I’m new to the area and want to get clued in on what’s happening in my community. I know there are Facebook groups, listservs and the Nextdoor app—which one is the best source for neighborly news and support?
Welcome, neighbor!
There is hardly a more charged subject than neighborhood news—everyone has a stake, everyone needs a handyman or help for IBS and everyone has a bath mat to unload.
Still, I am a huge fan of our local listserv, an immensely valuable resource for babysitters, mechanics, doctors and the like, along with community events and all things random, weird and useful. I’ve found concert tickets, clothes, a kids puppet theater, a babysitter who recognized said puppet theater as her own, and an air hockey table from a neighbor of said babysitter. It’s embarrassing. But also amazing—kind of like Loehmann’s meets Mister Rogers. You can get a deal, meet your neighbors, learn about an art fair, and find out who’s collecting donations for local families in distress and other critical causes.
Nextdoor, on the other hand? Here’s the appraisal from a handful of moms in the area: Apart from one instance when Nextdoor helped to reunite a neighbor with her beloved lost parakeet, the app is roundly trashed as “completely bonkers,” “the Wild West” and “borderline unbearable.”
Holly Low Reed of Gaithersburg summarized the app as follows:
“Weekly on Nextdoor:
I think I heard gunshots!
No, you heard fireworks.
No, it was a car backfire.
If you think you heard gunshots, report to the police, not here.
Rinse and repeat.”
Still, some people embrace it for the humor. “I enjoy Nextdoor. It’s a digital version of the old man who shakes his fist at clouds and yells from his front lawn,” wrote Elizabeth Booker Houston, a Silver Spring-based comedian, in response to my Facebook query.
Avigail Charnov of Gaithersburg says she left Nextdoor because of the hate-filled comments and started an Aspen Hill Facebook group that spun off from the local Buy Nothing Group, in which neighbors offer up goods and services for free. In general, a good neighborly spirit runs strong, with posts about yard sales, houses boasting top seasonal décor, or children’s business gigs (adults are not allowed to promote their companies or sell things). Even so, Charnov has had to eject the occasional neighbor or issue warnings. “These groups can devolve really, really quickly,” with adults tattling on each other like children, Charnov says. In one example, repeated escapes by someone’s dog prompted neighbors to out the owner and threaten to call police, rather than taking up the issue privately.
The less anonymous and the more local the group, the more constructive it is, some say. And when tempers flare, and subjects become too political or off the rails, flailing posters call for administrators to remove the discussion, leaving some victorious and others dismissed.
Perhaps that’s why one of the longest-running debates on our local listserv involved the neighborhood’s best Peruvian chicken, a topic that can only cause so much offense.
And now, if you’ll excuse me. I’m trying to claim someone’s vintage ice cube tray.
Got a question about life in Montgomery County? Ask Ms. MoCo by emailing msmoco@moco360.media.
This story appears in the January/February issue of Bethesda Magazine.