In the days before Xbox, MySpace, iPhones and High Definition TV, Queens, N.Y. native Ray Romano and his friends entertained themselves as kids by playing stick ball with a broom handle, using manhole covers as bases, and other classic street games that few kids even know about today.
“You were your own Nintendo,” says Romano in the new documentary, New York Street Games, an in-depth look at the street games city kids played all over the country for decades, particularly in New York City. “Ahhh, those were the days.”
One of Romano’s favorite games was the popular Johnny on a Pony, in which kids formed a human bridge by standing in a line and bending over, while others jumped on top of the “pony” their friends created. “Johnny on a Pony was a lot of fun,” Romano says in the film. “Unless you got hurt. I could play that once now and I would be in the emergency room.”
Romano joins other celebrities including Joe “Joey Pants” Pantoliano, Regis Philbin, Robert Klein and narrator Hector Elizondo, who share their favorite childhood moments playing outside in the streets of New York City. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of the New York Street Games DVD and Rule Book (the rules for 13 different games) will go to Kaboom, which builds playgrounds and play spaces for kids.
The film also explores the social and cultural significance of games like Stickball, Chinese Handball, Hopscotch, Boxball, Punchball, Stoopball, Ring-o-leavio and Skully, the sense of community they created in urban settings — and what is going on in society today that has caused these games to become part of a foregone era.
Romano and the other celebrities in the documentary were more than happy to share their childhood experiences with the world, says the film’s director, Matt Levy, 43 (below, left). “As soon as Ray found out about it, he said, ‘I’m in.’ I interviewed him for three hours about his life as a child playing street games. Ray couldn’t stop talking.”
Romano and the other stars talked about how every day, no matter the season, they gathered outside to figure out what to do with their free time, whether throwing tiny pink Spalding balls against the wall or seeing how far a bottle cap could skitter across the street. Elizondo recalls how family members and neighbors often kept an eye on their young charges from their apartment windows, often propping their elbows on pillows and whistling for their kids when it was time to come in. “There were the uniformed police and then there were the aunts, uncles, mothers and grandmothers,” says Elizondo.
The games children played in New York City, the country’s largest and most diverse city, and other urban areas, were passed down from generation to generation, starting at the beginning of the 19th century. “I don’t think we made them up,” says Pantoliano. “We inherited them.”
Levy, who grew up in the Bronx playing stickball and Johnny on a Pony, made the film to remind people of the legions of street games that are an oft-forgotten part of American culture.
“Six or seven years ago, I had a conversation with an old buddy and said, ‘Remember the games we used to play when we were kids?’” says Levy, now a Los Angeles-based director and producer. “I was like, ‘There’s a story there.’ I thought the world needs to know that the games we used to play outside were a common thread amongst New Yorkers and people over the age of 33. A vast majority of these games came from New York. But kids back then played a lot of these games all over the country. People have said to me over and over, ‘I grew up in Wisconsin, Chicago, Miami and I played these games when I was growing up.”
He also made the film to help encourage parents to let their kids go outside and experience all the benefits of playing. “When I grew up in the 70s and 80s, we were outside all day long, playing different things,” explains Levy. “We ran around being kids. Today’s kids don’t have the opportunity to be kids. Kids don’t really go outside and play anymore. You’re doing your kids a disservice if you keep them inside all the time.”
Levy says he loved playing stickball, “a lot of times against the wall at PS 106 or at St. Raymond’s Church in the Bronx,” he says. “I learned these games from other kids. I’m a huge Yankees fan and used to pretend I was Mickey Mantle. We also used to play Johnny on a Pony. I was a flier — the skinny kid who could jump and fling myself in the air and land on the other kids.”
The Many Benefits of Play
Playing helps sharpen kids’ social skills and teaches them how to negotiate and how to win and lose — without adult involvement, which is difficult in a time when many kids are overscheduled with after-school activities and play dates arranged by parents.
“I wanted to show kids and parents today that there is an age of innocence that we need to get back to,” says Levy. “We really need to let our kids [go] outside to play. Parents need to stop controlling everything for their kids. Kids need to go out and play and scrape their knees and figure out how to avoid doing that again. If you never let a kid near a hot stove, he won’t learn to avoid touching the hot stove. Kids today don’t have as many opportunities to learn right from wrong. They’re not out playing.”
