A couple of years ago, I walked a few blocks north from my Wallingford home toward sounds of the annual Tangletown Porchfest. A hundred or so of my neighbors gathered in the street as bands rocked out on front porches, some with costumes and mesmerizing visuals projected behind them. The band names were funky (like Dumb Thumbs or Worms in Dirt), and the sound was funkier.
Conversations buzzed as the crowd moseyed down the block to the next private porch–turned–music venue. I chatted with neighbors, exchanged names, traded phone numbers. In the years since, they became ski friends and dates and people I still run into at QFC and Zoka Coffee. The Seattle Freeze thawed out on a cute street on a June Saturday night, in a microfestival held in front of someone’s immaculate garden boxes.
After listening to a few sets, I popped into the corner store for drinks, exactly what festival creator Josh Golden envisioned. “What I’m hoping is that people will come and they’ll watch some music that they plan to see. They’ll see some music they didn’t plan to see,” he says, “and then they’ll go down to Tangletown and enjoy some food or some coffee.”…