Wednesday, April 18, 2018

There's now a public squash court on the Lower East Side


[Photo by @daniel.avila via Instagram]

In case you missed this announcement yesterday by the NYC Parks Department ... The city's (world's?) first outdoor public squash court debuted yesterday at Hamilton Fish Park, on Pitt Street between East Houston and Stanton.

Here are the guidelines via the NYC Parks website:

The public squash court is free to use, and is available for play on a first-come, first-served basis, except when the court has scheduled programming. The court is located on one of four of Hamilton Fish Park’s handball courts (the other courts remain available for handball use).

The court is for squash play only. Please bring your own equipment, and limit play to one hour. Goggles are recommended. Please do not wear open-toed shoes or flip-flops on the court.

NO FLIP-FLOPS!

Anyway, this isn't permanent — for now it's on a six-month trial basis, up through Oct. 18.

The idea for this emerged in late 2015 ... when a group of friends formed the Public Squash Foundation to help make the game more accessible to the public. (This Bloomberg piece has more background. And here's the Public Squash website.)

The court also has its own Instagram account...

#done opening 4.17.18

A post shared by Public Squash (@public_squash) on

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4 comments:

  1. AnonymousApril 18, 2018 at 10:45 AM

    I hope local people can respect this court and its intended purpose.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousApril 18, 2018 at 12:16 PM

    "Public squash"...there's a name someone can use for something.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousApril 20, 2018 at 1:36 PM

    "I hope local people can respect this court and its intended purpose.

    which is to serve the well known historical squash community of Loisaida and not at all meant to cater to new arrivals and is not part of efforts overt and clandestine and societal to help displace the respectful local people

    ReplyDelete
  4. GiovanniApril 20, 2018 at 3:02 PM

    I sure hope that thing is graffiti proof. Actually, no I don’t, and I can't wait to see who tags it first.

    ReplyDelete

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