Filed under: Basketball, Bread City, Photography, Women's Basketball | Tags: 1950s Culture, 1950s Girls, Babes
COURTESY OF THE 1950s TEENAGE HOUSEWIFE BASKETBALL LEAGUE PHOTO ARCHIVE.
Filed under: Basketball, Bread City, Photography, Poetry | Tags: Louis Jenkins
A huge summer afternoon with no sign of rain … elm trees in the farmyard bend and creak in the wind. The leaves are dry and gray. In the driveway a boy shoots a basketball at a goal above the garage door. Wind makes shooting difficult and time after time he chases the loose ball. He shoots, rebounds, turns, shoots … on into the afternoon. In the silence between the gusts of wind the only sounds are the thump of the ball on the ground and the rattle of the bare steel rim of the goal. The gate bangs in the wind, the dog in the yard yawns, stretches and goes back to sleep. A film of dust covers the water in the trough. Great clouds of dust rise from open fields that stretch a thousand miles beyond the horizon.
– THE OFFSEASON by Louis Jenkins
photo by Ryan Gallagher
Filed under: Art, Basketball, Brooklyn, New York City, Photography | Tags: Basketball Art, Rich Miceli
Photo by Rich Miceli
Filed under: Basketball, Bread City, Fiction, New York City, New York Knicks | Tags: 1990s NBA, Patrick Ewing, World Trade Center
We spread Knicks on toast for breakfast, lunch and dinner. At Sunday Mass we sat looking like Pat Riley six rows deep in the pews, our hair slicked back with water and our collars opened as far as we could swing it. At night in our thin bunk-beds, we peered out the mesh window screens. We saw Patrick Ewing walk across the East River in purple leather crocs, stop, and pick his nose with the Twin Towers. And Nikki DeVincentis was still the flyest little rich girl in Brooklyn, in a green miniskirt and pigtails jumping rope in Furman Street Park like GO NY GO NY GO!
– Excerpt from a non-existent novel
THROWBACK STYLE IN THE FACE OF ARAB-ON-ARAB TERRORISM: IF ONLY SPORTS COULD SIMPLIFY EVERYTHING.
Filed under: Basketball, Bread City, Denver Nuggets | Tags: Gang Signs, J.R. Smith, Mark Kiszla, Racism in sports
Dear Editors:
Re: J.R. a fool in danger of losing it all, published Wednesday, June 13th.
What right does Mr. Kiszla have to question whether or not J.R. Smith is sorry that Andre Bell, his close friend, died in that car accident? The suggestion that Smith is such a monster that he could not care, and the further stipulation that this is because of rap music, is far beyond offensive.
For a so-called journalist to mock Smith and Bell by suggesting that they would have somehow preferred it if Bell had died “outside a seedy strip club at 3 a.m., the way it would go down in a rap song,” is tantamount to slander.
Mr. Kiszla’s goes on to focus his ire on the lack of a public apology from J.R. Smith, but it is unclear why he thinks any sports writer needs or deserves a personal statement of regret from the 21-year-old basketball player on the day after this tragedy.
It also unclear is why, to Mr. Kiszla, a car accident is an indication that “Smith is a gangsta wannabe who got lost in a dangerous game of make-believe.” (There were approximately 6,420,000 reported car accidents in the United States in 2005.) Why Mr. Kizla thinks that it is acceptable to write this in a major newspaper is a much greater mystery.
Mr. Kiszla does not bother to back up a single one of these provocative statements, or bother to explain what any of them could have to do with Smith’s close friend’s untimely death: that Smith “tried so hard to live the lyrics of a rap song,” that Smith “flashed gang signs after making 3-point shots” (he holds up three fingers), or that “Smith was too busy drowning in a culture bigger than himself to figure out what he wanted to be when he grew up.”
Worse than just being an unwarranted personal attack, Mr. Kiszla’s article draws the journalistic integrity of the entire Denver Post into question.
I hope that Mr. Kiszla and the Denver Post will realize the gravity of this situation, and issue an apology to both J.R. Smith and to their readers.
Filed under: Art, Basketball, Bread City, Endangered Aesthetics, Madison Square Garden, New York Knicks | Tags: Art History, Basketball Art, Jumbotron Art, Madison Square Garden, New York Knicks
JUMBOTRON ART IS THE NEXT GREAT AMERICAN AESTHETIC ON THE CHOPPING BLOCK!
Filed under: Basketball, Bread City, Photography, Politics | Tags: Basketball Archeology, Basketball Culture, Zapatistas
A common feature of Zapatista gatherings—along with food, dance, music, and fireworks—is basketball. Both male and female ski-masked participants populate the basketball court while more senior level Zapatista commanders (including both women and men) meet in nearby tents.
-Charles Fruehling Springwood, Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 30 (2006): 364.
The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (ELZN) is a revolutionary group active in Mexico since 1994, when they tried to overthrow the Mexican government. When the coup failed, they established a base in Chiapas and focused their attention on creating a microcosm of a new Mexican society. In the Zapatista model, individual communities are responsible for their own sustainability and defending themselves, and the government has minimal influence over the country’s resources. The Zapatistas, who are mostly indigenous Mexicans, are not a political party; they want to reconceptualize the entire Mexican political system. Though armed, they have abstained from using their weapons since the 1994 uprising, and they give liberal arts students and Rage Against The Machine fans huge boners.
Photo by Bastian
Filed under: Animation, Basketball, Bread City, Video | Tags: 1980s Aesthetics, 1980s NBA, Basketball History, Video Art
1980′s FINALS TECHNOLOGY!
For some reason 75% of my hits come from OJ Simpson image searches. Who am I not to give the people what they want?
