Name: Komron
Date:4/12/26
More than a game
When people usually go into a park, it’s a time to decompress and relax, sitting in nature and enjoying the sunset. When you walk into Booth Memorial park in fresh meadows, you will hear the loud screeching and sounds of a basketball bouncing on the concrete floor. People are arguing about a foul call made and whether or not it is a right call and every win matters as a loss would mean you waiting to play again after 5 different teams waiting to play next. This is the culture of my park, a competitive level where you would feel like you are playing for a championship every game. This park resembles unity in a different way as people from all ages come to this park to have a fun time playing competitively against one another.
There is never a time in the park where you would feel like the park is dead, from the early morning hours when teens come to shoot around before school starts, to the evenings when the adults get off of work to join pickup games. Everyone in the park comes together with their own purposes, whether it is to challenge themselves, improve their skills, or to enjoy playing a competitive game with their friends. The sounds of the basketball echoing off the concrete, the loud screeching and players shouting at each other whether it is to encourage or communicate with each other is what makes Booth Memorial a place of uniqueness. It’s loud, chaotic, but it also brings people together in a way that’s rare to see outside of a sports environment. It’s also not just about coming to play, there is always a crowd revolving around the park just watching the games go down. The most entertaining games happen at night, when people start wagering and playing 1v1 for money to determine who is a better player. Spectators get really involved as two sides have a lot of sidebets between each other and root for their player, trying to get into the opponents head and making him mess up so that they have the advantage for their player.
To really understand how my subculture works, one day I just sat down and watched the people play to really see from an outsider’s perspective of someone who just entered into the park. I wanted to capture every detail of how the park felt beyond just the basketball games being played. I noticed different things like the lights getting turned on when the sun started setting and the long shadows being casted across the cracked concrete, and also the very unique smell of the park, you can smell the hot concrete cooling down as the sun sets and the evening air arouses. That smell mixed with the scent of the sweat coming from the players to the leather of the basketballs and the smell of food from a nearby street cart.
When you are nearby the court, you can feel the intensity of the games when it’s being played. When a heavy player jumps up to grab a rebound and lands hard on the ground, you can feel a small shake on the pavement under your feet, and the sounds are non-stop. From the sounds of a missed shot hitting the metal rim, to the snapping of the chain nets, to the people constantly yelling. An author once wrote a book called Homo Ludens by Johan Huizinga and it talks about how humans play games. He mentions an idea called the “Magic Circle” which is a place where the normal rules of the real world stop and the rules of the game take over (Huizinga 10). This is similar to Booth Memorial park because outside of this park, these people are just regular people from students, office workers, delivery drivers, and so many more. But inside of the park, they are in the “magic circle” where the outside of the park does not matter, and only the game being played inside the park does.
The park also has its own insider language where if you first enter not knowing what’s going on, you might feel lost. Since there are no official referees in street basketball, the players make their own calls. Knowing the slang people use proves that you belong in this environment, but when you don’t, everyone knows you are not a familiar face on the court. The things I usually thought were normal actually felt more different when I was observing people playing. I watched a player drive to the basket, get hit by another gym, and miss his shot, then he yelled out he was fouled. The guy who was guarding him started to yell back at him.
“That’s a horrible call! You are going to have to shoot for that. Ball don’t lie!” When someone says “ball don’t lie” it means they believe that when the person making the call and they miss the shot to get the ball back, the basketball will reveal the truth. Other phrases said are things like “check up” which means to start the game and “I got next” which means that you are next in line to play with your team. To someone who just came here for the first time, all this yelling might look like people are constantly fighting, but this is just how the subculture of this park is. Instead of the polite and respectful rules of our regular society, they embrace a system where they like to argue things out to solve their own problems in a way where everyone agrees it should be solved.
People come to this park to play, but it’s also a place where people are all treated equally no matter the age or status someone has. Sociologist Ray Oldenburg created a theory called the “Third Place.” and he explains how people need a place to go that isn’t their home (the first place) and isn’t their work place or school (second place). A “third place” is a spot for people hanging out where everyone is equal, no matter how much money they make or what their job is. (Oldenburg 24)
While I was observing, I noticed something happening on the court that proved his theory was correct. A teenager who is probably around the age of 16 years old was yelling at a team full of grown men who are around in their 30’s or 40’s. He was telling them to hurry and get on the court and was also yelling at them when they made a poor play or played bad defense. In the real world, no grown adult would ever let a highschool kid order them around. But on the court, the age you are or the job you work at means nothing. The teenager was the best player on the team and that status alone is what gained you more respect rather than your money or your career job on the court.
Booth Memorial Park is more than just basketball, it is a very unique place where childhoods were born and where a very unique type of subculture took place. The arguments, yelling, and the sounds of the sneakers screeching on the floor, it could look like chaos to a complete stranger walking in, but this is a home to the people that have belonged there from the beginning. In a system where the world judges people based on their status of money and career, this court only cares about the skill you withhold and where everyone no matter your age is treated equally and fairly, as long as you know the rules of the game.

Works cited
Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. Beacon Press, 1971.
Oldenburg, Ray. The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community. Marlowe & Company, 1999.

AI transparency: I will admit that I did not know how to clearly do a works cited page in which I asked AI to help me with it and I did use a bit of an outline to clearly get my ideas together and structure my essay properly.