Hey everyone,

This is how the skully board typically looked on Grand Avenue in Da Bronx:

http://www.westnet.com/~hmcnally/images/skully.gif

Please notice that the numbers in “the skull” (the middle part) are 2-4-6-8. These were the bonus boxes you got for hitting someone out of that region. I realize some people used 1-2-3-4. I am not absolutely sure what numbers occupied which skull boxes, but this seems as good as any.

We came up with a cool variant on the bonus box: one was the letter “K” (hit a person out, you become an instant killer). The other was an asterisk, which reversed where you were in the game (if you were going for “5-forwards”, you instantly plopped yourself into the 6 box and went for “5-backwards”).

The 13-box is 25% of the size of a normal box. Because it’s small, we’d always hit someone for the one-box bonus instead of actually shooting for 13. The other alternative was to try to “creep up a line” of the skull.

I remember the boxes being about 1 foot square, and spaced as in my drawing. I remember seeing other boards with huge boxes and tiny boxes, so I figure we were about average on Grand Ave. I should attempt to draw one now and measure it; the box spacing could be significantly different, and the proof would be in the playing. We ultimately used spray paint to draw the board because we got tired of drawing it in chalk!

Did anyone have any other variants? I’d love to know. Cool cinema fact: you can see a skully board in some overhead shots of the Scorsese film “Mean Streets.”

-HMM