I’ve been following Streetplay-oriented things for some time now, and have set up various RSS feeds and search alerts for key terms like “stickball,” “skully,” etc., to keep track of media mentions of our beloved topic.  What comes up most with these automagical content creators–aside from actual street game content–is stickball’s relation to youth and urban nostalgia.  Specifically, when an older notable New Yorker publishes a book, or gives a speech referring to his/her youth, or (most commonly) dies, stickball is mentioned, usually in a mythic relation to a carefree childhood filled with Homeric sporting achievement.

I’m moved to write about this because of today’s unexpected “stickball” story, a review of a restaurant in upstate New York:

Dakota Steakhouse Not As Remembered (Troyrecord.com)

If any of you have seen a reference to stickball that has nothing really to do with playing the game, please comment on this posting!

You can see my father’s childhood apartment building from this shot.  Excellent piece!

The Grand Concourse as seen from atop the Bronx County Courthouse(NY Times)

The Grand Concourse, Boulevard of Bronx Dreams – NYTimes.com

Good Humor truck

Every time I see something preposterous like this, I’m proud to be a part of Streetplay:

When Parents Scream Against Ice Cream (via the New York Times)

As a metaphysical protest of this 21st century abomination, why not send a Streetplay Postcard to a friend: choose the Good Humor picture for good measure!

It was nice to hear that handball is still capturing some attention in the media world. Noted NYC handballers Cesar Sala and Satish Jagnandan, along with New York Magazine writer Peter Duffy, were interviewed on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer show on Tuesday, August 4, 2009.  You can listen to the segment in its entirety below.

Longtime Streetplay readers will recognize Cesar as a friend of and contributor to the site. Congrats on the interview!

To celebrate the launch of our new blog, Streetplay founder Mick Greene visited the Bridgeport, CT office of Streetplay.com (my house) for the “2009 Summer Streetplay Summit.”  We had coffee, lunch, and WordPress all in one day… but I stopped short of installing the Ubuntu OS on Mick’s new PC, instead opting to show him how to use the WordPress iPhone app.

...on the Bridgeport Riviera!

Seriously though… even if our contributions to the site are less numerous than they were 10 years ago, integrating this blog with Streetplay (we hope) will let us publish our thoughts and ideas on playing in the street more easily and effectively… as well as letting us have more folks write here as well.  So stay tuned to http://blog.streetplay.com/ for continued great stuff!