BY JOEY SWEENEY | I do not know where I’d even begin to research the prominence of screen doors gracing the rowhomes of metro Philadelphia across the last five or six decades. And beyond that, I have a very strong hunch that no such data exists. Who would keep it? Why would they keep it? How?

Even if there were a band of roving data analysts slowly canvassing the city and counting screen doors — a club I’d join, maybe — I suspect they’d meet with a certain degree of disappointment: Anecdotal evidence suggests that homeowners in Philadelphia are hanging screen doors in ever dwindling numbers. 

It would be hard to blame them: Screen doors — especially that classic Philly screen door, white painted aluminum, maybe with a small dent and a silhouette of a horse and buggy on it for some reason, with a ripped-in-one-corner screen — have fallen out of favor. There’s lots of reasons for this, which range from good ol’ gentrifier neighbor-fear on down to the cycles of fashion. 

But today, I am thinking about what’s good about the screen door.

For one, you cannot be a true Philly nonna unless you’ve got one. The screen door doesn’t merely allow one to casually eavesdrop on the whole street, it pretty much encourages it. The screen door doesn’t feel like it’s really screen-dooring unless it’s at least slightly ajar, preferably with a person who’s half in, half out, half-engaged with the world outside but keeping that stylistic choice of judgy distance. If this is not Philadelphia, I don’t know what is. 

And even if you’re not a person who fancies themselves, as they move through this life, a perpetual nonna-in-training (congrats to you, Grace friggin’ Kelly), here’s the other thing that is in woeful supply that the screen door invites: The pop-in visit from a neighbor, a cousin, your weirdo art friend who’s come ‘round your way on their ten speed on their way somewhere else. So many of us wax poetic about the serendipity of the city at the very same time as we are consciously or unconsciously doing everything we can to tamp down the circumstances that allow for that serendipity. Screen doors know what side they’re on.

Now, I hear you: Randos. Do you want people knocking on your door, asking for money, sharing their crazy, and sometimes making you feel unsafe? Of course you don’t, but with great screen door comes great screen door responsibility. Think of the screen door as your office hours, and you are the professor of the block. The screen door is engaged, with no closed door behind it, whenever you want it to be. Think of it as a car that goes nowhere; it’s for when you wanna go on a stakeout without leaving your house. 

If you don’t open it, no one will come. But if you hang out of it, you’ll be hangin’ out. Put it this way: If you smoke by a closed solid door, you're a fool. If you do it by a screen door, you’re just looking for a good time. Isn’t that the whole reason we’re here, that we suffer all of this craziness together, to have a good time?