Category Archives: Locales

Wow, wow wow! This site…

Streetplay Discussion Archive Posted on by
Original author: Denise N. Wagstaff
 

Wow, wow wow! This site is a blast! Skully was one of my favorite games growing up on 37th street! inBrooklyn. I had a brushed cotton pair of pants, bright yellow. They were for school, and I remember wrecking them up with tar, you know, laying across the sidewalk for that perfect shot! I got in trouble for wrecking a lot of clothes over that game. I now live just north of Toronto, (that’s in Canada for any of the geographically challenged!) and hope to get my kids and the neighborhood into this great game. I have 2 boys that I am sure would love it if they started playing. Geez, this has gotten me nostalgic. I also plan on looking up SPUD, I saw someone mention earlier. We played this too, but all I have is a vague memory of chasing friends with a ball. LET THE STREETGAMES LIVE ON!! Signed, missing my Brooklyn youth, Denise

REMEMBER PERIODICALY DEFECTING…

Streetplay Discussion Archive Posted on by
Original author: dwoncisz
 

REMEMBER PERIODICALY DEFECTING TO NYC 42nd Street FROM BROOKLYN TO SPEND A DAY WATCHING CHEAP “B” ACTION, HORROR, AND KIDDIE SKIN FLICKS CHARLES BRONSON’S VIGILANTE, BRUCE LEE, FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH, HELL-RAISER, ETC. There was always more action in the theater than on the screen. Guys on angeldust leaping from the top balconies onto the audience below screaming “I can fly”; gun-shots and stampedes, setting off fire sprinklers… snickering at the couples using the back seats as motels, oh, the memories. Once after having seafood and pasta, I went to 42nd street to see a horror movie with an old guy-friend and spent the entire movie wretching (and I wasn’t bulemic) in the john, as some crazy girl stood outside my stall singing gospel songs, the worst of it is she had a beautiful eerie voice. (Kind’ve like Kate Bush singing Wurthering Heights)It was weird. I went to some drive-in theaters in the south and they had the same cheap movie thrill as 42nd street and they had an apparent b-movie star that I had not been aware of before: Dolomite!

For me the Bronx of 1953-1959…

Streetplay Discussion Archive Posted on by
Original author: Steve [e-mail]
 

For me the Bronx of 1953-1959 in the Throggs Neck Housing Project was also an innocent paradise. Our apartment building had whites, blacks, Hispanics, and everyone got along GREAT. If there were racial problems, we kids were blissfully unaware of them then. We were neighbors. It was OUR neighborhood. We took care of it… I was dragged kicking and screaming away from that HOME in 1959, at age 12, by parents looking for “The American Dream”: A chicken in every pot, two cars in every garage, 2.2 kids, and, most of all: A home of your own in the suburbs… When they told me we were moving I wanted to run away from home instead. 🙁 Nassau county LI was already $$$ out of reach, so we went to Suffolk county. A place called Deer Park which, for all I knew, still had Indians lurking in the woods! Who was I going to play stick-ball with? Or ringalievo? How could I leave the only life I’d ever known? I think that’s what we miss most, the carefree innocence of a youth in a different world, with friends that stuck by you cause you all “BELONGED”. I suppose in the long run, it was beneficial to the family to move, but I wish I could have stayed in the Bronx a few more years…

What about the ice man who…

Streetplay Discussion Archive Posted on by
Original author: Anonymous
 

What about the ice man who used to deliver ice to the bars? I grew up on 191 Street in Manhattan and the ice truck would come about 8 a.m. and we would climb on the back of the truck and grab pieces of ice as they fell off the big blocks. On a hot summer day they tasted great!

Growing up in Washington…

Streetplay Discussion Archive Posted on by
Original author: Anonymous
 

Growing up in Washington Heights, NY, we used to sit on the stoop and play Concentration, where we would snap our fingers and chant “Concentration, names of” then you would fill in the blank, “one apiece(or 2, etc.),no repeats, such as ….” Anyone ever play that?

As a kid growing up in the…

Streetplay Discussion Archive Posted on by
Original author: John OBrien [e-mail]
 

As a kid growing up in the Bronx, stickball is nothing new to me. Our field was our narrow, one-way street. (As I remember, the distance from first to second was quite a distance, but guys on first and third were practically right next to one another.) When I moved to Portland, Maine… a state overrun by soccer and basketball.. I thought stickball days would remain a memory from the past…BUT… The other day while in a Shaw’s supermarket in Scarborough, Maine, I discovered they were selling both the rubber Spaulding balls and… Spaulding stickball bats. The bats were somewhat thicker than the broom handle I was used to as a kid, but for $7 ($2 for the ball, and $5 for the bat!) I was armed and ready to start playing stickball again!

We lived in an apt in Astoria,…

Streetplay Discussion Archive Posted on by
Original author: Donna
 

We lived in an apt in Astoria, Queens and as a little girl I use to prop upa blanket like a tent. Me and my siblings would hang out especially on hot summer nights. We had to be in at 8:00 and everyone was still out. So being on the fire escape made us feel we were not missing anything. Also there would be a group of boys from a gang called the Barons and they would harmonize to the tune of Duke of Earl. Oh the days of little wants.

I lived on Steinway St in…

Streetplay Discussion Archive Posted on by
Original author: Anonymous
 

I lived on Steinway St in Astoria and we went fishing too. Since it was a busy street we had meters and boy that was good for fishing. People were constantly dropping coins down the gratings. It was like hitting lotto when you got 25 cents. After all look what it could buy.

I lived in East New York…

Streetplay Discussion Archive Posted on by
Original author: Anthony Lombardo [e-mail]
 

I lived in East New York (Buschwick-Arlington) from the time I was born in 65 until 77. I can relate to many of the stories posted. One that sticks with me was how we would sit around with the “older boys” and plan how we were going to catch “The Son of Sam!”