By 2014, Brooklyn had become, by at least one measure, the most unaffordable place to live in America: a household making the borough’s median income would need to spend 98 percent of its monthly earnings to pay the median monthly mortgage. In 2000, residents who made between $20,000 and $40,000 in salary spent 33 percent of their income on rent; by 2012, that figure had reached 41 percent. Brooklyn, as many longtime locals saw it, had less and less space for poor and working-class families. Brooklyn had become a brand. “The Coolest City on the Planet,” GQ magazine declared in 2011. There was a place called the Brooklyn Diner in Dubai and a snack booth called Williamsburg in a park in Moscow. Brooklyn, once perhaps the epicenter of the crack epidemic in America, had grown so distant from those years that local establishments had taken to commercializing the drug that once ravaged the borough’s communities. A Mexican restaurant, with locations in Williamsburg and Park Slope, made a special house dressing called “crack sauce”; a popular bakery, with locations in Williamsburg and Carroll Gardens, served a sweet gooey dish called “crack pie.”
New Brooklyn ate away at Old Brooklyn, and the gulf between the two worlds continued to grow. The median income in the borough’s richest neighborhood, Dumbo, was $140,000 higher than in Brownsville. The average life span of Borough Park residents was 83 years; for Brownsville residents, it was 74, the lowest in the city. In Brownsville, 61 out of every 10,000 children had been hospitalized for asthma; in Greenpoint and Williamsburg, 18. In Brownsville, 180 of every 100,000 residents were victims of nonfatal violence; in Park Slope and Carroll Gardens, 32. In Brownsville, eight of every 1,000 infants died before their first birthday; in Sunset Park, less than two. In Brownsville’s school district, just 61 percent of students graduated on time, the second-lowest rate of the city’s 55 districts.
All of which led to the fundamental question many Brownsville locals asked: Was it possible for a neighborhood to experience the benefits of development without longtime residents getting displaced? “I don’t think any neighborhood anywhere has shown how that can be done,” said Darren Johnston, a 32-year-old community activist.
Brownsville locals wanted a better neighborhood—nicer grocery stores, fancy bars, and outdoor cafes. Of the 25 restaurants along the neighborhood’s most-commercial avenues—Pitkin, Belmont, Mother Gaston, and Rockaway—not a single one offered sit-down service. “I’m ready for the change,” said Clyde, a Brownsville native whose son played on the Pee Wees. “I like to eat organic. I wanna be able to eat organic without having to go to Manhattan.” The neighborhood was headed in the right direction, he said. Twenty years earlier, he wouldn’t have felt safe at Betsy Head Park once the sun went down. “The lights would be busted and it would be dark and dangerous,” he said. “It’s so much safer now.” But progress in Brownsville was relative. As one local, paraphrasing Malcolm X, put it: “If you stick a knife nine inches in my back and then pull it back to six inches, can you call that progress?”
Brownsville’s housing projects meant that the neighborhood would remain a welcome place for tens of thousands of low-income residents. It also meant that the neighborhood would retain the problems that emerge when tens of thousands of people are crammed into poorly maintained and socially isolating facilities. In Chicago, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Memphis, Saint Louis, and Newark, city officials were tearing down housing projects and promoting mixed-income communities instead. Those cities had decided it was time to end the housing-project experiment of the twentieth century. Brownsville locals wondered how their ubiquitous brick towers would shape the neighborhood’s future. Would developers build restaurants and condominiums alongside the projects? Would the placement of expensive apartments alongside housing projects emerge as the new model of the seemingly mythical mixed-income community? Was this how development occurred with limited displacement? Or would the city sell the facilities to private developers to turn them into mixed-income apartments, as it had done in parts of Manhattan? Would working class families be driven out by rising rents and replaced by the young creative-class types who often mark the first stage of gentrification? Or would Brownsville just always remain a pocket of poverty and blight, skipped over for more shimmering land in Queens and the Bronx? “Brownsville has always been a place of experimentation,” said Johnston, the community activist. “If there’s a community that figures it out, maybe this is the one.”
