Streetball

I don’t think streetball would be the right term, Streetball would be better off defined as those unorganized and spontaneous basketball games in urban back alley courts. Last weekend, the neighborhood gangs held a basketball tournament using this wide open space which is unfortunately the road outside our house as their court. I think this is more of a traffic nuisance movement than a streetball game.

The road outside our house is one of the key roads around the city, two of the bigger downtown malls is connected to this road and a hospital right on the on the other end. It did piss a lot of motorist over the weekend for the trouble of going around another block just to let a bunch of punks play ball in the road.

Saturday night I waited for a friend to pick me up at our house to go have some beers. I stood outside our driveway waiting and watching the crowd the road court blockade brought. I felt some of them weren’t there for the thrill of the game, but rather for this triumphant mood of invading the road even just for a weekend. Seemed like a peasant uprising because its not everyday that these kind of people can have the glory of claiming the road for themselves.

Amidst complaints, the streetball roadblock was legally absolved because of some silly permit they got from the traffic police. I think it was plain ridiculous for the traffic police to give out such permits to mess traffic which is completely contradicting to their mandate. If they wanted to promote goodwill and friendship and all that crap and celebrate humanity through sports plus sore loser brawls after the game, there are a lot of other public ball courts around the city to herd these road raiders to play in. But hey isn’t what roads are for anyway? And they aren’t the traffic police for nothing.