Streetplay Discussion Archive

I grew up in West New York, NJ. I lived by St. Mary’s Church on the northwest side of town. Growing up in the late 70’s we used to play “bottle caps”. We had a board that was carved right into the street at the entrance to the park. It was painted blue with red boxes. Very professional. We used to hang out there all day playing. We used bottle caps filled with crayon and pennies for added weight. Some of also melted metal to make’em real heavy. We basically played the same way as the rules on this site state, but we had an interesting twist. We played with what was called “sweeping”. If you landed in a box and someone was outside of that box less than a hand laid flat on the ground away you could litterly take that person cap and sweep it down the block. We also had “chucking” and “sewering”. Chucking was just basically picking up the other persons cap and throwing it a block away or onto the church roof. Sewering was when you swept someones cap into the sewer. Big fun. I used to love it. Went through a lot of caps though. I haven’t seen anyone playing it in a long time. I’m glad people remember such a great game. Also, surrounding 13 was what we called the “pit”. No number just P in each box, so no bonus for knocking anyone out.