Sunday, Aug. 27, 2006 | 7:28 a.m.
A couple of years ago I pulled up to a building where a large sign welcomed me to "Home Courts," a combination gym that sponsored youth and adult basketball and volleyball leagues and instruction.
The sign advertised courts for rent, leagues for kids and adults, and space for parties. A schedule offered a weekend volleyball tournament, advertising club teams from around the region. As my son and I entered, the sound of squeaking sneakers, dribbling basketballs and excited young voices was music to my ears. It brought back memories of my own youth, of the endless games that dominated my afternoons and summers.
The gym we entered was large and wonderful, with 16 courts of various kinds, basketball hoops that descended from the ceiling to any range of heights. Three games and a volleyball practice were going on. My 9-year-old beamed and ran to join his new team. I stood by the side, awestruck. Wow! What a great place for a kid to play some ball and make some friends.
Then it struck me: This was pay space, not play space; private, not public. There was nothing public about it. You had to belong to get in, and for good reason. The investment had to be enormous. A marketing department encouraged parents to sign their kids up for leagues, and there were no scholarships for needy kids advertised.
This was a business, where someone stood to make a significant profit off the decline in the concept of community and public space that has overtaken America. As much as I liked it, I was also repelled.
Home Courts was a far cry from my youth, when we went to the schoolyard and played against all comers, the winners keeping the court sometimes from early in the morning until it was too dark to see. In those days, there were no adults around, no restrooms except the bushes, no parents wearing jerseys emblazoned with their kids' names, no electronic scoreboard, no sense of hierarchy except that among the kids, and no one to solve the inevitable problems that occurred except the kids who wanted to knock off the nonsense and keep the game going.
Everywhere you look, private space masquerades as public or at least community space. The motto over the waiting area at a local dance studio reads: "This isn't a lobby, it's a neighborhood." Again, the only people there have paid; the only reason to be there is because your child is enrolled in a dance or gymnastics class. So admittance to the neighborhood costs, and is driven by affinity, not the proximity of old.
The world today is different: For the most part, my kids do the same things I did, play the same games in the same ways. The difference is they do so in private space for which we pay; I played in spaces that everyone shared and nobody had to shell out a few bucks to get in.
Here is a metaphor for what has happened to the U.S. What we once did in public we now do in private space; what was once free now has an admission charge.
This division is a step on the road to a very different society. Turmoil in the American economy in the 1970s and 1980s broke the middle class into two distinct groups, the large downwardly mobile cohort of the old middle class and the professionals and entrepreneurs who pushed upward.
The 1990s restored prosperity, placing a premium on the trappings of privilege, on the ways people can make themselves distinctive. With immigration at an all-time high and local news featuring mayhem, the association is clear. Americans fear people unlike them. Everyone knows their rights; few understand that they come with obligations. People widely perceive that the protections of the private sector are better than those of the public.
Even I have become comfortable at Home Courts; now, we know everyone there and they're our affinity friends. We socialize casually, transport kids to and fro, and generally keep an eye on what goes on. The life of the young is in view of their parents. We feel safer and maybe they do, too. But if we do, it's because paying for space excludes those who can't, and American society today presumes that if you can't pay for space, there is something wrong with you.
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