Hi, I’m currently helping someone do some research into childhood street culture and games played. If anyone could email me with details of games played, locations or amusing stories it would be appreciated. This web site is also a fanstastic starting point for the research. Many thanks Jo email jfurlong [at] supanet [dot] com
Hi, I’m currently helping someone do some research into childhood street culture and games played. If anyone could email me with details of games played, locations or amusing stories it would be appreciated. This web site is also a fanstastic starting point for the research. Many thanks Jo email jfurlong [at] supanet [dot] com
Soft Pinkies rule. One of my most savored kid memories was walking back to school at lunch in NE Philly having just stole () a Pinkie from the corner candy store. Throwing a fresh pinkie at a nice tall brick wall on a spring afternoon is heaven on earth. Does anyone remember playing SUICIDE – a game with a sponge (Pinkie) ball against a wall (school wall). You would throw the ball to hit 1st the ground then 2nd the wall so the ball launched high in the air. If you caught it, the person who threw it must touch the wall b4 you get to peg him with the ball. If you try and catch someone else’s ball and miss, its your bum on the line. Still don’t know why it was called suicide. Likely many names for this game. Chris
Our fires escape was on Amsterdam Avenue and 65th Street (before Lincoln Center). My girlfriend lived in the apt. beneath us. She and I had tin cans attached by a string hanging from fire escape to fire escape, so we could chat as we ate cut-up Fig Newtons and penny candy and sunned ourselves on our “terraces.” The metal structures provided a respite from the heat of the tenement buildings where not a fan, certainly no air conditioner, could be found “back in the day.”
I’ve been playing Wall-Ball for about 10 years now, I remember when I was little I’d walk by the local schoolyard and see older guy playing this baseball game against the wall. Since then a lot of things have changed. I remember we didn’t have a pitching mound so some kids would take wood chips and cover an area on the grass, eventually it killed all the grass in that area and the Local School board paved it over, so now we have a little strip that resembles a mound. Every Sunday here in Toronto the school is packed with 2-3 games going on side by side. We all use tennis ball and normal baseball bats and play 2 outs and we even have Pilons in the outfield marking the foul lines. We got the Double play rule where if you ground out to the pitcher and theres someone on base ( ghost runner ofcourse)the pitcher would pick up the ball and try to hit the box wherever he was standing and the trick was to get it past the hitter who was trying to block it with the bunt technique. Wall ball or Box baseball has come a long way for us and I hope it continues.
I’ve been trying in vain to find my best friends from childhood. I’ve tried classmates and various Brooklyn boards over the past 10 years but nary a sole has turned up there. If any of you are out there,post a message here: Marty Leffler,Nina Schwartz,Saulie Schwartz,Bernie Keiler,Bernie Halpern,Louis Levine and Seymour Ackerman. We were friends in the early to late 40’s.
Hi, Jeane: My friends and I used to rent out bikes in that shop when we were twelve and thirteen years old. Right next door to the bicycle shop was a pet store that specialized in pigeons. In my neighborhood (Little Italy), most of the guys were pigeon crazy. Almost every block had a coop or two on it. Back in the late fifties, the rents were so low that landlords really didn’t care what you put on their rooftops– although it was much wiser to seek permission from the landlord before you started building your coop and buying pigeons for it. We had coops on Mott and Prince Street, on Prince and Mulberry Street, on the Bowery and Prince Street, and on Houston and Mott Street. Sometimes, when we were up on the roof during school hours, the truant officer would come up. Then my friends and I would have to scamper six-stories down the fire escape and into the yard to get away from him, laughing all the way. Getting back to the bicycle shop you mentioned in your post. I believe the name of it was “Barbares.” And that it was located across the street from Sara Roosevelt park, a short distance from the corner of Houston St. The owner used to charge us thirty-five cents an hour to ride those old, heavy, hard-to-pedal bicycles that we used to call “trucks.”