For most of my adult life basketball was very important to me! aaaa
On an average Saturday afternoon or a workday with daylight left after work, I would get antsy at home. I would put on my beat up basketball shoes and head for my local court.
It was my exercise, my therapy, my relaxation and a good part of my social life!
Growing up
It surprises me to think about this, but I hardly played basketball with my buds in high school. We did all the dorky things high school boys do, but hanging out at the hoops court was not a big thing for me!
College Dorm Days
The hoops passion came on me during my lonely sophomore year in Lowell House.
Harvard freshmen live all together in the Freshman dorms, which are those lovely three-story brick buildings in Harvard Yard that you always see in any Harvard movie or video. Lovely, but there’s no place to play ball! There were no athletic facilities in Harvard Yard, and besides I was too busy figuring out life at the big-time university!
At the end freshmen year, students are sorted into the nine Houses (very reminiscent of the Sorting Hat in Harry Potter :). I chose to go to Lowell House. This was still the era that Harvard Houses were all boys. Radcliffe girls lived in Radcliffe dorms.
Literally across Holyoke St from Lowell House was an un-lovely college gym with the un-lovely name of Indoor Athletics Building (IAB for short) which became my home away from home! 🙂
In the dark of a Massachusetts winter afternoon I would put on in my hoops clothes (gym shorts and beat-up t-shirt) and a hoodie, and pick my way through the slush in my un-waterproof Converse high tops and hop Holyoke Street to the IAB and play myself into a puddle of sweat.
It was my therapy. There is lotta stress dealing with Harvard – thinking about term papers, about tests and grades, about girls you were never gonna meet, and that were too cool to talk to you even if you did, … but when I got on the court none of that mattered!
College Off Campus Days
For my last senior year me and my soon-to-be wife moved to a lovely little block of apartments called Terry Terrace (lol :), off campus across the street from Harvard Law School on Everett Street. The Law School gym was very close, and my undergraduate Harvard card got me in, so I was able to continue using hoops as my escape from it all. Refining my game, such as it was 🙂
Law school dudes were quite a bit more intense than the undergrad dudes at the IAB. It was great fun!
We stayed in Cambridge and lived at Terry Terrace for an extra year. I got a job writing software for a Psych professor while I figured out out whether I wanted to go to Psychology grad school or Computer Science grad school.
I spent a lot of that year at the Law School gym deciding! 🙂
The decision was that Comp Sci at the U of Maryland College Park was the place for me!
University of Maryland
For the three years I was studying at the U of Maryland we lived in a 12-th floor apartment in a high-rise in Adelphi MD. It wasn’t much of a neighborhood, so I did all my playing at the U.
On nice days I played outside with whatever student riff-raff was there.
I don’t recall having particular basketball friends, I just showed up and played with whomever was there.
On crappy days and when I wanted a better game, I played indoors at the gym.
I have a strong memory of seeing Len Elmore there, where he was treated like the celebrity he was.. He graduated from the U of Maryland in 1974, so it all fits. To be clear I never played on the same court as Len 🙂
I got my Masters in Computer Science in 1974 and sent out my resumes!
Court behind our apartment on Kentucky St
My first entry into the real world of full-time work forever was at the United States Census Bureau, located out in the southeast Maryland suburbs in Suitland MD. We cleverly opted for the reverse commute, living on Capitol Hill downtown and commuting outward to the suburbs.
We first lived at 225 Kentucky Avenue SE for almost a year. We were in a second floor apartment with a tiny landing on the fire escape where we could open the door and get a little through breeze. There was an inner city elementary school behind us with some crappy little basketball courts
I would open that door, check out the court and hustle down there if nobody is playing. We only lived there less than a year, butI can still remember standing on the back fire escape checking out the action on the court!
Eastern Market court
We left the Kentucky St apartment so we could move into our fancy-but-run-down four story row house on East Capitol St SE! aaaa
Inside out
My version of basketball heaven!!!
This was my most intense basketball time. I was late-20, early 30’s so I had as much energy as I was ever going to have! Every Saturday I would have my coffee then dribble through the alleys and streets (or ride my old clunker bike) down to the full court at Eastern Market.
North County San Diego hoops…
Then life happened, and a company moved me and the family from DC to North County San Diego! We again rented from someone for a while until we found a place to buy, but I was in the full local hoops scene the whole time!
This is a small thing but meaningful to me at the time: San Diego still had an NBA team when we moved there!! The Clippers left later in the 80’s, but there were a couple of years when I could and did cruise down i-5 to the Sports Arena and watch Clips games!
The little hardware company that moved us to Encinitas kind of imploded after a couple of years, and I went to work for the fellow that sold them their graphics software. The importance of that here is that for the rest of the time we lived in So Cal I worked at home! (woo!)
Glen Park in Cardiff
The court pictured below became my home away from home!
It was a super simple and scenic drive from our little neighborhood:
- East on Encinitas Blvd to
- south on Manchester Ave.
- Manchester hugs the edge of San Elijo Lagoon under I-5 and around the corner to where
- it becomes San Elijo Avenue
- Cardiff Beach and the Cardiff little restaurant row is on your left
- San Elijo straightens out to parallel the railroad tracks and the Coast Highway on the left
- and within two blocks you are at Glen Park!
A short and scenic and never crowded drive to get to this little slice of heaven!
