Sporting Observations: Let’s Take It Back to 89
I’m 28, so in 1989, I was eight. I spent a good chunk of my eight-year-old time running my eight-year-old frame around the St. Francis Xavier church parking lot in a neighborhood called Black Rock on Buffalo’s northwest side. I was playing street hockey. Maybe you were doing the same where you grew up.
That’s not me in the picture above – that’s a photo of a guy named Wayne that I found on Flickr, but it looks more or less right. Except those sunglasses. We could never have pulled those off. And we didn’t use rollerblades; we ran around like cavemen. I’d like to say that’s because we were all skaters and weren’t trying to mess around with any corny rollerblades, but I only knew two skate kids in my neighborhood. No rollerblades wasn’t really a conscious choice – we just didn’t have any. And that looks like California or something, whereas Black Rock looked (and still looks) like this:
But otherwise, you get the idea.
Street hockey was fun as hell. Somebody – I lived in a neighborhood with a lot of kids, so I forget who – but somebody had a beat-up pair of the old leg pads, which were basically two pieces of foam, each with a tan plastic covering on one side and two sets of straps on the back. If you were playing net, you’d strap those on, put on an equally busted blocker pad and your baseball glove and some dude’s catcher mask, then zip up your hoodie or put on this thick, sweaty Mets satin starter jacket reserved for goalie use, and you were good to go.
Most of the time there was just one net, so you’d have to take the small orange plastic ball out past a clear line when your team got possession. Our passing was rudimentary and shooting was worse, but that didn’t stop any of us from loudly identifying ourselves as Alexander Mogilny (“MOGILNYYYYYYYY!”) after getting a ball through. There was typically some scuffling in front of the goalie – usually the bigger, older kids, as I remember – while little dudes like me just ran around the perimeter. We were also the primary ball-retrievers when someone smacked a clearing attempt out into East Street, which was often.
Man, I loved it. We didn’t play hockey as much as we played football, for a variety of reasons. Football required far less equipment and a few less people, and was a better fit when the snow got deep. The Bills were solidly in their golden years, too, so our sporting imaginations were hijacked by those heroes. But I really enjoyed the hell out of running around playing street hockey. That scene in Clerks felt real familiar to me when I saw it in the theater with my dad years later, even though it was older dudes playing. Same with Wayne’s World – which, weirdly, I also saw in the theater with the old man.
Anyways, I was sitting on my couch last night drinking beer and watching hockey when I was suddenly attacked by the wave of nostalgia that I’ve indulgently aired out here. Once I shook off the memories, I remembered that I’m 28, that I have a job and a paycheck and no rules, so I could go ahead and cop myself a street hockey net if I really felt like it, or even if I just kinda felt like it but was drunk on the internet. And pads, and a stick, and all that shit.
And so I checked it out. The nets are the same, but here’s what the state of the art looks like now for balls (haha):
And now Reebok makes crazy-ass pads for super serious street hockey combat. Look at this shit:
Whoa. Anyways, given that I live in the country’s biggest city and I’m sure I’m not the only dude who remembers street hockey being fun, I could probably google “street hockey league brooklyn” and find a hyper-competitive set of bros to relive long-gone eight-year-old glory with me every Tuesday night at 7. But I know it won’t be the same, for a billion reasons. Besides, fuck all that.
Still, I’m gonna go to the store this weekend and look at some sticks.
- Caps
December 10th, 2009 at 11:31 pm
Dude excellent post. Perfectly captured it. Those were the good old days, I can relate. I spent a huge chunk of time dangling benders and sniping tenders back in the day. @bmose14
December 11th, 2009 at 12:45 am
oh man. Death Adders Street Hockey League. No pads, no skates.
December 11th, 2009 at 2:28 am
make double sure you got the MYLEC cold weather ball. i’ve been foiled too many winters prior.
p.s. thanks. i share in your adolescent bask.
p.s.s. i was a young harold snepsts (detroit)
December 11th, 2009 at 9:36 am
Caps: you know there is a Black Top Hockey League that plays in the LES. I always try to get people to join wth me but i never have much luck… and the league has never been open to letting us introduce our own Mishka sponsored team.
