OpenLab Calendar: Event
Virtual event: “Handball: The True City Game”
Join the Brooklyn Waterfront Research Center for the last virtual “Breakfast Talk” event of the academic year! RSVP for the Zoom link: https://bit.ly/BWRC_handball
New York City parks are dotted with over 2,000 vertical concrete slabsâslabs to some, worlds to others. For close to a hundred years, these slabs have been the sites of New York Cityâs true city gameâhandball. Some of the earliest handball courts were located near the beaches in Brooklyn, especially in Coney Island.Â
Â
Handball was once called âtennis for savages,â reflecting the lack of ârespectabilityâ of those playing this inexpensive gameâthe players have largely been successive generations of immigrants and poor and working class New Yorkers.âŻBut in addition to the grace and athleticism exhibited, there was ugliness on those courts in Coney Island: drinking, drugs, fighting, bettingâand racism. These too will be explored by our panelists, with a special focus on the famous Coney Island handball courts, the home of the Annual National One-Wall Handball Championships and the center of New Yorkâs true city game!âŻÂ
BWRCâs last Breakfast Talk of the academic year will host a panel of handball players, including Dan Flickstein, one of handballâs unofficial historians and Paul Williams, the founder of the Inner City Handball Association. The panel will explore the history of the game, how it almost disappeared during New Yorkâs financial crisis when schools cut teams and paddles threatened to replace hands on the courts. But this quintessential street game survived these challenges and now continues to offer players competition, diversion, and tests of speed, agility, endurance, and skill. Many (including BWRCâs director) have played the game for decades and have celebrated its unique relationship to the Brooklyn waterfront.Â
Join us even if you have never thrown a ball against one of those concrete slabs and learn why so many New Yorkers have been doing so for so long.
RSVP: https://bit.ly/BWRC_handball
â Back