Really looking forward to the premiere of the documentary “New York Street Games” on Thursday, May 20.  The clip is a straight run of great interviews and fantastic archival footage.

Check it out

• Homepage -- www.newyorkstreetgames.com/home.html

• Trailer -- www.newyorkstreetgames.com/trailer.html

Also, don’t miss this feature in this weekend’s USA Weekend highlighting the film, describing rules for the essential games, and citing Streetplay.com “more more information.”

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.

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.

Ok, I’ve been watching from the sidelines at the stuff going on in the blog and thinking about this long piece I’d like to write about incorporating streetplay into my role as a therapist working with kids.  I figure the only way to get the article done is to put it out there and place my butt on the line.  So coming soon, some musings on how a rubber ball still fits into this world of video, electronics and structured activities.

Our original Streetplay.com graphic designer, Alf Brand, is kicking it West Coast style nowadays working for the e-mail marketing firm Vertical Response.  Of course, Alf brought his street sensibilities to the table, and they’re featuring him in an ad campaign (seen at left), with the moniker of “The Furious ALF.”  Part Chubb Rock, part Curtis Sliwa: so 1992 your can almost taste it!

Don’t miss the accompanying video, below, pushing VR’s iPhone app.  I’m hoping the sequel is pattered after Word Up.

We now own the domain name "Streetplay.org"

Ten years ago, Streetplay started modestly using the domain name “Streetplay.com”. As our success grew, so did that of the Internet, and by the time we realized that we’d maybe like to be known as Streetplay.org (we make no money and our mission is definitely dot-org-ish), the world of domain name brokering had come into being. Long story short, since 2003, Streetplay.org had been squatted upon by overseas entities with no plans but to resell the name–probably to us.

All that has changed.   The previous owner of the name Streetplay.org let the name lapse and our all-out assault to claim it worked (a $64 bid on a domain name backorder service).  So now, it’s official: we own Streetplay.org.  Go ahead… try this link:

http://www.streetplay.org/

We haven’t changed anything about the site itself yet, but just knowing we have the new name is reassuring.

Neither Mick nor myself know what we’re going to do with this name right now.  While we’ve been doing less development of site content in the past years, our recent dabbling into blogging, Facebook, and Twitter have been pretty fun.  It’s nice to know we still have an audience.

So… stay tuned here to keep up on the news of the site… and if anyone has some good ideas on what we should do, please comment on this blog posting below.

Great news via Facebook: Streetplay emeritus Alf Brand and his wife Trish have added to their family today (that’s Pacific Time in the title, folks).  Congrats!  We’re sure she’ll be jumping rope in no time.

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!