We were sad to hear of today’s passing of Dennis Hopper.  Dennis and Streetplay crossed paths in 1999 during the filming of Knockaround Guys, which featured a scene where he and John Malkovich played handball (see our coverage of behind-the-scenes action).  Here’s the film trailer:

This wasn’t Hopper’s crowning cinematic achievement (they waited until 2002 to even release the picture), but we still have fond memories of seeing him chasing a little blue ball around the court.

Perhaps more memorable in Hopper’s connection to sport was his popular series of Nike advertisements playing the paranoid, unhinged character Stanley.  Here’s a memorable ad, a 1995 Super Bowl commercial:

Also not to be forgotten is Hopper’s portrayal of the down-and-out “Shooter” in the film Hoosiers.  Here’s a scene featuring a temporarily rehabilitated Shooter:

Rest in peace.

We’ve mentioned Lenore Skenazy more than once here on our blog; here’s a video of her positing the idea that parents don’t necessarily need to get involved and drive their kids’ play, suggesting that it may actually be detrimental.  After Lenore, a bunch of mothers you’ve never heard of chime in, agreeing or disagreeing based on their own experiences.

It would have been preposterous, at least for me or anyone I ever knew as a child, for parents to hunker down with us as we played stickball, skully, or anything else outside.  That time was referred to as “going out to play” by parents and kids alike.  We figured things out on our own, learned basics of fair play, wrote our own script for the day.  And had fun.

I did play board games like Scrabble enough with my parents, but that’s not what I remember as “play.”  What do you all think?

Careful readers of this blog may remember our last post about Baron Ambrosia, the host of Bronxnet’s show Bronx Flavor, and a YouTube clip showing him playing handball against someone dressed like Divine’s character in Pink Flamingos. The Baron has explained it all in his recently released episode: he’s playing for the Bronx against the evil “Queen of Westchester” to determine the ownership of City Island:

Baron Ambrosia plays handball-click to watch the episode on BronxFlavor.com

The Baron doesn’t provide an embed code for us to plant the show in our blog–and it’s not on YouTube–so click through Web 1.0 style and enjoy the contest! By the way: I’ve seen The Queen of Westchester many a time lurking through the Galleria in White Plains.

Way back in August 2000, we put 4 short videos of the Double Dutch Divas on Streetplay, part of our jump rope coverage.  Well, some 10 years later, we fixed them up a little (putting them all together, for one thing) and posted them on our new YouTube channel.

The video quality may not be great like Hulu, but the message of fun still shines through after a decade has passed.

So as we’re putting together our Streetplay YouTube channel, we stumbled across this video of people playing a “Traditional Malaysian game” with bottlecaps on a round tabletop.  Looks like fun!

If anyone has more information on what the heck this game is called or how it’s played, let us know in the comments section of this post!  Until we find out, we’re going to call it “Malaysian skully“--kind of like “Chinese handball” but hopefully without the racist overtones.

We had videos on Streetplay way before there was a YouTube, but we have to admit, those guys have done it a little better than us.  So, in the “if you can’t beat ‘em, use ‘em” kind of way, we’ve added our own channel on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/streetplaycom

If you know of a great YouTube video that depicts what we’re about, drop us a note in the comments.

Perhaps better known as the impresario of the Sex Pistols, Malcolm McLaren had a hit with “Double Dutch” in 1983 (a follow-up on “Buffalo Gals,” his take on what we called rap back then).

He definitely helped shape a lot of the music scene back then, mixing and matching genres.  Sadly, he died today at the age of 64.

The latest thing in children’s play?  The recess coach!  This is a great listen from NPR’s Tell Me More program, featuring Jill Vialet (president and founder of Playworks), and NYC’s own Free Range Kids evangelist, Lenore Skenazy.  Even Lenore, who scoffed at the idea at first (we’re guilty on that one too), sees some benefit beyond the knee-jerk “harumpfing.” This is mainly because no one is teaching kids any “actual reality” games to play anymore; the traditional way that kids learn games–from older kids–is going away because the older kids don’t know the games nowadays either!

Listen and decide for yourself… and remember that Streetplay’s Rulesheets are always there if you want: print them out and give them to your kids.

Careful readers of this blog may remember an earlier post about Baron Ambrosia, whose brilliant food review TV series Bronx Flavor seems to be an on-again/off-again affair.  Well, I found recent signs of life from the elusive Baron on his YouTube Channel… and he’s no longer off-topic for us.  The video below depicts The Baron playing handball against what appears to a second coming of Divine from Pink Flamingos, watched by two old-school real handball players.

We have no idea of the context of this video--if it’s just for fun, or part of a past or future Bronx Flavor episode--but it’s great nonetheless.  If anyone involved in this video--from the “real” handball guys to Divine’s love child to even The Baron himself--reads this post, please contact us at Streetplay, if just to say hello, or even if you want us to help with any street-game-themed upcoming episodes of Bronx Flavor!

Many of our loyal readers are directed toward Streetplay because of nostalgia, wanting to recapture memories of the good old days, the simpler times.  In fact, a lot of people adopt a crotchety, self-anointing attitude in this regard, a rejection of what “these kids today are doing” in terms of their personal time and entertainment.

A thought provoking piece was posted on LiveScience.com yesterday that has some significance and overlap with these sentiments.  While mainly concerned with recent science and studies concerning the phenomenon of children who are bullied, a phrase stuck out in terms of Streetplay sensibility:

Unstructured playtime — that is, when children interact without the guidance of an authority figure — is when children experiment with the relationship styles they will have as adults.

Bullying is a serious issue that is becoming more apparent and reported in the mass media, and may actually reflect an increase in its occurrence in American society (instead of being the media’s “flavor of the day”).  It begs the question: is the combination of hysterical, overscheduling, overprotective parenting (witness Lenore Skenazy’s Free Range Kids blog, sane reportage of the problem), combined with the rampant, time-sucking, physically isolating use of electronic media (witness the Kaiser Family Foundation’s latest report on children’s media usage) a formula for creating socially dysfunctional, ready-to-be-bullied children?

All this just leads me to restate the Streetplay mantra: Get out and play.

Studies Reveal Why Kids Get Bullied and Rejected | LiveScience