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| Venice Beach -- 2nd most renowned public basketball court in the world |
Preface --- I write here from the perspective of an adolescent. Having survived
and thrived on the city of Pawtucket playgrounds with all its seedy characters
gave a kid a certain swagger, a certain hard scrabble status. It didn't last long, after varsity Saint Raphael high school
sports I finally turned my focus to academic life. And was stoutly humbled --
swagger gone. But it was a moment in time worth capturing. Part funny, part
adventure, part passage. A boys stepping
out.
Basketball Ethos --- There's a certain culture unique to basketball. More so, there’s a
special culture of pickup public court basketball. It’s experienced by those who traveled to neighborhood courts for
pickup games. It's different than the ethos of the varsity squad. It has its own cadence, its own color; it is somewhat slapstick but yet has a certain
propriety. There was an unspoken Zen to it,
before the kids knew was Zen meant. You had to get what it was all about – read
what was in the air. There were no spoken words – – but yet everyone was
communicating.
It's a certain crazy-ass culture, colorful, meeting
people from very different backgrounds but yet sharing the brotherhood of the
public basketball courts. Part of the shared culture is the love of the game,
part the laughter and trash-talking. You had to be good at the game and good at
the trash talking, yet knowing its unspoken boundaries. Forty or fifty years later some brilliant psychologist (Daniel Goleman)
figured out that this was 'emotional intelligence'. Hell, we all knew that.
A lot of kids just never get this, particularly the proper, well-schooled
kids – – they knew they don't fit in, and
everybody on the public courts knew they didn’t fit in. Wearing expensive
sneakers or, god forbid, attending summer camp was the kiss of death. You had
to be from the lower rungs of society, from lower middle-class down. Any hint of the upper-class
was immediate disqualification --- the worse was tennis, summer camp, your
parents dropping you off (we all hitchhiked). You would be made fun of and unceremoniously drummed off the courts – worse
yet, you get ‘pants-ed’ (don’t ask).
There was a poetic justice that favored the underclass --- a leveling based on
grit and emotional IQ – the melting pot under-class weeding out the upper-class.
I experienced this in my Fairlawn neighborhood in Pawtucket RI. You
could experience this in your neighborhood but to get the full Monty you had
travel to other neighborhoods. It was best when you didn't know anybody. There
was a meeting of the eye, demonstrating a good jump shot, a wink and a nod -- you would get a sense of the
place. Incredibly, the basketball court was always safe even when the
surrounding neighborhood was not. With this simple backyard salute and
streetwise presence gained you an acknowledgment
and instant membership. No words were spoken,
yet you knew you belonged. After an intense and good sporting run of games, the
newfound friends would make sure to escort you safely off the court and through
the neighborhood.
Fairness was a big part of it. Sides were picked up to be even. The
strong and weak spread evenly over two teams – – the heavy kids, the young
kids, the unathletic kids, distributed evenly with the most athletic and
cunning of the bunch. After this perfect win-win negotiation, once again with
no rules and no referees, what follows is an intense
body on body, in your face competition. One side with shirts off, driving to
the hoop with somebody draped on your hip, moving a weak guy out from rebound
position, blocking a shot. Where other 'organized' basketball has referees and
explicit rules, this neighborhood stuff
is just as intense, and completely unregulated. Bodies slamming bodies,
intensely competitive and yet completely fair -- a fairness that transcended
culture, income level, age, and background. That's magic. For me, after years
in the business world with it's
unethical, quick to take advantage of, basement ethics --- public court
basketball stands out as a model of what people are capable of. Voluntary good conduct under duress, with a sense of
humor and mutual respect. The neighborhood code of conduct --- voluntary and
unspoken, yet honored.
Pickup basketball is very different
than sandlot baseball and certainly different from football that is seldom played full out without referees
and pads. Pickup BB is intense physical
in your face competition, spontaneous within a social covenant that remains
unspoken. It's partly the magic of youth, partly the magic of serendipity
across cultures, partly an American melting pot phenomenon.
The closest experience for me was the United States Army, especially the
infantry school at Fort Benning. The trick was to get along and also excel with
people of all different backgrounds – – where similarly much of the cooperation
happens without words. The Army calls this leadership and the esprit de corps.
At a deep level, the combat arms troops depend upon exactly this bonding. Our
Marine Corps and Infantry Army soldiers
do not fight because of patriotism or the training – – they fight because they
have each other's backs. It's the camaraderie and bonding that enables them to
go beyond extraordinary circumstances.
The youthful pickup basketball is not
lost with age. Many of us steeped in this played well into our
adulthood, as long as our bodies allowed. Even now in my 70s I connect with
people who have shared this experience. From all over the country. It's a
universal boyhood rite of passage. Many kids never make this seminal passage.
It takes place before kids know what seminal or Zen or passage means. It takes
an adventurous spirit and frequenting parts of town that are off-limits to
proper boys. Most of the best basketball courts are in the worst neighborhoods.
I now play a lot of tennis which in a small way re-creates some of this
teenage Zen. Tennis is the antithesis of pickup basketball with its trash
talking and in-your-face mentality – – tennis is ‘nice shot’, apologizing when
the ball dribbles across the net’s right side. The emotions are all bottled up
instead of the catharsis release of trash talking on the black tar. But still,
there's a sliver of the tennis experience that holds the same allure.