Parents today fear “pedophiles and murderers,” which is why they are hesitant to let their kids run around outside by themselves. “There is a fear factor in this country that is blown way out of proportion,” he says. “The country is safer than ever these days. It’s no more dangerous now than it was back then. Parents have more information about where sex offenders live in their communities. There were pedophiles and murderers back then, but people didn’t know so much about it.”
A lack of free play has serious social consequences, especially with this generation of kids sitting in front of the TV or computer so much of the time, he says. Playing teaches kids how to be inventive and creative, and how to communicate and work things out, he says.
“I grew up in New York City in a different time,” says Levy. “If you are from one of the five boroughs, there was a thread that ran through every single one of us — the commonality of community, of kids being kids and the games we played outside. Our childhoods were basically all the same. There were generational gaps, but there wasn’t a generation gap like there is now.
“Today, kids have video games and cell phones. They watch hours of TV. Don’t get me wrong. I love my iPhone. I love the technology we have today. But if I want to have an important conversation with you, I’m not going to text you. I’m going to talk to you in person. Right now, the technology that kids have access to, coupled with parents keeping their kids inside is cutting off communication.”
One of the stories Ray Romano tells in the film is about how his son and his girlfriend texted each other all summer long, says Levy. “But when they got back to school, he said they didn’t know what to say to each other in person because they had been texting so much. They were too shy to talk face to face.”
Playing keeps kids healthy. “Playing is good for you physically,” he says. “If you don’t let kids run around and just be kids, all that sitting around inside can lead to childhood obesity and childhood diabetes. Howell Wechsler of the Centers for Disease Control and Protection did a study and found that since 2000, one in three children will either develop Type 2 diabetes in childhood or in their lifetimes. One in three! That’s significant. In this country, 20 percent of kids are obese today.”
The New York Street Games DVD and Rule Book, which is available at Nystreetgames.com, is a great gift for anyone in your life. Says Levy: “It’s more than a gift because it sends such a positive message.”
While playing can help kids stay healthy, learn about life and even get smarter, most of all, playing is fun. “Playing is instinctual — and not just in humans. Puppies play. Even fish play. Let your kids go outside and play,” he says. “Let your kids be kids!”
Facts from the New York Street Games website about the benefits of play:
The Play Deficit
- Youth between the ages of 8 and 18 spend an average of 6.5 hours a day with electronic media, more than 45 hours a week. (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2005 and 2006)
- The area outside of the home that parents feel comfortable letting their children play unsupervised has shrunk by 90 percent since the 1970s. (Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv, April, 2005)
- Children in low-income households are estimated to spend 50 percent more time watching television than their more affluent peers. (B. M. Miller, S. O’Connor, S. W. Sirignano, and P. Joshi, 1996)
- Kids, especially those in low-income communities are spending 40 hours a week with electronic media. (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2005)
- 30 percent of third-graders had fewer than 15 minutes of recess a day. (Pediatrics, January 2009)
Kids Who Play Are Healthier
- More than 24 percent of US children ages 2 to 5 are overweight or obese. (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, December 2009)
- More than 31 percent of all children in the US are obese or overweight. (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, January 2010)
- Obesity related issues tallied $147 billion in medical costs in 2008. (CDC, July 2009)
- 89 percent of pediatricians believe play helps kids from becoming overweight. (Harris Interactive, 2005)
- Children with a park playground within 1 km were almost five times more likely to be classified as being of a healthy weight compared to those children without playgrounds in nearby parks. (Journal of Public Health, October, 2008)
- A study of 1,800 middle school students found that the more physical fitness tests children were able to pass, the better they performed on academic tests. (Pediatrics, January 2009)
- Play builds active, healthy bodies… encouraging unstructured play may be an exceptional way to increase physical activity levels in children, which is one important strategy in the resolution of the obesity epidemic. (Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 2005)
Kids Who Play Are Smarter
- 90 percent of teachers and 86 percent of parents believed that physically active children are better able to learn and are better behaved in the classroom. (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 2003)
- A study that followed 11,000 children and found that kids who received at least 15 minutes of recess every day were better behaved in school. (Pediatrics, January 2009)
- Studies indicate that children with ADD and ADHA showed fewer symptoms after playing outside in “green” environments. (Taylor, Kuo, & Sullivan, 2001 and Kuo & Taylor, 2004)