It is, rather, a ''liminal'' space, a boundary zone. I learned this from my neighbor Mike Dolan, who's writing a book on porches. He rebuilt his own porch, upon which porch season, by his personal calculation, opened during the afternoon of April 21. A porch, Dolan says, ''is the outside rendered inside and the inside rendered outside. This, no doubt, explains why so many front porches, particularly in fancy-pants suburban neighborhoods, are empty.
People are too busy to be social.
I use the front porch only when I'm feeling social and have prepared a list of all-purpose entertaining remarks. Aversion to the public sphere may be one reason the deck has become an architectural mainstay. A deck is behind the house. Ideally, it will have a giant umbrella, a hot tub, chairs and furniture made from the finest endangered hardwood species, and a gas grill that costs as much as a Mercedes and can cook a hot dog in less than a second. There was a time when a person sat on a porch without any self-consciousness at all.