A street game or street sport is a

sport Sport pertains to any form of competitive physical activity or game that aims to use, maintain, or improve physical ability and skills while providing enjoyment to participants and, in some cases, entertainment to spectators. Sports can, ...

game A game is a structured form of play, usually undertaken for entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator sports or games) or art (suc ...

that is played on city

street A street is a public thoroughfare in a built environment. It is a public parcel of land adjoining buildings in an urban context, on which people may freely assemble, interact, and move about. A street can be as simple as a level patch of di ...

s rather than a prepared field. Street games are usually simply play time activities for children in the most convenient venue. Some street games have risen to the level of organized tournaments, such as

stickball Stickball is a street game similar to baseball, usually formed as a pick-up game played in large cities in the Northeastern United States, especially New York City and Philadelphia. The equipment consists of a broom handle and a rubber ball, ...

. When street games are based on organized sports, the rules are highly modified to fit the situation, i.e. manhole covers for bases with cars or buildings for foul lines in stickball. When balls are used in street games, Spaldeens are often used.

Street sports

Street sports are sports held in urban environments. Street sports are an expression of the spontaneous, improvisational and creative origins of sport adapted by human ingenuity to the urban environment. In historical terms their origins are traceable to the very earliest evidence of sports in Greek and Roman civilisation.''Urbanization and the Evolution of the City; Reader, J.; Vintage; (2005) Street sports are a hybrid form of sport and reflect the adaptation of conventional sports to the cityscape. Viewing the city through as a living, bustling, and thriving organism helps to cast light on the nature of that which is urban and to begin to home-in on particular salient features of urban life. It is only with the advent of this relatively modern perspective on the urban that it has become possible to speak in terms of street sports.

Parkour Parkour () is an athletic training discipline or sport in which practitioners (called ''traceurs'') attempt to get from point A to point B in the fastest and most efficient way possible, without assisting equipment and often while performing ...

artist Sebastien Foucan has defined the sport of Freerunning as a ‘physical art’.Foucan, S; ''Freerunning: Find Your Way''; Foucan, S.; Michael O'Mara Books Ltd.; (2008) In the words of Foucan, street sports are "...a philosophy concerned with the quest of personal and social realisation..." A similar point of view can be found in the notion of the philosophy of urban solo-climbing expounded by

Alain Robert Alain Robert (born as Robert Alain Philippe on 7 August 1962) is a French rock climber and urban climber. Known as "the French Spider-Man" (after the comic character Spider-Man) or "the Human Spider", Robert is famous for his free solo climbi ...

. Likewise, the high-wire walker,

Philippe Petit Philippe Petit (; born 13 August 1949) is a French high-wire artist who gained fame for his unauthorized high-wire walks between the towers of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in 1971 and of Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1973, as well as between the T ...

, whose performance include walking between the World Trade Center towers in 1974, has described his 'interventions' on the urban environment as 'art crimes', suggesting their essence is creative and constitutes an expression—an interaction with the city.

Examples of street games

This is a list of games that are traditionally played by urban

children A child ( : children) is a human being between the stages of birth and puberty, or between the developmental period of infancy and puberty. The legal definition of ''child'' generally refers to a minor, otherwise known as a person younger ...

in playgrounds,

parking lots A parking lot (American English) or car park (British English), also known as a car lot, is a cleared area intended for parking vehicles. The term usually refers to an area dedicated only for parking, with a durable or semi-durable surface ...

, and back streets. They are all games that may be played on a hard surface, like

asphalt Asphalt, also known as bitumen (, ), is a sticky, black, highly viscous liquid or semi-solid form of petroleum. It may be found in natural deposits or may be a refined product, and is classed as a pitch. Before the 20th century, the term ...

. They are part of

children's street culture Children's street culture refers to the cumulative culture created by young children. Collectively, this body of knowledge is passed down from one generation of urban children to the next, and can also be passed between different groups of chi ...

, and are notoriously hard to classify rigorously.

Utilizing a rubber ball

Other games

In popular culture

* Street sports in the middle east: ''The Kite Runner'' and ''

The Kite Runner ''The Kite Runner'' is the first novel by Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini. Published in 2003 by Riverhead Books, it tells the story of Amir, a young boy from the Wazir Akbar Khan district of Kabul. The story is set against a backdrop of ...

'' (the film adaptation) * Highwire Walking: ''

Man on Wire ''Man on Wire'' is a 2008 documentary film directed by James Marsh. The film chronicles Philippe Petit's 1974 high-wire walk between the Twin Towers of New York's World Trade Center. It is based on Petit's 2002 book, ''To Reach the Clouds'', ...

'', film documenting the background to Petit's high-wire walk between the WTC Towers. * A 2010 PBS documentary, '' New York Street Games'', shows the best-known street games played in New York City in the twentieth century, as well as discussing the decline of those games in recent decades.

References

External links

Kid's Games: All About Kid's Games

StreetPlay.com

Parkour examples

Playing stickball
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