You would think in my 70s all of
this is so far forgotten and gone. Not so. Some of my best conversations are
with people from the same world. The conversation takes wings once you
recognize a pickup brother – – the hilarious courts, colorful characters, rims
with no nets, half inflated basketballs -- the rush, the thrill. The Zen and
poetry of it all.
I go on and on about this, because
somebody should. This experience had a lot to do with my character formation, and I have spent most of my life
looking to re-create this kind of magic, the bonding and the flow of physical
athleticism and competition. The thrill of learning how to shoot a jump shot
while your body and mind are maturing. The thrill of driving to the basket muscling
somebody on your left side as you lift off and stretch to the hoop. The
delicious thrill stays with you all your life,
and you spend much of your life trying to re-create that special transcendence and
physical magic.
The best I can do at this point is tell the story. The story needs
telling. For any brother of the public pavement,
the story rings a spiritual bell, long gone but never forgotten.
My professional career was as a mathematician/entrepreneur,
and I had a crazy topsy-turvy adulthood. Surviving
and embracing the neighborhood basketball courts gave me instincts that had a
lot to do with succeeding as an entrepreneur. The craziness was not new.
Venice Beach
There's a point to all this rambling. I had a chance to re-create this
in my late 50s. I had stopped playing basketball at age 50 because of repeated
injuries that took way too long to heal. When I was 57, my son Timothy and I were
at a computer conference in downtown Los Angeles which ended midday Friday,
leaving us the afternoon. Looking at the map we decided to go to the ocean, and I recognized Venice Beach. I had a
vague memory that there was something out of the ordinary about Venice Beach.
Tim and I parked the rental car about four or five blocks south of
Venice Beach and took off our jackets and ties. As we walked north along the
Venice beach promenade things seem to get crazier by the block. We went by Muscle Beach where musclebound narcissistic
men took pleasure in making a side-show spectacle of themselves. Tim and I took
notice – ‘so there is the famous Muscle
Beach’.
Just beyond all the weightlifters was the real gem --
three basketball courts all fully occupied with full-court games. Black men were racing up and down with
hang-dog intensity and trash talk --- music to my ears. Between the
basketball courts and the Promenade was a three-tier
set of bleachers, with young black girls with their boomboxes at full volume. It turns out that the Venice Beach
basketball courts are the number one famous public courts in the US -- made all
the more famous by the 1992 movie ‘White men can't jump’. Number two is Rucker Park in New York City.
Here it was, the big league of pickup basketball. Venice Beach, the Mecca of my boyhood dreams.
There was no way I would pass this up. Tim sort
of got it, but I was the instigator.
I asked someone who looked sane, ‘where can you get sneakers around
here’. The guy pointed me north a couple of blocks and down an alley. The deals were great because everything was
‘hot’. We bought new Nike sneakers and shorts for next to nothing – everything was stolen.
Back to the rental car, quick change, back to the courts.
On the first court, there was a
break in the game; Tim and I walked on –
– the only white men. Everything stopped, the second two courts stopped and the music stopped. We were escorted to
the second court -- game interrupted a game to pick up new sides. Tim got
chosen in the second round, and the ‘old white guy’ was the very
last to be picked.
We started playing and young black man, more athletic and taller, gave
me a good hip under the boards -- I gave
him a good laugh and a return hip --- we both laughed. We ran up and down the
court, jawing trash talk back and forth. Tim played well, he could still drive
and shoot. I concentrated on defense, set some good pics, locked people out
rebounding. Tim played fairly seriously. I did too,
but the larger narrative intrigued me. Particularly the trash talking --
talking trash to brothers you had just met.
That certain basket Zen came back --- pushing, shoving, up and down the
courts, talking trash – you lose yourself. A workout way beyond what I can do
on my silly exercise bike. The moment was delicious, the black athletes
laughing and talking trash, Tim a participant and a witness, me home again.
We played several games. Switching sides several times. Lost in the flow and excitement. The Mecca of neighborhood basketball. How sweet
it was.
We stopped, high-fives all the way around and some chest bumps. The young gifted black athletes got the Zen of it –
the gritty old man back home again. They could tell.
We were in a sea of black, the only whites on the courts. I felt completely safe, what’s more, I felt at home.
Tim and I got a slice of pizza and a Diet Coke at a sidewalk carryout
overlooking the courts. We watched a few more games and congratulated ourselves
for the great afternoon – high fives.
I had a deeper appreciation for all of this than Tim. My life had come
full circle from the playgrounds of Pawtucket to Venice Beach, and I was sharing this with my son Tim.
I didn't try to explain, just savored the moment.
Venice Beach Revisited
Tim had been gone since October
2001.
I was looking for something to hang on to.
I felt Tim walking along side of me.
The place didn't seem so edgy. Many buxom young girls, skating along the promenade, seemed the new
main attraction.
Alone. I felt a bit out of place but found a place to eat overlooking
the same three basketball courts.
The waiter asked ' what brings you to Venice Beach?’.
I said 'memories' with a wink and closed the conservation. I was sharing
this with Tim and didn’t want an interruption.
Memories indeed. Memories of the culture of
the hard courts and memories of Tim. Memories
of the best parts of my life.
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