It truly was 40 years ago when I was here 3,4,5 days a week, 1986 to 2026! I am very happy that the court looks basically as it id back then. Possibly a little better maintained today!
Just a single, non-regulation sized full court. No extra hoops on the side, no frills. The backboards are the tacky elementary school style with the rounded edges.
So this is not the place to practice your fall-away rainbow three-point bank shot, because that part of the backboard is missing!
But you can (or as least I can) feel the love that the locals have for this court by how perfectly it is maintained.
As I recall they mostly played very intense half court games. The right hand court, closer to the beach, was the “main event” court. With the short length and the cheesy backboards, full court just didn’t seem like the thing.
I could pop over any time after noon and have a decent change of someone being there. By 4:00, almost certainly enough bodies for a 3 on 3. I think we played 4 on 4 sometimes, but I won’t swear to that! 🙂
The newspaper guys
Looking back, what was even more meaningful is that most of the friends I made in So Cal were basketball buddies.
Encinitas Junior high full court
North to Marin County (90’s)
First place we found was a rental on the side of the hill in Corte Madera. The Town Park Playground basketball courts were right down the hill!
Court-wise this was a slight upgrade from Glen Park. A single full court, but a little closer to regularion dimensions and with a square plexiglass backboards like God intended basketball courts to have!
It was right down the hill from our house, and I was brand new to my company, so I had no work friends yet, so I spend a lot of time there.
Also, I played a bit in the funky little full court on Bee Street in Sausalito. Part of what attracted me to Autodesk was that I would show up for work in a cool building in Sausalito. Folks from the city coult take the ferry to work, it was pretty awesome,. Sadly though that lasted about two years before the moved to old boring San Rafael by the Civic Center.
The point here is that I hooked up with a crew of Adesk guys who would play at the Bee Street court!
Move to Larkspur
Then we bought a house in Larkspur a couple of miles away. We basically moved from a little south of the Town Park courts in Corte Madera to a little northeast of them in Larkspur. So that remained my go-to weekend court.
Playin with my Autodesk homies
Now that I’m back at a real company I have a real schedule! I have to show up at the workplace in the morning and stay all day! sigh…
But as time went on I played a lot more with my work buddies from Autodesk.
More at lunch than the arternoon, people wanted to go home in the aternoon. Any also we had a team in the local San Rafael Parks league. We weren’t very goo, but it sure was fun!
Choose a condo in Reno facing a park with two full courts
When I was deciding where to live in Reno, the fact that there was a park with two full courts that I could see through the trees from my 3d floor deck was a Big Deal in my decision-making!
I played there quite a bit in my first few years there, but as I got older the charm wore off.
The dudes that played there weren’t very good or very likeable for that matter.
Reno time I’m getting older
Played at my court quite a bit at first.
(did I play at the gym?)
the gym
the three years I went to U of Maryland
Basketball was a BIG part of my life until somewhere around in my late 50’s after the Istanbul surgery when I just couldn’t hang with the kids any more and it wasn’t that fun any more.
I shoulda gone back to tennis at that point, but i didn’t. 🙂
Scouting Report on ME
- Strength – not even a little.
- Speed – average – I was usually not the slowest guy out there
- Endurance – pretty good.
I could hang in 3 on 3 games for as long as it took with anybody. - Court Awareness – top notch!
- Secret Ingredient – long arms!
So … I am not big or strong … nor quick or fast or coordinated but I process information quickly and my arms are longer than the average for a person of my height.
The latter is not a big deal in most life situations, but a hand that stretches and inch or so farther than you think it will can be helpful on the basketball court.
Hong Kong Interlude
Going through the steno pad that I used to keep track of our Tour of the Orient I found that I actually played local pickup basketball with the kids in the park not too far from our hotel. We were out exploring one day, and I noted a game that at the level where I could plausibly ask to play, so I went back the next day and did it. They were very nice and I held up my end by passing instead of shooting, paying attention to boxing out and all those little thing that make your teammates like you, and it was (I think) enjoyed by all concerned! 🙂
For most of my adult life, basketball was a pretty important part of my life. On a run-of-the-mill Saturday afternoon, or a run-of-the-mill workday with some daylight left after work, I would very likely hop out of the house and walk or drive to my local court. That was my exercise and a good part of my social life.
I intentionally said “adult life”, because I played very little in high school. As I remember it, it was not a “thing” to me at all!
Those lonely first couple of years at Harvard is where I got the bug. The unlovely building for undergrad indoor athletics had the very functional name Indoor Athletic Building, or IAB for short. It was literally across the street from Lowell House, so even in the winter I could just hop over there.
I am not athletic in any way.
I’m not fast, but was of probably average speed. There were some people I could outrun.
Ditto on quickness. I was at best average in those hand-slapping games one to one, but I like to think I was better than average at seeing which way things were going and getting to that loose ball just a little bit quicker than the other guy.
Strength – not even a little. Endurance – pretty good. I could hang with 3 on 3’s for four hours or so with anybody.
U of Md gym
Len Elmore!
Court behind us at Kentucky St
Eastern Market court
– my heaven!!!
Cardiff Park – go many hours…
Encinitas Junior high full court with the news guys
Other locals
Reno time I’m getting older
Played at my court quite a bit at first.
(did I play at the gym?)
the gym
stuff
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