to me, this row of houses looks very american. the little fenced off yards, the wooden houses with a porch, the electricity wires...., the fire hydrant.... just as you sometimes see in the movies as well.
the first 3 months we lived in somerville in such a house (but even bigger, it was divided in several apartments), with a front and back porch. i really liked to look around in that neighborhood. often there were yard sales in the weekend, where people just dump out all of the stuff they dont want anymore in their yard, and sell it for little money (some of our furniture we bought there). currently, no porch and no yard sales. i guess management would go crazy if we would dump out all our stuff trying to sell it to our neighbours... ;) and i guess none of our neighbours would want to buy anything. what does happen every now and then is that people put stuff out in the hallway, with a note that you can take it. although i find it the ultimate form of laziness, i also profited from it; we now have a fancy set of wine glasses, a water boiler, a popcorn maker (i dont know why i tookt that one), a nice glass dome for pies (how do you call that? in dutch it would be a "taartstolp") and a side table.... thats also very american, i dont think dutch would just give stuff away that easily if they also could get money for it.. :), and at least they would want to get credit for it, not just leaving it in the hall anonymously until someone secretly takes it away....