THE FOLLOWING SATURDAY was cloudy, and Isaiah showed up to Betsy Head early. He had no other plans that weekend. A few years ago, he’d spent many weekends with his two closest friends, who lived several blocks from his apartment, just over the Brownsville border in Crown Heights. But one of the boys moved to Queens and the other to the Bronx. Their families could no longer afford Crown Heights.
Hart was second to arrive. The two boys sat on the long green bench and talked about basketball. A rotund 50-something man who went by Boonie overheard them as he walked by. He had seen Lance Stephenson play high school ball years ago, he told them, back when he was a prodigy from the Coney Island projects, an eighth grader hooping with Lincoln High’s varsity squad. Best player he’d seen come out of Brooklyn since Lenny Cooke, he said.
“Lenny Cooke was number one, but he wasn’t humble and didn’t work hard. Y’all remember that,” he imparted. “That was a different time, though. Brooklyn ain’t what it was then no more.”
The boys nodded absentmindedly.
“Do y’all know Lenny Cooke?”
The boys shook their heads.
“How old are you? Fifteen?” he said to Isaiah.
“Nah. Twelve.”
“Twelve! When you twice that age, this ain’t gonna be the hood,” Boonie said, sweeping an arm across the landscape. “No. It’ll just be vanilla walking all around.”
12
HELL WEEK
August 2014
THE HITTING HAD BEEN WEAK BEFORE ISAIAH AND OOMZ got a turn. Isaiah picked up the football and dug his cleats into the dirt. It was a warm and clear August afternoon and the dust kicked up and drifted into Oomz, who stood facing Isaiah several yards away. Both boys wore helmets and shoulder pads, but while Isaiah wore padded football pants, Oomz wore basketball shorts. He’d forgotten to buy football pants. Today was the first day in pads and the rest of his teammates, who were lined up on either side of the tackling stage, had the foam cushions on their knees, thighs, and hips. At the start of practice, Hart had said to Oomz, “How you gon’ practice with no pads on your legs?” and Oomz had replied, “Don’t worry about it.” Oomz leaned forward, pulled the bottom of his shorts above his knees, and crouched down. He wore a relaxed, indifferent expression. Isaiah’s face was stoic, as if he were angry but trying to hide it. The park was quiet and their teammates could hear their shoulder pads rustling against the mesh jerseys as they rocked side to side in anticipation.
“Been waiting for this all summer!” Esau shouted, clapping his hands and nodding his head vigorously. “Set! Go!”
Isaiah jogged forward, the ball in his right arm, and Oomz chopped his feet, his hands at his sides like a gunslinger. Isaiah accelerated, faked to the left then cut to the right. Oomz didn’t buy the fake. He shuffled sideways to meet Isaiah and Isaiah lowered his shoulder and braced for impact. Oomz crouched down lower and thrust forward, and when the two boys hit, their bodies made a loud smack. Oomz wrapped his arms around Isaiah and drove him to the ground, his back hitting with a thump, and a thick cloud of dust puffed into the air and engulfed the two boys.
“Ooooohh!” their teammates roared, jumping up and down.
“There you go!” Esau said.
“That’s the sound I’ve been waiting to hear!” Andrell said.
Oomz was smiling when he stood up. He helped Isaiah off the ground and Isaiah tapped him on the helmet and said, “Good hit, boy!” Oomz giggled and tapped Isaiah back on the helmet.
“You gon’ let him do you like that, Isaiah?” Andrell said. “Good shit, Oomz!”
“Y’all want some more?” Esau said to t
he two boys. “Run it back.”
They lined up and barreled toward each other again. Oomz’s helmet hit Isaiah’s chest with a smack louder than the first, but this time the collision rocked Oomz backward and Isaiah surged forward, falling onto his stomach as Oomz dragged him down.
“There you go Isaiah! That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout!”
Oomz hopped to his feet, shook his head, and slapped his hands together.
“One more time!”
