{"id":391,"date":"2026-06-06T11:39:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T11:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=391"},"modified":"2026-06-06T11:39:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T11:39:07","slug":"how-city-kids-used-to-play-on-the-streets-of-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=391","title":{"rendered":"How City Kids Used to Play on the Streets of New York"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>In the late nineteen-seventies and early eighties, photographers for the New York <em>Post<\/em> were sent scuttling around the city, loaded down with rolls of film, to look for a lot of different things: politics, sport, sometimes art, and, because it was the <em>Post<\/em>, mostly crime and celebrity. Photojournalists worked out of their cars, and, at the end of the day, brought their film back to the office to be developed under the eye of the photo editor at the time, a hard-nosed woman named Susan Welchman. In between assignments, they tried to take what were called weather shots, which were typically photos of the actual weather. Snow, sun, rain. Someone holding up an umbrella, or walking sadly along in the cold. They ran feature-size if the paper needed to fill a page.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=389\">How the War in Iran Is Transforming the Global Economy<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>The photographer Martha Cooper was a staffer at the <em>Post<\/em> at the time. She had moved to New York a few years earlier, into a city on the brink of bankruptcy. It was the New York of headlines like \u201c<em>FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD<\/em>,\u201d where more people were moving out than moving in. Cooper worked a lot on the Lower East Side. When her photos came out of the darkroom\u2014a process that the staff called souping\u2014her weather shots often featured abandoned lots, trash and rubble, and scenes of children playing and passing the time outside.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>Cooper, who is now best known as a groundbreaking photographer of New York\u2019s graffiti, expanded on those photos for a series called \u201cStreet Play,\u201d which is currently on display at the Bronx Documentary Center, as part of a retrospective of her work. In my mind, the archetypal vision of street play in New York comes from the opening of the Spike Lee film \u201cCrooklyn,\u201d which shows an idyllic afternoon of hopscotch, jumping rope, and spinning tops. The children of Cooper\u2019s photos play with bits of scrap wood nailed together. \u201cNew York had fallen on hard times,\u201d Cooper told me. \u201cPeople didn\u2019t really understand why I wanted to come here.\u201d One of her photos shows a trio of young kids crouched around carefully assembled bottles and one plastic tub. She gave it the beautifully depressing caption \u201cPlaying with water in bottles.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>A lot of the photos seem less like kids at play and more like kids at scavenge. They make worlds out of bed frames, bottlecaps, and broken wood. In one of my favorite images, six boys stand around, having a great time, holding what initially appear to be balusters detached from the handrail of some grand staircase. When I asked her about the photo, Cooper told me that the railings had actually come from a discarded crib, which was just as unexpected, if more poetically loaded. \u201cThat was just the Lower East Side,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was full of abandoned lots, and the lots were full of trash.\u201d In another photo, the chassis of a go-kart is constructed from a police barricade.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>Cooper\u2019s work recalls classic Tenement-era images of city dwellers making the most use of the city around them. One picture, of a child bouncing on a trashed mattress, has the verve and frozen dynamism of a Simone Biles action shot. Cooper catches the child in a full flip, folded like a pin, as if he\u2019s just rebounded from a sprung floor. I was curious how much Cooper knew about these children and what their lives were like. She told me they were mostly the children of recent immigrants and \u201cworking families who were struggling to make a living.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=387\">Why the American Novel Refused to Grow Up<\/a><\/p>\n<p>As we walked around the gallery, Marty Rogers, a local who helps run a community garden next door, wandered in and shook Cooper\u2019s hand. Rogers, who wore a blue Yankees cap and cargo shorts, had grown up in the Bronx in the sixties, playing many of the same street games. \u201cThis was our life, man,\u201d he said, pointing to a photograph of a boy holding a hollow tin can over a roaring fire hydrant. \u201cWe called that shooting the pump. You tried to control it like a rodeo.\u201d They played it on sweltering summer days. \u201cWhen it was hot, hot, hot, somebody opened the pump,\u201d Rogers explained. \u201cYou tried to hold it as long as you could. You could reach the second floor of a school with the arc.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>Right outside, Rogers said, had been what was called a playstreet. Some days, the police closed the block off from cars, and children came out to play stickball, and skelly, a game reminiscent of marbles. \u201cThese are games kids don\u2019t play anymore!\u201d Rogers said.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>\u201cDid you ever build a kart?\u201d Cooper asked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo, that was a little above our pay grade,\u201d he said. \u201cMy friends always say the same thing, \u2018I would give my right arm to grow up like that again.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>Earlier, I\u2019d asked Cooper what her favorite picture was in the series. It was one she\u2019d taken of a go-kart race down an abandoned stretch of the West Side Elevated Highway. Two groups of kids are screeching down the road. Other boys are sitting on the guardrail, or strolling and watching from a distance. It\u2019s otherwise empty\u2014just the kids and the road. Like almost all of Cooper\u2019s photos, the scene is fleeting, a remnant of a New York that no longer exists. That highway was demolished, and, though Cooper saved one of the go-karts, and exhibited it at the Museum of the City of New York, she wasn\u2019t able to keep it. In the seventies, when Cooper took these photos, she already knew that what she was seeing was temporary. \u201cI would drive around Alphabet City, and I would see these things,\u201d she said. \u201cBut they might last for a couple of hours. If I saw it one day, generally, it wouldn\u2019t be there the next.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=385\">Inside Phoebe Bridgers\u2019s Secret Show at Madison Square Garden<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Naaman Zhou writes about a retrospective of Martha Cooper\u2019s work, reflecting a bygone era of growing up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":390,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-photo-booth"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>How City Kids Used to Play on the Streets of New York - City Relocation News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=391\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How City Kids Used to Play on the Streets of New York - 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