Is block captain a common thing?
Is block captain a common thing?
I am re-watching King of the Hill and Hank Hill is the block captain of Rainy Street. Is that a thing all over the US or more state or city specific? Is this a serious side-job and does a block captain get something in return? And how to become one?
King of the Hill depicts an America which in some ways has now disappeared, the degree of cooperation between neighbors being one of them.
The modern block captain is the president of the HOA, unfortunately.
And that can vary widely! In my neighborhood we have an optional $100 per year HOA fee. It goes to planting flowers at the entrance, helping pay the water bill of the guy who lives at the corner and waters those flowers, and repairing the brick wall beside the street that cars keep crashing into. The HOA president collects those fees and runs the Facebook page to let people know when there's a crime issue, cars getting broken into or things stolen out of garages, stuff like that.
That's odd. My HOA mostly just issues fines for things like weeds growing in rocky waterways.
Ahh interesting. That still seems to be different than in europe. I am not aware of HOA being a thing on community level. At least in my country it's just a big lobby and legal organization. They help you with legal services if you have trouble for example with construction companies. I think the stuff that your HOA does is here handled by the municipality. You don't have to be HOA member.
It's for if there's a "neighborhood watch" which is almost never a thing.
You're watching a show that's 30 years old making fun of Americans, most of the stuff Hank does we thought was stupid back then
My neighborhood growing up had a neighborhood watch sign. Nobody actually patrolled. I just assume it was a hotline for busybodies to call when they saw suspicious people.
The show I'm watching has neighbor watch where the characters stand watch at night. Is this a real thing?
Do Americans really have someone from the neighborhood posted up on guard every night?
Only time in my life I’ve ever seen guards posted at night was when I was in the military.
I could see it plausibly happening in an area with major rioting and wide spread civil disorder. Other than that, nope.