The Professional Porch Sitters Union is a group I think I might have to join:
As you were caressed by the cool, silent kisses of air conditioning last night, Claude Stephens and his wife, Erin Henle, were sitting outside on their front porch in 90-plus-degree heat and brow-coating humidity.
Their pastel-painted, cinder-block porch -- which stretches amiably across the front of their duplex at 1339 Hull St. in Louisville's Irish Hill neighborhood -- is more like a comfortable, welcoming urban cave.
So much so, in fact, that it's become the international headquarters for the Professional Porch Sitters Union Local 1339 -- an organization of welcoming porches with affiliated locals across the world, including Canada, the Netherlands, Germany and, of course, France.
"There's also a strong group in San Francisco," said Stephens. "We're all over."
Spend a little time on his porch and you can see -- feel -- the appeal of his international porch sitting. His house is the last one on the left on a dead-end street in a neighborhood that's being rehabilitated -- including a lot of great front porches.
They'll have to let me move my couch out to the porch, though.
