Category Archives: Skully

Wow this brings back memories….

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Wow this brings back memories. In the 60s I lived in the Pink Houses projects off of Linden Blvd & Crescent St.My building was on Stanley Ave. I remember using chalk to make a Skully Court in the playground. I also remember the smell of melting crayons. I would put crayons in a baby food jar ( it could take the heat) and hold it over the stove to melt the wax. I loved filling bottle caps for Skully. I remember the pride we had in our wax filled caps. Sort of like a badge of honor. I can still smell the melting wax right now! This is a great walk down memory lane. Doubt that anyone in Tampa (home) would know what Skully is.

I remember my mom putting…

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I remember my mom putting me on a 5 day punishment that caused me to miss a hell of alot of skelly games,that was one time I was hoping to get my ass whipped so I could go back out and play. Turns out moms was pretty good skelly player herself. so she knew how much fun it was.K.B. 7th walk.

Yeah, I remember “kicking”…

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Yeah, I remember “kicking” an opponent’s cap but also forget why we did that as well. I recall also getting “blasted” off the street into the park. You know how many turns it would take you to “flick” your cap back up a 50ft dirt hil??

This is too cool. My boys…

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This is too cool. My boys were whining there’s nothing to do outside…so it was time to teach them “bottlecaps” as we called it in NE Philly (circa mid-70s). I couldn’t remember all the rules, called my sister and brother, both not home, and started surfing. What a great site! We played a variation with a deadbox in the center. We only used bottlecaps(soda or beer), as is…no wax or anything to weigh them down. We had other/different rules (like if your cap got run over by a car, you advanced a box – 2 boxes if both tires nailed you.) We used “head for the hills” instead of “out of town”. We used to kick a player’s cap down the street, but I can’t remember why. You could also “cuff” your cap into a box if you were within a certain distance of the box, a foot length, I think. (I know…Baby s@*^!) I wish I could remember them all…we played this game for hours, every day, until mom was yelling at us to come in. If anyone remembers this version, feel free to email me. Thanks for the memories…looking forward to new ones with my kids and bringing the game to Cherry Hill, NJ!

Playing Skelly in Sheepshead…

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Playing Skelly in Sheepshead Bay/Marine Park during the 60’s was my favorite game. I guess that’s why I have knee problems today. I now live in East Brunswick, NJ and hope to spread the word of “Skelly” to others. In fact, tonight I’m suppose to teach by 8 year old how to play the game. I’m curently refreshing my mind on how to play the game by checking out this site. It’s been atleast 40 years since I scraped my knees against the concrete. Can’t wait!

Wow, wow wow! This site…

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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

Skully comes to Massachusetts!…

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Skully comes to Massachusetts! See http://www.geocities.com/chesler.geo/Woburn/woburn_skully.html This morning I demonstrated Skully to my daughter’s kindergarten class at the Charles Goodyear Elementary School in East Woburn, Massachusetts. See http://www.geocities.com/chesler.geo/Woburn/skully_goodyear.jpg and http://www.geocities.com/chesler.geo/Woburn/skully_mahoney.jpg My most optimistic hope is that the game spreads virus-like through the school and the rest of the community. If this is not the northeasternmost Skully board in existence, it may be the most colorful. I used dimensions suggested in Hugh M. McNally’s rules here but "about a square foot" seems awfully big. Even for kindergarten beginners I reduced it to 8″ by 8″ and that seemed big. If the board is only 4′ on a side, 1′ boxes would meet! My recollection from Co-op City was a board no more than 4′ on a side, and boxes maybe 4″ or 6″ on a side. I don’t recall numbers in the Skull, nor did we play much more than a straight race 1 to 13 and back. It wasn’t a particularly popular game in the 1970s — paddleball was popular, and there were enough grassy areas that sidewalk games took a backseat. For the mathematically-inclined, I did use the rope-stretcher’s 3-4-5 triangle (with a tape measure and a metal yardstick, not knotted ropes) to lay out the square.

I am so attention-deficit…

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I am so attention-deficit its not funny….I read the archives as found a few other people mentioning the 1-9 configuration and was relieved that my memory was intact. In 1981 I did a term abroad in Seville, Spain and lived in a barrio that was very urban with many apartment buildings. I enjoyed hanging with the kids better than the college students and remember showing a group of kids there how to play skully. When I left Seville 10 weeks later I spotted a few 1-9 skully boards chalked into the sidewalk over a mile away. Its a really satisfying thing to pass on….a piece of your childhood in Brooklyn! My kids, Caitlin and Connor, and me are in the process of bringing skully to Delaware and Schoharie counties

I lived in Brooklyn in the…

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I lived in Brooklyn in the late 60’s and played lots of skelly/skully on Bay Ridge Avenue between 18th and 19th avenue and West 8th between Bay PArkway and avenue O. I now live upstate and just made some caps with crayons and pennies with my kids. We then found this website and I am seeing that the boards we made back then seem to be atypical…..numbered just 1 through 9 with the area around the 9 called “mud”. Does anyone else recall this board configuration??