The third time, their hit was louder than the first two—“Ooooohhhhh!”—and it knocked dust from their jerseys. On impact, their crouching bodies straightened up, chest to chest, legs churning, in a stalemate. Oomz couldn’t knock Isaiah off his feet and Isaiah couldn’t shake Oomz’s grasp. After a few seconds, Isaiah slapped Oomz on the helmet, “Yeah, boy!”
“’Bout time I see some damn hitting out here!” said Esau.
“Glad they both on our team,” said Hart.
“How you feel, Oomz?” said Andrell.
Oomz smiled wide, then said softly, “Good.”
The back of his purple jersey and all of his silver shorts were brown with dirt. He pulled his helmet off, took a knee, and dusted the dirt from his sleeves and shorts. Isaiah walked over to him and wiped the dirt from his back, and then Isaiah turned around and Oomz wiped the dirt from Isaiah’s back.
The fathers standing along the fence clapped for the performance.
“Good hit, kids!” Marquis’s father, Ramsey, bellowed. “That’s how you supposed to hit!”
“Both ways good hit!” shouted Dorian’s father, Dwight. “Makin’ some noise now.”
Isaiah and Oomz had sparked an excitement that now hovered over the field with the dust. It was an excitement familiar on fields across the county: the hitting had finally begun, which meant the season wasn’t far off. At every level of football, the first day in pads marked the start of Hell Week, a late summer ritual of rigorous hitting and running, enough hitting to get the body used to contact again and enough running to chisel the body into condition for the season––enough to pare a team down to its toughest parts. Heads would ache and bodies would bruise. Legs and lungs would burn. Boys would pray that the eighth or ninth 50-yard sprint would be the last, and then their hearts would drop when their coach said, “Set!” and blew the whistle again. Coaches would blow the whistle over and over, so many times that every last kid would think about quitting, would question his love for the game and wonder how much he was truly willing to sacrifice for this punishing sport. The boys would fall to the grass, sucking air, chests heaving, splashing water on their faces, groaning, too tired to talk but silently thinking Fuck this shit. And then their coach would tell them to get their asses up and get back on the line because water break was over and it was time for 100-yard gassers, and if everybody doesn’t make it across in 18 seconds, the whole team’s gotta run it again. And when practice was finally, mercifully over, they would pray that the next day would be easier, fully knowing that it would, in fact, be harder. But when the week was finished, they would know that those who made it through were now forged together through this fire.
On fields across the country, there was hope that the efforts through the long spring and hot summer months would yield wins in the fall. And on this hard, dusty field in Brownsville, Brooklyn, that hope mostly rested on the two boys wiping dirt from each other’s jerseys.
“Y’all two thunder and lightning!” shouted one father. “Bruise and cruise!”
“They don’t know what they in for when they step on the field with y’all,” another father shouted. “But soon they gon’ see what we seeing right now! They gon’ learn what we knowin’ right now!”
“This a big day,” said a third father. “First time Oomz and Isaiah went heads. And they did not disappoint! I’m gon’ remember this day!”
It was a big day and everybody at Betsy Head that Saturday afternoon would remember it, but for other reasons. That very hour, 1,000 miles west at an apartment complex in Ferguson, Missouri, a police officer shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown.
TO COACH CHRIS, the first day in pads was the most important practice of the year, and he woke up that morning feeling a rush of adrenaline. This was the practice when he would learn the most about “what kinda heart some of these kids got.” The moment a football player lined up for his first hitting drill was unique to the sport. “You see somebody hit a baseball: OK this kid can do this. You see somebody shoot a basketball: OK this guy can do it. In football, you can’t tell until you see people play. We’re gonna find out who responds to getting knocked down. Some guys quit.” Unlike in basketball, which required exceptional height, and in baseball, which required exceptional eyes or an exceptional arm, in football, a boy could advance through high school and college primarily through toughness and technique. The way Chris saw it, anybody could play football if they wanted it enough, but anyone who didn’t would wash out.
