The Garage Is the New Porch

In Houston, when football season kicks off, so does garage season.

In this car-bound city, and beyond, vehicles are being pushed aside to give the garage a second act.

Take Melissa Spence: On many evenings, she can be found relaxing with friends in her garage, feet up on a cooler, Michelob Ultra in hand. She and her husband, Joseph Spence, park on the street, and, where a car would be in the garage, there are instead a half dozen yard chairs, a rug, a big-screen TV, and string lights crisscrossing the ceiling. A mesh screen hangs where the retracted garage door would close, and when you push it to the side, as you might a hippie’s beaded curtain, it’s like entering a magical, mysterious realm.

“It’s become that third space you can go,” Ms. Spence, 49, said, referring to the sociological concept that the home is a person’s first space, work is their second and their third is an informal gathering spot. “People drop by to say hi or pick up the guitar and play,” she said. “It’s a really friendly room now.”

The American garage’s reincarnation looks different depending on the resident: It might be a hideaway man cave, a she-shed, a home theater, a workshop, a crafting zone or a band practice room.

Why hang out here, instead of a house’s air-conditioned living room? For many, the garage opens up an opportunity for interactions with neighbors and passers-by that closing yourself inside a home does not. In a city like Houston, where car-focused living minimizes the chance of running into people, the revived garage is a tool to create the human interaction that some people crave.

In Houston’s Rice Military neighborhood, Jane Haas, 53, spent many of this summer’s evenings sitting in her garage in a folding chair next to her dog and a fan, with Motown playing on the radio. “We’re getting older and I guess we’re becoming porch people,” she said one night, as a neighbor walked by and said hello. “But since we don’t have a porch, this is the place where friends will drop by for a drink or to maybe watch sports with us when we bring our TV down. Our garage has become our front porch.”

The mythology of the garage’s reimagined potential runs deep in modern American culture. For businesses like Apple, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Mattel, Disney and Harley-Davidson, the garage is the backdrop of their origin story. Those companies’ founders took that common, square structure that was originally built to house a certain vision of American success and transformed it to house their own version of the American dream. [ed. As did countless garage bands.]

by Shannon Sims, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Meridith Kohut

[ed. I've often wondered why more people (on the mainland) don't do this. In Hawaii, garages (and carports) have always been a focal point for parties, tailgating, music making, and just about everything else. Great for promoting and maintaining neighborly interactions and community cohesion (unless you party too much!).]