I have a theory that you can measure the quality of a neighborhood by counting the number of dogs you see from a park bench in 10 minutes.
I call it the Park Bench Index.
Under 2 dogs? You’re in a financial district. Everyone’s miserable and the only living things are pigeons who’ve given up on life.
2-5 dogs? Decent neighborhood. People live here. They have time to walk something that depends on them.
5-10? You’ve found it. This is the sweet spot. This is where people have balconies with plants on them and the barista knows your order.
Over 10? You’re either near a dog park or you’ve accidentally wandered into a Disney movie.
I think about this stuff because I spend a lot of time on park benches now. That’s what having a dog does. You go outside more. You sit down more. You notice things.
Before Sami, I would walk through a park at full speed, thinking about work, listening to a podcast, treating the entire outdoors as a corridor between two indoor spaces. Now I sit. I watch him sniff the same patch of grass for four minutes like it’s a crime scene. And while I’m sitting there, I notice things. The old guy who feeds the pigeons at exactly 2pm. The woman who runs the same loop every morning with a Labrador that’s clearly faster than her but stays at her pace anyway.
None of this is productive. None of it moves any needle on any metric I’m supposed to care about.
It might be the best part of my day.
Bobby