Zach Barocas, Diasporist Diarist
This group of photos was taken midday last Saturday during the Dew NBA event at the basketball courts on Pier 2 in Brooklyn Bridge Park. The general sense of activity was rather loose when I happened by, and although there was play on each court, it appeared to be entirely unsupervised, so I couldn’t tell if it was part of the event or not. Maybe I showed up between rounds and these guys were playing pickup to fill the time.
I’m not aware of another city that has our quotidian relationship with handball courts. Anyone familiar with New York City’s park system recognizes these walls with unattended indifference. Should the walls, on the other hand, appear unused and mysteriously erect and their purpose unclear, it takes only a quick query to a local to learn that they’re for handball. Like eating pizza while walking or scaffold pull-ups, handball is a not infrequently-occurring phenomenon here in New York.
It was over 90° when I made this exposure on the east side of Carroll Gardens. The street you see (click the image for a larger version) is a single-block one way, situated between Smith and Court Streets, whose terminal streets are one ways in opposite directions. That is, the only entry to this short street is a right turn from the direction of Smith St., and the sole exit is a right turn in the direction of Smith St.
There are other such streets in the area, but they usually stretch among longer blocks and look very much like their neighboring streets: same kinds of brownstones, mostly, same types of trees, cars parallel parked for the full lengths of the blocks. The street above, however, differs from its surroundings in two essential ways. First, its narrowness prohibits on-street parking and the buildings lack garages, so there is little, if any, car traffic. The street is thus a near-perfect place to play. Except that: second, there are no trees and therefore no shade. This latter distinction was felt acutely on the day I walked by.
Practically speaking, none of these details occurred to me when I took the picture. What did I have my eye on? My eye was on the game at the middle of the block which I had photographed from the opposite end of the street not long before. It was only while editing this photo that I noticed the boy with the placard and unseasonable Sherlock Holmes hat. And so he emerged as the image’s walker.
Here’s a gallery of recent black and white photos, some of which have been posted elsewhere but at reduced size. I hope you enjoy them.