December 11th, 2009 at 9:48 am
Great post. Really reminds me of our winters here in Saskatchewan. Except we ran around on a road covered in a sheet of ice. I can remember having people play net and using both a left and right baseball glove with no stick, glove saves were always the highlight of being in net anyways.
December 11th, 2009 at 10:20 am
My brother and I did the same thing…..except it was a few years later in ’94 and were lived in the south where hockey was an alien sport at the time. We also didn’t have many friends since we were military brats in a time when there weren’t a lot of military brats, so we played 1-on-1 on an old tennis court. We had goals that our dad helped us custom make out of PVC pipe and military netting. My brother is 6 years older than I am and could skate so he played on roller blades while I just “ran around like a caveman”. This post brought back a lot of good memories man. What I wouldn’t give to be that close with my brother again 16 years later.
December 11th, 2009 at 11:05 am
Man, thanks for the comments dudes. I’m real happy you guys hear me on this. A DASHL would be fuckin rad. PVC pipe FTW.
December 11th, 2009 at 11:15 am
I’m late to the game, but I really enjoyed the post. Always a success to make a reader feel like he’s known you for years and years. I am an evil California kid who grew up in private school with divorced parents, so the only real neighborhood sports i got as a child was akin to sitting inside and reading The Amazing Spider-Man…but you made me feel like I was there.
December 11th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Hey, California kids are awesome. No shots against CA intended in the post, and thanks for the kind words Hateball. Glad you dug it.
Coincidentally, the Chicago Blackhawks are in Buffalo tonight to play the Sabres tonight, which means hometown hero and cabbie-abuser Pat Kane is back to play against his childhood street hockey rival and fellow Buffalo native Tim Kennedy. Both Kennedy and Kane grew up in South Buffalo, right around the corner from each other, and now they’re both in the league. Good article about the street hockey they used to play as kids against each other in the paper today:
http://www.buffalonews.com/sports/story/890329.html
Couple good excerpts:
“Every weekend, there would be a game in a parking lot or along one of the tree-lined side streets in South Buffalo. They were just a group of kids without a clue where hockey would lead them as they played morning until night, through all the arguments and fights and bloody noses and swearing over the score.”
“Kane’s punishment [for punching the cabbie] was handed down in his own neighborhood. Apparently, the front lawn of his parents’ home was littered with dimes after early reports said the dispute was over 20 cents.”
“It was in the church parking lots and narrow side streets that Kennedy and Kane unknowingly sharpened skills that carried them into the NHL. They were forced to handle the puck in small spaces and develop a quick release. No wonder both can stickhandle through three guys in a broom closet. Certain elements of their playing styles can be traced to their personalities and perhaps their backgrounds. Kennedy is the son of a Buffalo cop, Kane the son of a former car dealership owner and businessman. Jim “Digger” Kennedy and Pat “Tiki” Kane played against one another in the 1978 Explorer League championship game in which Kennedy and South Park beat McKinley.”
Haha I love that their dads played against each other.
Should be a good one tonight.
December 11th, 2009 at 11:41 pm
Mylec cold weather balls and jet-flo sticks were the shit. Realy captured the neon zeitgeist of the late 80s/early 90s. stepping on the blade to get just the right curve for top-shelf wrist shots…. In Mass. we used to buy the little foot-long souvenir hockey sticks at the baseball card store and bring them to school to play during recess with a hackey sack for a puck and backpacks for goals. whoever had the ball was instantly at a disadvantage because you had to run way hunched over for the stick to reach the ground, even at age 9. The seriously serious dudes would heat up their blades over the stove and curve them, but my folks weren’t having it so i played straight but was envious. I inexplicably rocked a North Stars stick and one from UMass Lowell, where my mom taught for a while and would take my brother and i to see ice hockey games. we played serious street hockey at summer camp, too, bringing our own sticks from home to avoid using the shitty plastic-shafted ones at Cedardale. Orange vs. Blue. One dude even brought his wooden ice hockey stick, as well as his goalie stick and pads (!) The instructor for a year or two was a dude named Cal who played for University of Maine and i actually went to a UMass Lowell/Maine ice hockey game later that year and saw him do his thing. I was conflicted as to which side i should cheer for.
December 15th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Man you Buffalonians are pretty much Canadian. Except you pronounce hockey “hyaykey”.
June 10th, 2010 at 1:32 pm
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