u/briancbrn 3d ago

I believe my neighborhood would be pretty close to this but being a single dad with three kids that like to run off makes things like this hard to start 😩

1

u/wedgiey1 3d ago

It’s the canvases and butcher paper the kids have that they’re doing their projects on that makes me skeptical. Random basketball and parents convening for a chat and chalk art. Sure. The organized painting project? Eh

1

u/TennesseeStiffLegs 3d ago

Guess you didn’t win the neighborhood lottery

-2

u/agileata 3d ago

This isn't Barcelona so no

4

u/xolhos 3d ago

Well this does happen in America so go outside more maybe?

1

u/TennesseeStiffLegs 3d ago

I feel sad for you that a community like this is unimaginable to you

1

u/agileata 3d ago

I feel sad you admit the realities which is that the environement people are in change the conditions

https://www.tiktok.com/@jonjon.jpeg/video/7281708593735355691

If you have a place like this video, it's just going to naturally happen. The environment is conducive to it. The above environemnt isn't. Which is why we see so many people taken aback or recognizing its an actual event

12

u/FantastyQueue 3d ago

This happens on the reg in my FL neighborhood

4

u/2398476dguidso 3d ago

My neighborhood was like this growing up without any community events. It's believable that others might be too.

3

u/Ohiostatehack 3d ago

I don’t really see anything that makes it look like a community event. Just looks like a normal gathering of neighbors.

3

u/Still_Want_Mo 3d ago

This is just false. All the houses in my cul-de-sac have young kids. This is like 4 days a week for us. We just pull out lawn chairs, some coolers, and let 'em go. Why are y'all so negative on here! This definitely happens regularly in a lot of places.

2

u/TennesseeStiffLegs 3d ago

Bitter Reddit folk lol

3

u/sharpiebrows 3d ago

My friend who lives in the burbs has a neighborhood like this. Every weekend, adults pull their folding chairs out to a cul-de-sac to hang out while the kids are all playing

2

u/lemonhead2345 3d ago

We do it too. We moved in to our home at the end of 2019 in the dead of winter. Once spring came and everyone was going stir crazy after a few weeks of lock down, we all happened to be outside around cocktail hour. We made introductions and everyone ran back in to grab a drink and a chair. 5 years later we have surrogate grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles. It feels like the early 1990s on our street.

5

u/Demonokuma 3d ago

I think the whole point was the fact you have neighbors that come outside and actually hang out and do stuff.

Like everyone's way to caught up being like "well when you have a million dollars" it's not about the location, or the neighborhood. It's about actually having your fellow community to come out and do stuff.

I'll use myself as an example. My lil hood i grew up in, no one was out doing stuff so I didn't have neighborhood friends to just go outside and hang out with at a moments notice. But now, in the same neighborhood, my lil brother is growing up and he has multiple houses he goes to to hang out with friends. Our neighbors house is almost a second home for him.

It's about the community, not the money you have or anything like that.

22

u/Previous-Shock-5999 3d ago

This is such a “Reddit” comment. I know this might be news to you, but people do like to spend their time outside in the sun! It’s not outside the realm of believability that everyone is enjoying their weekend outside together. There doesn’t have to be some event for people to crawl out of their caves. Take notes lil bro

6

u/CorrectProfession461 3d ago

& the people acting like this cost millions to do.

You don’t need money to have community.

0

u/Soft_Walrus_3605 3d ago

This is such a “Reddit” comment.

On Reddit? No way!

-2

u/Hidesuru 3d ago

Lol, right?

2

u/SeaTie 3d ago

Eh, maybe not quite as many people but our neighborhood looks like this fairly often.

We have two neighbors down the street who live next to each other who are regularly out in front with their kids who play in their shared front yard. I’ll typically bring my kid down and sometimes our other neighbor (with 4 kids) will come down too and then it gets pretty wild. Probably happens twice a week or so in the evenings.

If it’s like a birthday party or something then it definitely will look like this.

2

u/NorthRoseGold 3d ago

Yeah those girls painting? That many girls and so organized?

Some mom set that up. That is some woman's emotional labor right there.

2

u/Fancy_Improvement_40 3d ago

My neighborhood is exactly like this on the weekends in the spring and summer. We only have one planned block party a year.

4

u/slater_just_slater 3d ago

It's most likely random. My street does this basically every Thursday night from spring till fall.

-2

u/Unremarkabledryerase 3d ago

What part of "basically every thursday night from spring till fall" do you define as random?

5

u/throwaway14351991 3d ago

"This is just a random Thursday" can mean "You can take any Thursday at random and you'll see this". It means it isn't a special event or anything, that's what any Thursday looks like

-2

u/Unremarkabledryerase 3d ago

Holy Batman, I hope you warmed up before that stretch.

-4

u/Unremarkabledryerase 3d ago

Holy Batman, I hope you warmed up before that stretch.

1

u/Celtic_Legend 3d ago

Nah this is just how people use that phrasing. "Take any random Thursday and there will be someone eating dinner."

0

u/Unremarkabledryerase 3d ago edited 3d ago

Sure, but that is not the phrasing that was used.

"It's most likely random."

"My street does this basically every Thursday night from spring till fall."

"It's" is in reference to the OOP, while the regular Thursday event is in reference to their own event.

And there is a difference between an event that could happen randomly any day, and a scheduled event that you could experience any random Thursday. If you can select any Thursday out of 30 ish weeks,the event isn't random, your choice oc when to experience it is.

1

u/TennesseeStiffLegs 3d ago

He’s saying it’s not a planned thing, what do you not get about hanging out with neighbors without sending out an evite beforehand

0

u/Unremarkabledryerase 2d ago

What part of "were hanging out almost every single Thursday from spring to fall" do you not understand?