He’d seen tall, athletic boys who ran fast and acted tough all summer turn soft on the first day of hitting. He’d seen slow, clumsy, skinny boys who’d been afterthoughts all summer emerge as hard-nosed football players on the first day of hitting. There was no higher compliment from a coach than, “He’s a football player.” It denoted toughness, will, discipline, work ethic, desire, leadership—the most revered values in the sport. “Today is when we find out who’s a football player,” Chris said to Coach Gary before practice, as the Pee Wees lined up for shoulder pads, helmets, pants padding, mouth guards, and jerseys. The boys picked out their numbers: 2 for Isaiah, 7 for Oomz, 32 for Hart, 44 for Donnie, 4 for Chaka, 5 for Naz, 1 for Time Out, 21 for Marquis. As the boys put on their gear, they showed off the accessories they’d added. Hart had a neck roll. Isaiah wore a clear visor on his facemask. Time Out attached a back flap below his shoulder pads. Marquis had his nylon sleeves and colorful knee-high socks. One player joked that you could spot the best players on another team by their jersey numbers (single digits) and their accessories (the more the better). “’Cause if you can’t play you look like a fool wearing all that,” Esau explained. Oomz, though, kept a minimalist look. He wore a ratty T-shirt under his shoulder pads and old white tube socks that he folded down so that they wrapped the heels of his cleats.
“How you gon’ practice with no pads on your legs?” Hart said.
“Don’t worry about it.”
Chris called the boys over.
“It’s a good day!” he said, as they circled around him. “What a day! We gon’ learn a lot today. Now we gon’ really be playin’ football. Who’s excited? I’m real excited. We gon’ be hitting today. Y’all ready?”
“Yeah!” the boys replied in unison.
He paused and nodded his head, hands on his hips.
“Now—what’s the big national issue in football right now?”
“Concussions!” Hart and a few other boys shouted.
“President of the United States said if he had a son he might not let him play football,” Chris said. “How can you help prevent getting a concussion in football?”
No boy spoke up.
“First off, you gotta make sure you got on the proper equipment,” Chris continued. “Gotta make sure your helmet fits properly and it’s strapped up. And this is important: you gotta keep your head up when tackling. See your man”—Chris bent down and mimed a slow motion tackle—“and bam! Your facemask right on his chest, or right on the ball, might even pop that ball loose. Always keep your head up. That’s very important. Very important. Football is a very serious game. Make sure you get a mouthpiece from Coach Gary ’cause we gonna be bangin’ today.”
The adults lined the fence to watch their boys hit. They weren’t worried much, though they had seen the stories in the news. Scientists were saying that the risk of long-term brain damage was heightened for kids who played football before their teenage years. Studies showed that the primary cause was not concussions, but rather the accumulation of smaller, sub-concussive hits, which were unav
oidable in the sport. Perhaps football’s days as America’s pastime were coming to a close. Perhaps one day soon basketball would surpass football the way football had surpassed baseball. Perhaps football would fall from public consciousness the way boxing had. The growing fear about football’s impact on the brain had convinced many parents to pull their kids from the sport. From 2010 to 2012, participation in Pop Warner dropped by 10 percent—the first decline in the organization’s more than 80-year history. In a 2013 Robert Morris University poll, 40 percent of respondents supported a ban on kids playing tackle football before high school. That year, a state assemblyman from the Bronx, Michael Benedetto, became the first legislator in America to introduce a bill banning youth football statewide.
“He never played football, I guess,” said one father.
The adults lined up along the fence believed the recent public outcry about football was overblown. And indeed, there was no doubt they were part of a very broad stronghold. “I received an awful lot of criticism about this bill,” Benedetto said at a press conference. “I have certainly received dozens of emails for and against—mostly against—this proposal, I’ll be honest.” Only six other assembly members, from a body of 150, signed on to back the bill, and not a single state senator was willing to sponsor it. In February 2014, a New York City council member proposed a bill requiring that a doctor is present for every youth football game and that only a doctor can decide whether or not a player should be tested for a concussion. The bill stalled and didn’t reach the floor for a vote. But it was clear that a national movement had emerged. States across the country were passing laws establishing concussion protocols for football games and practices. In California, the state legislature passed a bill to limit high school football teams to two full-contact practices a week during the off-season.
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