Meeting New Friends on the Front Porch

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By John Burton
ATLANTIC HIGHLANDS – The Front Porch Club is about more than the chili.
“It’s an eclectic group but we do have common interests,” member Brian Boms said.
The now decade-old club held its annual Chilifest cook-off on Sept. 27 at the borough’s historic Strauss Mansion. Organizers said the event attracted more than 500 people with 40 businesses offering support. The event raised more than $10,000 for the newly formed Henry Hudson Tri-District Education Foundation and other groups.
The club involvement goes well beyond its signature event.
The club has a book group, children’s play group and regularly conducts dinner and other social gatherings and activities.
As co-founder and borough resident Benson Chiles describes the organization, “It’s a place-based, online community that brings people together socially and encourages a sense of community.”
It also continues, “to seek out newcomers,” member Charlotte Magee said.
The club also has a Facebook group, now limited to its current members, which allows participants to communicate and share information. The social media forum is ideal for members to ask and find out where they can find babysitters, reliable contractors and other needed information, she said.
“It’s always been about connecting gaps,” Chiles said.
Benson, Magee and Boms were seated, appropriately enough, on the wraparound porch at Benson’s Victorian-style East Mount Avenue home last Friday as Benson detailed the club’s beginnings and goals.
Benson and his wife Sarah moved to Atlantic Highlands about 12 years ago and hoped to find some sort of newcomers club, but there wasn’t any in the area.
“We got to know a couple of neighbors,” who would drop by his home or invite the Bensons to theirs. They would have a beer, chat and get to know one another.
“It just started to grow and blossom after that,” he said.
Magee had a similar story. She moved here with her family from New York City. The Magees, too, didn’t know anyone. It was November, the weather was cold and nobody was outside in their yards. Life in the new home felt a little isolated, Magee said.
She came across a flier Chiles had distributed, seeking new members for the Front Porch Club. “It created a sense of relief,” finding the club and getting to know its members, Magee said.
As for the club’s name, Chiles said, “What I like about the front porch is that it’s open, inviting.”
The group “does attract creative, interesting people who want to be a part of something,” Magee said.
The club now has about 500 members on its email contact list, Benson said, and always has been about “connecting.
“We bring together the new members with the traditional” longtime residents, Boms said.
Atlantic Highlands seems to have been evolving over the last decade or more, with an ever-burgeoning business district that is attracting art galleries, new eateries, now and a craft brewery along with its residential neighborhoods, the members said.
Both Magee and Chiles noted, they’ve been living here longer than anywhere as adults. “And I’ve lived in a lot of places,” Chiles said, having lived in Denver, Boston and New York over the years.
“What’s not to love?” Magee asked of her now hometown. “It’s got all these good things we like to see.”
This winter, Chiles said, he hopes to start collecting video interviews of club members and making them available on its website, www.frontporchclub.com.
Along with working with the education foundation, the club has been working with the elementary school on its Learning Garden environmental education project.
The group continues to look for other chances to partner on worthwhile programs and projects that may interest its members, Chiles said.
“I think there are more opportunities to do more,” he said, adding, the club’s steering committee during the coming months will do just that and look at where the club should go for its next 10 years.