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LES Residents Say Adult Kickball League Is Destroying NYC
By
Ben Yakas
Published Jun 5, 2013
Modified Jun 5, 2013
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Jun 5, 2013
Modified Jun 5, 2013
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Forget homelessness, forget stop-and-frisk, forget income disparity and the lack of affordable housing. The biggest crisis facing NYC on June 5th, 2013 is the scourge of adult kickball: "I have lived in the neighborhood when there were gangs running around, heroin, but this is one of the most annoying, obnoxious things,” Karen Gehres, a Lower East Side resident for more than 30 years, told DNAInfo. Adult kickball: it's worse than heroin!
Gehres, who has lived across from P.S. 142 for the last five years, is spearheading a campaign to shut down the adult kickball league that uses the school's courts at Delancey and Attorney Streets most weeknights and every Saturday. "It is a very frat-house behavior," she said. "I don't want to insult children and say it is childish — these are adults screaming, trying to relive their youth or something."
Her husband explains that between the howling and the lights, the league has ruined their summer evenings: "First, it started off two or three years ago with a few grown-ups playing," explained Gehres' husband Phil Penman. "Then, slowly it became stadium lighting, adults screaming their heads off, and it got later and later. Sometimes they play until 10 or 11 at night." The horror.
We spoke with Kevin Dailey, the commissioner of Brooklyn Kickball, who said that he had never had a noise complaint problem in his neck of the woods: "There is nothing different about kickball from any other league in terms of noise. Regardless of whether people respect kickball as a sport or not, people are just trying to recreate."
Dailey did note that his league plays at night "across the street from a dormant high school, where many fields buffer us from residents." But they seem to get along with other locals: "Our league is successful because we haven't bothered anybody," Dailey concluded. "This sounds like one of those, 'selfish drunken hipsters ruining the quality of life for everyone else,' one of those BS stories."
None of which solves Gehre's problem: "This goes on from the minute the weather is nice — you can't open your windows or hear yourself think in your own apartment," she said, noting that she wants the league to move to East River Park, or somewhere not near her apartment. "I didn't save for that long for somewhere I can't even open up the windows."
If you too believe in Gehres' cause, she'll be presenting her argument to Community Board 3 on Thursday. Or if you don't want to be an incredulous party-pooper, you can always play Solitaire indoors.
Tagged
adult kickball league
kickball
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Lower East Side
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Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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