Get back!

Get the neighbors wondering at your truly wild summer shindigs.

by Chris Handyside
5/3/00

Create a vibe, a theme, a visual motif.

This time of year you’ll very likely run into one of ‘em: Summertime snobs who insist on extolling every last little virtue of chillin’ on the front porch.

I should know – I used to be one of them. I’d bore people to death with my theories on why the front porch is the best spot to relax, cold beverage in hand, nodding your head and exchanging pleasantries with neighbors. I’d make sure people knew exactly where I stood on how much slower the summer sun seems to set when one is glued to a comfy chair looking out on the street where you live.

Then one afternoon, after several cold beverages, with Black Grape’s Stupid, Stupid, Stupid cranked on my hi-fi, I realized I was putting on a public, very unfunky dance show for the entire neighborhood. Soon thereafter, I discovered just how welcoming was my back deck.

I’ve got nothing against front porch chillin’ per se. As you can see, it’s more about the manner in which you choose to chill. More and more often, as that summer wore on, I found my back porch the ideal locale for gatherings of friends, family and other freaks who would’ve a) overpopulated my relatively small front porch and b) been inhibited from some of their more outrageous behavior by the probing eyes of the neighborhood watch. So it goes that I hid the fiesta away from the street.

It’s a psychological adjustment to move to the back deck, too. Not to gossip about my co-workers, but this is a fact MT Web Editor Adam Druckman knows only too well. Once an avowed front porch supporter, his new home has a mere stump of a stoop. But, oh, the deck he has yet to truly christen!

"The front porch connects you to the community while the back porch allows you to create your own little community," he says, seemingly resigning himself to rationalizing.

But it’s more than rationalization that has made the back deck/ porch a staple locale for the modern summer shindig. Besides the Jacuzzis you’ll find on the more tony back decks and the boccie tournaments that seem to get more and more interesting as the keg gets lighter and lighter, back porch jams have it all over lollygagging in plain view of your neighbors.

I know I’m not alone in preferring the isolation of my back yard, either. All-day, all-night house parties have long been a staple of the blues community, with jam sessions, food, folks and fun lasting past the wee hours. Once removed from the constraints of the working week, the hours go by in a bacchanalian bliss when the back porch/deck party goes down correctly and with the right folks in the mix.

The front-porch-to-back-deck issue distresses, too, many of my contemporaries who spent the greater part of their on-campus college years standing around on front porches sipping keg beer and leering at the fuzz when "the man" chose to roll by and check out the hubbub. (Not that the cops don’t show up to backyard parties if you’re not careful).

Better still, the back deck soiree allows the party-thrower to create a vibe, a theme, a visual motif to bring the summer sun, the BBQ and the beverages together. Particularly popular, thanks largely to the proliferation of cheap kitsch knockoff decorations, is the tiki party. Or mix fine wine and cheap china for a posh knockoff of decadent high-society outdoor cocktail parties.

And let’s not underestimate the importance of music in this mix. I refer you to the aforementioned front porch "dancing incident" – and to the fact that you can get away with both a higher volume and a lesser street noise factor – as contributing factors to the supremacy of the back-o-house jammy.

So let your true freak flag fly, invite your crew, warn the neighbors (or invite them, too), fire up the grill, the tiki torches and the hi-fi and prepare for some back porch summer fun. And don’t be embarrassed when you deign to "bust a move" – no one’s watching. Really.

Chris Handyside’s tiki torch is a few drops short of full.