Three Rivers, Michigan (March 2017)
You can still see the scar where the city removed the downtown basketball courts last summer. Nearby, in the upgraded skate park, a couple of kids who look to be about ten years old are hiding under one of the ramps, smoking. I rarely saw anyone using the basketball courts and they weren’t very well maintained, but I do wonder about the underlying narratives that bid us to replace them with skate parks and dog parks. In the meantime, on the south end of town, neighbors have raised funds and recruited corporate sponsors to restore basketball hoops to a tiny, bustling park. Downtown, a lone hoop remains on the edge of the parking lot, its tattered net twitching in the stiff breeze, straining against the threads that keep it tethered against its will.