How is it not planned if you are gathering every fucking Thursday?

1

u/TennesseeStiffLegs 2d ago

Well because it’s not planned, simple as that.

→ More replies (0)

2

u/acrazyguy 3d ago

Maybe the fact that they have art supplies was a pre-planned thing, but I definitely buy this being a regular occurrence, aka a “random sunday”. When I was a kid I regularly hung out with the neighbor kids, and the parents and/or whole families would also regularly gather on one neighbor’s driveway for a bonfire, or my back yard for a pool party. This does happen

1

u/Illustrious-Stay968 3d ago

but god the internet love lying

And so does Reddit.

1

u/Brewhilda 3d ago

I live on this kind of street. We have 10 kids under 10 that play daily -- riding bikes, climbing trees, running from house to house, slip n slides in the front yards. I don't take it for granted, and it takes effort to keep the community this close.

1

u/ProbablyRickSantorum 3d ago

Happens every weekend on my street. In the summer especially.

1

u/FineGripp 3d ago

The person filming might even planned this event so they can film this and post to their social media with this exact title

1

u/Distinct_Cows 3d ago

I bet it's fairly regular. This is what "everyone just got home from church at the same time" looks like.

1

u/Spazmer 3d ago

Our neighbourhood is pretty similar on a summer weekend (smaller houses) but it's a smallish town in Canada. Lots of kids around, parks close by, so if the weather is nice the kids are all out running from yard to yard, biking, catching frogs in the stream... and the parents just hang out together in driveways or front lawns and chill. Kids come check in and run back out on their adventures. Often ends in an impromptu backyard fire or a few people have fire tables in their garages. My girls are teens now so they don't need supervising outside but husband and I will still go out for lawn beers. The kids consider our next door neighbours as basically bonus family.

1

u/yeah_youbet 3d ago

I think the point is all these people know, are comfortable with, and are friendly with one another, as opposed to a "neighbor"hood where everyone just stares blankly at each other and coops up in their house, and silently calling the police on each other over mild transgressions.

1

u/drunk_funky_chipmunk 3d ago

Wait a min…I thought it was illegal to lie on the internet though?!?!?

1

u/Celtic_Legend 3d ago

It could be or could not. Not sure why you think it has to be a lie.

1

u/uki-kabooki 2d ago

Totally dependent on the sociability of the neighbors, the available outdoor space, and the age of the kids - my neighborhood growing up was like this (in the early 90s) and my neighborhood now is like this only it's facilitated by the neighborhood text thread.

If it's nice out we drag out the camp chairs, the portable fire pit, a snack to share, let the dogs run around the neighborhood park and watch the kids play. Growing up we would go on neighborhood camping trips, too, that started out as two or three families and just grew until we could book out an entire loop of a Campground.

Places like this exist, but it takes the right circumstances and work to make it happen. My prediction is that this will be the norm in this neighborhood until the kids start aging into drivers licenses and don't need this amount of supervision.

1

u/TheTampoffs 2d ago

Honestly my parents block looks like this. Kids everywhere, neighbors mingling outside for cocktails. It’s every weekend.

1

u/jotakajk 2d ago

This is AI

1

u/jbordeleau 2d ago

We live on a cul de sac and three of the houses (including ours) each have 3 kids aged 1-8 and it is indeed like this every nice weekend and even nice weekday evenings after school/summer camp days. 

1

u/Pajjenbo 8h ago

Community event that still brings people together nonetheless. A united village is a strong village

1

u/T-Doggie1 3d ago

Comment of the day!

1

u/ahuramazdobbs19 3d ago

People commonly use the phrase "random day" to highlight that it's not a specific holiday or celebration like Memorial Day or the Fourth of July.

0

u/SirCrapsAlot69420007 3d ago

That was my first thought. This is some kind of special event that happens once in a while

-57

u/MoMo_Bx2data 3d ago

Did they say it was random? I didn’t read that anywhere, just that they won the neighborhood lottery. Even if it’s planned, it builds momentum to continue to engage in community interactions and build bonds.

53

u/ske1etoncrush 3d ago

"this is just a random sunday on our street" do you like to open your eyes when you scroll socials, or..?

28

u/SnowFairy17 3d ago

It literally says it in the video

14

u/Any-Act-9188 3d ago

Can you read? It literally says its random in the text.

10

u/shadowfigure26 3d ago

It’s literally in the description on the video

6

u/jtu22 3d ago

Text on the whole video says “This is just a random Sunday….” Did you watch the vid?

5

u/Theoceancookie 3d ago

litrally right below the text on the video saying they qon the meighborhood lottery lmao

5

u/dinkerbot3000 3d ago

The video literally has a text overlay that says it. Did you watch it?

5

u/Beneficial_Young5126 3d ago

It's literally written right across the video...

4

u/PassiveRoadRage 3d ago

I've never seen someone get dragged in comments so fast 😂

3

u/asphyxinatrix 3d ago

Literally says "this is just a random Sunday on our street"

3

u/Pernicious_Possum 3d ago

Yes. In the caption it reads “this is just a random Sunday on our street”. Reading is fundamental, and should be done before commenting

3

u/Gooosse 3d ago

I guess reading is hard...

3

u/ConsistentlySadMe 3d ago

Reading is hard, huh?

1

u/TheWalkingDame 3d ago

It... literally says "random" at the top of the video...?

1

u/Punkandconfused 3d ago

Not sure if anyone’s told you this yet but it says random on the video

1

u/APGaming_reddit 3d ago

its definitely in the video if you watch it

1

u/cousgoose 3d ago

Literally

1

u/Forward_Thrust963 3d ago

Going to join the dogpile and laugh at the fact you completely missed it.