Posts tagged The Pit

Follow the link to The Brooklyn Rail to see some photos too.

Mallets on Wheels
by Marianne Moore
The Brooklyn Rail
July, 2010

Sara D. Roosevelt Park on the Lower East Side has an odd, all-purpose play space at the center. It’s a sunken concrete shell, with markings at mid-court, metal railings, and benches along the tops of its shoulder-height walls. It might be ideal for basketball, kickball, or Tai Chi. Every Sunday and Thursday afternoon, it’s used for bike polo. Those who meet here in all weather for pickup games of three-on-three call it The Pit.

Bike polo is played with a hard rubber ball, the kind used in roller hockey, and improvised mallets. You saw off both ends of a ski pole and wrap one in hockey tape. To the other you bolt a small length of high-density polyethylene plastic pipe, the kind ConEdison uses for gas lines. You can use the wide part of the pipe, the part perpendicular to the shaft, to pass and handle the ball, but an actual goal shot must be made with the narrow end of the mallet, otherwise it’s called a shuffle and it doesn’t count. The only other rule in basic play is that you have to stay on your bike at all times. If you put a foot down, you ride to the side of the court and “dab back in.” The first time I watched the game, one player in particular kept on riding over to me and thwacking his mallet against the wall by my feet—I thought he was flirting with me.

I’d never seen or heard of bike polo before I wandered up to The Pit one evening, but it didn’t occur to me to describe what I was seeing in any other way. When I told people about it I said, “It’s exactly what it sounds like,” but of course that’s not quite true. Urban bike polo—also known as hardcourt bike polo—is always played on asphalt or concrete, usually at an unused playground. Hockey rinks are ideal, but those are hard to come by in New York. The landscape of the court can have a huge impact on the quality of the game.

The NYC Bike Polo League holds a practice in Brooklyn, in addition to the twice-weekly meetings at The Pit, on the playground of Junior High School 265 near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. It lacks The Pit’s concrete walls—instead, the space is surrounded by a high chain-link fence, and the ball often rolls out of bounds and into the dried leaves and trash at the bottom. It makes for a slower game when play has to stop so that someone can fish the ball out from behind a Pringles can, and regulars at the Brooklyn court tend to play less aggressively, taking softer shots and passing more, in order to keep the ball in bounds. For this reason, total beginners seem to prefer to get their feet wet in Brooklyn. I met Taylor Antrim, novelist, journalist, and raw polo rookie, at the Brooklyn practice (it was his second time ever). His first day on the court, he collided with a fellow player and knocked his glasses off. “I felt really badly about it,” he said. Taylor has yet to make a mallet—he has to find a ski pole first. “I looked in my parents’ attic, but I couldn’t find one. I’ll probably have to buy one on eBay,” he said. He thought for a minute. “Actually, I’ll probably have to buy two.”

The crowd at The Pit is bigger and rowdier. They’re intimidating to approach. It isn’t their clothing or tattoos—it’s their body language. They are frank and relaxed, completely at home. Sidling over to talk to them one Sunday afternoon, I felt like somebody’s kid sister. I asked a few lame questions; everybody told me I should go find Doug. Doug (Doug Dalrymple, six years playing bike polo, native to Ohio) was wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a fully naked woman. He’s handsome in an Ed Harris kind of way. When I asked him about the worst injury he’s ever gotten playing polo, he looked deeply offended. “Why would you even ask me that?” he wanted to know. He asked me if I’d ever been hurt; I admitted that when I was little I crawled into a chair and busted my head open. “Well, I think being a little kid and crawling into chairs is probably a lot more dangerous than bike polo,” he pronounced.

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