A post at psychogeography.ca raises the question: does anybody answer the door to random people who ring the bell? I don’t: after years of living in a dense urban neighbourhood, I still find that nobody rings my doorbell except people I’m already expecting, Jehovah’s Witnesses, or the energy scam from a couple of years ago. (‘I’ll need to see a copy of your gas bill.’) If it’s a package, I can always hear an engine idling outside.
If I’m not expecting it, it’s always some sort of scam or imposition, be it spiritual or temporal, and I say that as somebody who likes to think he has a broad-minded tolerance of other humans.
Did people in urban neighbourhoods once open their doors to more or less anybody? Or do they do it still, and I’ve grown into a knuckle-dragging misanthrope without knowing it?
I wouldn’t know – I grew up on a rural concession road.