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A little girl opens a new bag of street chalk and draws on Vermilyea Avenue. PHOTO: Orubba Almansouri
It started with one or two kids wondering why no cars were on the street. Then a few more came out. Just after noon a game of whiffle ball had been organized, and the bases mapped out.
“Who can do a hop scotch on the block? Who can do a hop scotch on the block?” asked Angelo Ortiz, unit director for youth and community development at the nonprofit Inwood Community Services.
A stretch of W. 211th Street just off Vermilyea Avenue between Broadway and 10th Avenue is the newest of three playstreets operated by ICS. The organization has opened the blocked-off streets in areas plagued by crime or violence, giving kids a place to play during the day. ICS has another on Post Avenue and one on Academy Street that it runs in cooperation with the Police Athletic League.
“In general these blocks are known to be high [drug] trafficking areas,” Ortiz said.
Indeed, in April narcotics officers, dressed in body armor and wielding battering rams, burst into 10 apartments on nearby Vermilyea, Post and Sherman Avenues.
Fourteen people were arrested, accused of selling marijuana, Ecstasy and cocaine.
Dubbed Operation Manhattan Project, the New York Post reported that over a period of nine months, undercover officers bought 1,550 Ecstasy pills, seven ounces of cocaine and marijuana during two dozen purchases on and around Vermilyea Avenue.
The report also says two drug crews controlled opposite sides of the street, but cooperated with each other when it came to lookouts and customers.
After that, ICS and UNIDOS – a coalition of community organizations that includes the Manhattan Times – decided the next site would be on Vermilyea Avenue. That changed during the summer to W. 211th Street.
“We want to be able to do it in such a way that we are creating almost a zone of safety for kids,” Ortiz said. “That’s why we did Post [Avenue] and it was very strategic in the middle of Post.”
The playstreet on Post Avenue, which opened five or six summers ago, has undergone a transformation since programming has started on the street. Along with closing the block during work hours, ICS has staged a pumpkin carving contest there, called Pumpkins on Post, and a Mother’s Day celebration called Mothers on Post. During the year it has teamed up with Literacy Inc to have lobby reading sessions in the buildings on Post Avenue.
“That three-block stretch has been notorious as a stretch of nothingness,” Ortiz remembered. “Something amazing happened. Parents started to come out.”
The change, over the years has been noticeable.
“You go on Post now and it’s a different place. There’s trees now, there’s tree guards,” Ortiz said.
Chalk that up to the city and the Million Trees campaign, but there’s some feeling of community there, too. Ortiz said buildings are competing to see who can decorate their tree guards the nicest.
Fifty-two blocks south of W. 211th Street, in Washington Heights, a playstreet is celebrating its 49th year in operation.
Community League of the Heights, which turns 50 this year, opened its playstreet on W. 159th Street the year after it formed.
“Any day you can come and see organized activities,” said Yvonne Stennett, CLOTH’s executive director. “It’s education not just play.”
Around 100 kids use the playstreet on any given weekday, and those kids are supervised by teens and young adults from the City’s Summer Youth Employment Program.
The youth are a “captive audience” Stennett said, they’re not only working for CLOTH.
“We take the opportunity to educate them,” she said. “Today we had a workshop on gang violence. Today was a pretty emotional day.”
Other workshops are more mundane, but important.
Representatives from HSBC bank came through and helped each SYEP employee set up a bank account and gave lessons on how to properly manage their money.
“It’s not just the work experience, they get more out of it,” Stennett said. “They gain knowledge. I think it’s key.”
The playstreet also helps keep the criminal activity down on the street.
“In terms of unfortunately dealing with the criminal issue, it’s really cut down on it happening during the day. Over the years I’ve really seen it have an impact on that,” she said.
Being such a venerable summer activity – one of the oldest in the city – it’s something people expect.
“In terms of community cohesiveness it’s become something everyone looks forward to. If it doesn’t happen, it’s a problem,” Stennett said.
A generation of kids grew up on the street playing. Those original kids are often the parents of kids on the street today, she said, and they’re supportive, because they want their children to have the same experience they had.
“I’ve seen them as not just adults on the block, but they come back, whether they’re teaching or whatever … we have one of them on our board,” Stennett said.
Back on Vermilyea Avenue earlier this summer, a Spaldeen rolls into a sewer grate.
“We’re going to lose a lot of stuff, we’re not organized yet,” Ortiz said.
Some of his summer youth are standing in the shade, talking to each other instead of playing with the neighborhood kids. Another is asking Ortiz about paperwork.
He shuffles through and manages to get all the kids together for a picture and ribbon cutting inaugurating the new street.
“Why are we doing this?” he asks the kids. “We’re doing this for you, so you’re not bored in the house all day.”
The W. 212th Street playstreet doesn’t have a lot of toys yet. It has a few balls, the whiffle ball bat, a Frisbee and some board games. ICS is looking for more donations of games to add to the pile, and more dollars to add to the $500 it has collected to start the playstreet.
His hope is to recreate what’s happening on Post Avenue here.
That playstreet is expanding. Because of a $2,400 grant ICS earned the street will be open on Saturdays now, and one of the mothers from the street has been hired to staff it.
One Vermilyea Avenue resident, David Joseph, came out of his building with a laundry bag slung over his shoulder and a basket of detergent in his hands.
He saw the blue police barriers at either end of the street, and asked a NYPD Community Affairs officer what was going on.
“Before, bad things used to happen … I thought something bad might have happened,” Joseph said.
Despite the recent drug sweep, he said it used to be worse.
“Things happen from time to time, but not like it used to be a long time ago.”
He liked the idea of the playstreet.
“I’ve got kids, they don’t live with me, but I can bring them over and let them play in the street,” he said.
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