Amid the slick sunbathers and bare-chested volleyball players in Prospect Park in Brooklyn on a recent Sunday afternoon, Gabriel Vaughan was an apparition in white: white Converse sneakers, white T-shirt and shorts, and a white boater hat with navy and red ribbon trim. Three bikini-clad women listened to Bob Marley as Mr. Vaughan pushed croquet wickets into a patch of clover and crab grass by the Picnic House near the park’s West Drive.
“Good play depends on when the grass is cut,” said Mr. Vaughan, the self-appointed commissioner of the Brooklyn Croquet and Hunt* Club.
But, he added, “the divots add to the frustration and enjoyment of the game.”
In “Alice in Wonderland,” the Queen of Hearts may have sent a live hedgehog flying with the whack of a stiff flamingo, but croquet is not the sport of kings. It is for people who like to dress up in white and take in their pastoral surroundings — but don’t like to exert themselves in an untidy sweat. It is not so much a sport as a way to flirt, as Brooklynites have done since the pastime’s heyday at the turn of the 20th century, when dozens of coed groups would gather on the manicured croquet grounds on the park’s Long Meadow.
BROOKLYN
PARK SLOPE
GRAND
ARMY PLAZA
BROOKLYN
BOTANIC
GARDEN
Picnic House
Croquet Green
PROSPECT PARK
Prospect Park
“The chief advantages of the game,” a reporter for The Brooklyn Daily Eagle wrote in 1865, “are that both sexes join in it, is not too laborious, is out doors in the air and sunshine, is graceful for ladies, and is interesting to both participants and spectators.”
And so the tradition continues.
“I once brought a date,” said Emily Earle, 35, who was one of eight players on the recent afternoon.
The relationship didn’t last, she said, but “it was a good screener.”
Andrew Bakonyi, 27, an Australian who works at the New York Botanical Garden, stumbled upon the group, which meets in the park most Sundays during baseball season, one afternoon in May after a touch rugby game. He returned with his girlfriend.
“It’s a nice thing for us to come to together,” he said.
Sipping on soda water mixed with guava and lime juice, Mr. Bakonyi said that the relaxed pace of the game provided a space to get to know people in the city, where, he said, it can be hard to connect with others.
Under the protection of umbrellas and a communal floral parasol, a gallery of committed observers looked as though they were in search of a Restoration Hardwarecatalog shoot. Dressed in shades of white lace and floppy brimmed hats, they lounged on blankets and nylon chairs as they snacked.
Piper Goodeve, 35, the commissioner’s fiancée, who helped found the club last year, had packed Melba toast, hot and sweet pepper jelly, brownie bites and a lemon Bundt cake in her grandmother’s picnic basket.
“I never play,” said Haas Regen, 31, an actor who started a theater companywith Ms. Goodeve. “For me, it’s all about the hashtag ‘daydrinking.’ ”
Lizzie King-Hall, 31, who is also a member of the theater group, said, “I spectate, I encourage, I commentate.”
Meanwhile, on the playing field, Mr. Bakonyi laced up his shoes after knocking into the black team’s ball. He would perform what he described as a “croquet,” when a player lines up two balls, plants a foot on his own and strikes it with the head of the mallet to send his opponent’s ball anywhere he wants.
A tinny thwack rang out as the bespoke instrument — made from Hudson Valley black locust and reclaimed wood from a boardwalk in the Rockaways — sent the ball flying off-course.
Anthony Garcia, 9, who was playing soccer next to the field, shouted an apology as he slid near the wickets to retrieve his errant orange ball. Originally from Mexico, he said he was unfamiliar with the activity.
“What’s croquet?” he asked later. “A food?”
Recently, Mr. Vaughan discovered that his club’s field was within eyesight of the old croquet clubhouse, which burned down in the 1950s, where regulars stored equipment and casual players could rent a set for less than a dollar an hour.
The club costs nothing to join, though a large metal bucket seeking donations to a new equipment fund is displayed by the playing field. “I am not after making something exclusive,” Mr. Vaughan said.
As to the hunting portion of the name, he replied, “Off the record, hunting is postponed indefinitely.”
On this Sunday, three and a half hours after the first swing of the mallet, many of the sun seekers had retreated for the day. A couple canoodled on a blanket up the hill. Two of the four teams were neck-in-neck at the last set of wickets, but the black team’s ball tapped the striped wooden stake first and was met with a standing ovation.
The players slipped on their flip-flops and sandals, and Mr. Vaughan called the awards ceremony to order.
Mr. Bakonyi’s team didn’t win, but he earned a plastic gold medal for his attire: an embroidered white short-sleeved shirt, open to the navel, a fedora with a blue feather, and faded blue shorts. His reddish mustache might have also swayed the judge.
“Even if I lose, I get to spend three or four hours outside, with no shoes, in the grass, in the sun,” he said. “And how much did it cost?”
No comments:
Post a Comment