Author Archives: Streetplay Discussions

My first kiss was NOT particularly…

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My first kiss was NOT particularly pleasant but it was memorable. I think I was about thirteen or fourteen years old. This guy from the neighborhood who was about my age was always making racy comments around me, which I pretty much ignored. Late one summer night, I was walking home after hanging out with my friends and ran into the guy. He walked up to me, asked me if I’d ever been kissed and before I could reply, planted his lips on mine and stuck his yucky, sloppy tongue halfway down my throat. And then he walked away. At the time I thought, “if this is what kissing is about, I’m NEVER getting married!” We never mentioned it after that and I haven’t seen him in yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeears…… – webdiva

SORRY it took me so long…

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SORRY it took me so long to get back here! I lived in the projects in a building right near the corner of Houston Street and FDR Drive. The thing I loved most about the Essex Street Market was that there were so many buildings and so many different sections selling everything from soup to nuts. When I was in high school (Seward Park on Grand Street), I used to buy vanilla sandwich cookies from one of the vendors at Essex Street almost every day on my way home from school… – webdiva

Hmmm… You know…

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Hmmm… You know what? I think I said “Mr. Frostee” when I MEANT “Mr. Softee”. And, no, I didn’t know about the green bottles… I only remember blue. And YES, I remember the “chocolate cake Good Humors”! Wow..that takes me back.. I had a DOVE bar the other day and I remember thinking, “This is pretty darn good, but there’s just too much of it!” 🙂 🙂 And I remember the shaved ice and cherry syrup — I LOVED that as a kid. I also remember guys pushing carts full of “homemade” ices that my mother would never let me buy. She said they made the ices in their bathtubs at home! 🙂 🙂 – webdiva

My brothers John and Tim…

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My brothers John and Tim and I always played stickball in our native Canarsie, the center of Brooklyn and the world, to us. Charlie Stella always bragged about his ability to consistently whack a two sewer hit and was usually willing to back up the brag with a bet in which the loser had to spring for a slice of pizza and an Italian Ices at Joe’s Pizzeria. Now and then errant balls would hit cars and windows which would lead to the local beat cop ambling along. He’d collect our sticks and break them in half in the very sewer in which Charlie’s best shots would bounce off of. We would then resort to stoop ball, until we got our hands on more broomsticks and black tape. There wasn’t a house on our block that contained a broom that was more than two feet long!

I grew up in West Philly…

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I grew up in West Philly in the 70’s. what we called “Box Ball” was played on a “baseball diamond” (anything would do…never on a real field) played with a tennis ball, pink rubber ball (solid) , or a white rubber ball (hollow). The game was played like baseball except instead of a pitcher the batter would drop the ball and hit the ball with their fist.. aiming at someone they felt couldn’t field or just over someones head… and you would run the bases and score like in baseball.. 3 outs per inning… never heard of what everyone else calls “box ball” anyone else out there that remembers playing such a game and what you may of called it????

Flipping baseball cards…

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Flipping baseball cards was one of many gambling games played in Far Rockaway, N.Y. The others being marbles and tops. We had two variations: 1. Closest to a wall – Standing a determined distance from a wall, each player would flip a card frisbi-like with a flick of the wrist towards the wall. The winner would be the closest card to the wall. A leaner (leaning against the wall) would beat a card laying flat on the ground touching the wall. If two card were touching the wall laying flat on the ground, the top one won. If two cards were leaners, the most vertical card won. The winner kept all of the card in play. The big dilemma was that crisp new cards flipped best, but who wanted to lose a crisp new card? 2. Flipping Heads or Tails – By swinging your arm in an upwards motion and releasing the card just as the arm started up, the card would overturn and land on the ground either heads up or down. There were alternate ways of flipping the card, but this one was by far the most popular and effective. The goal was to meet the pre-negociated arrangement. Sometimes it would be simply to match the number of heads and tails. Sometimes it would be to match the exact order and number of heads and tails (ie; 6 heads, 1 tail, 3 heads). The number of cards could be 1 to whatever. Of course, if the matcher met the challenge, he kept all of the cards. As with the flipping dilemma, the crappier cards that you didn’t care about were more difficult to control. Gottem, needem was the universal language for trading.

In Far Rockaway, N.Y., Johnny…

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In Far Rockaway, N.Y., Johnny on the Pony was played mostly on the beach. As described by others, one person would stand as what we called the pillow (as opposed to pillar). The rest of the team would line up crouched over head to butt with the pillow holding the head of the lead croucher. The other team would then run and jump leap-frog like to land stradled on the line of crouched kids. The object of the game was to support the weight of the entire team long enough to say; “Johnny on a Pony 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2-3”. Of course, the prevailing strategy would be to target one weak link (or unlikeable kid) in the chain and to have the entire team try to pile drive on that kid. More often than not, the pile would tip over sideways and fall off. Only brave and dopey kids played this game without shirts. The beach sand could file the skin off of your back when kids would leap as high as they could to crash down on you. In spite of the sand playing field, it’s a miracle that no one broke their back playing this game.

We played Ringaleavio almost…

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We played Ringaleavio almost every summer night in Arverne, Far Rockaway. Like Greg of Big Six Towers, I lived in a self-contained block of buildings with parks, benches, bushes and grassy areas in the middle. As soon as enough kids (boys & girls – mostly boys) showed up, 2 captains would choose teams and then one team would go out to hide while the other team waited 10 minutes or so. Generally, kids moved in small groups, although there were some slippery hard-cores who like to hide alone. The park bench that everyone started from, was the home base (jail). Kids were captured when someone had contact for the duration of saying; “caught caught Ringaleavio 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2-3.” They would be escorted back to the home base where they had to stay unless one of the hiders could get to the base uncaptured and yell; “HUMPFREE-ALL!” Incredible game . . . started around 7pm and usually went til about 9.

In Far Rockaway, N.Y., we…

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In Far Rockaway, N.Y., we used to play a sadistic top game we called “crack-top”. A circle would be drawn on a smooth surface, like a shuffleboard court. Each player would place a top in the circle. The tops in the circle would have the standard ball-bearing type tip. The playing tops, however, would have a sharpened, spear-like tip. Sometimes the playing tops would be regular tops with the ball bearing removed and a nail placed point out in its place. The idea of the game was to knock tops out of the circle with the player knocking the top out, keeping the top. Of course, the real goal of the game was to split someones top wide open.

In my neighborhood in Philly,…

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In my neighborhood in Philly, we called the game “Killers”, but it appears to be the same game as described by the NY kids as Skullie or Skillies. I have great memories of rigging-up a magnet on a string and fishing bottle caps out of the soda machine at the Flying A station on the corner of 5th and Sommerville. An entire side industry developed around collecting the caps. Not that we didn’t take the game seriously. We eventually painted the squares on the street; it was a dead-end so traffic was limited to occasional trucks going to and from the factory across the street.