I wish I could share all the love that's in my heart
Remove all the bars that keep us apart
I wish you could know what it means to be me
Then you'd see and agree
That every man should be free
- Nina Simone “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free”
The moment the Hoop Bus arrives anywhere energy is transformed. Whether it’s negative to positive or the perception of absence into activation, the mobile basketball court has been spreading the game to communities across the country. Recently the bus was in New York City for the WNBA draft. My time with Hoop Bus began on a Saturday at Rucker Park. The hallowed ground was empty that afternoon. The weather sucked, period. And before the bus pulled up the local hoopers who were invited to an open run sat in the Rucker stands frustrated. There was light rain. Overcast. No one there but them. The situation felt like a bust. Shit was dreary.
The bus’s arrival altered the whole mood.
Hoop Bus was founded as a 501(c)(3) non-profit by Nick Ansom of Veniceball, an organization out of Venice Beach that began as an outdoor league at the iconic coastal court and has transformed into a community project that tours the country spreading the good vibes of hoops. Ansom is an influential organizer, seemingly limitless in energy, and he’s connected with a team of builders, engineers, photographers, directors, creatives, and of course, hoopers to guide the project on a national level.
It’s as though the Hoop Bus team carries Venice Beach warmth in their trunk. The sun seemingly on a string with their arrival. The bus pulled up onto the sidewalk outside The Rucker fence. Players who were threatening to abandon now lined up to get loose, get a bucket, and dunk on the dual hoops that flank the bus. The people of Harlem stopped in curiosity. Children emerged from the towers that overlook the court. Games of knockout commenced. There’s a saying among hoopers that the ball finds energy. The bus, like a basketball, finds energy. The bus even generates it.
So, the skies cleared. The day felt warmer despite night approaching and the games were steady until anyone not playing had to follow players with phone flashlights to illuminate the final game. With the games concluded we piled into the bus—some 15 deep—headed for Times Square. It was on this journey that I witnessed the true ingenuitive spirit of the team. The bus technically clears the height requirements of FDR Drive. However, the FDR is not consistent in that height when it twists and dips. The Hoop Bus would get lodged into the highway tunnels, stop all traffic, and yet, the team handled it. Sure, it scraped the hell out of the backboard tops, but we made it through without dropping a shattered backboard or shutting down the highway completely.
As we pulled into midtown Manhattan, relief turned to joy quickly. The hoopers played their favorite rap selections through the bus’s booming system and danced in the light of cameras recording the party.
Nothing can stop the bus from producing pure energy.
Just seeing the Hoop Bus in-person changes you. It triggers immediate joy and a desire to interact with it. My first experience was at All-Star Weekend in Cleveland. The buses were parked outside a community center just south of Downtown Cleveland. Even in the snow and ice, I wanted to get a bucket. There’s a sense that the bus is otherworldly and impervious to the mundanity and oppression of our lives. The bus is in its element in Harlem and Rucker. Times Square too. There’s just one defender in the lane: the NYPD. There’s no greater test to the power of the bus than the NYPD.
First, some backstory…
The Hoop Bus first began traveling in the pandemic, or rather despite the pandemic, and would arrive at the front lines of protest and uprisings as this country, for the first time on a national scale, attempted to seek reconciliation for the racism and violence of the police. The bus pulled up to protests throughout the country with backboards that read “Black Lives Matter.” It logged 580 miles of marching for BLM. When the bus pulled up on Washington D.C., it was like a counter-weapon of love and play that represented community opposition to the militarization that was waiting to meet each march. But, it wasn’t intolerant to cops. The Hoop Bus, everywhere it went, invited cops to get a bucket. Drop your weapon. Drop the shield. Get a bucket. The Hoop Bus lives by the philosophy that basketball is a unity of the world. The game does not divide. The game unites.
Which brings us back to NYC cops…
The NYPD wasn’t having it. As we approached Times Square and looked for a place to post up, officers refused to grant it permission. All the hoopers filed out of the bus and marched ahead with basketballs in hand, dribbling and spinning on their fingers. Their only cause was to encourage onlookers to get a bucket. The police wanted none of it. Many times Ansom tried to refuse moving. He’d offer a compromise to the officers.
“I’ll move, but you gotta get a bucket first.”
Each officer we encountered in Times Square refused. And we encountered many. They treated the offer like it was a trap. It speaks to the levels of distrust in the public that are conditioned into police training. Ansom’’s offer is simple: meet me halfway. He was saying, I’ll respect your place in all this, but first please take a moment to feel and be a part of why this is here. Say yes to something that might change your day. It’s almost guaranteed to improve your day.
Sometimes you could see the conflict in them.
Which has me wondering: how is order and no play good for us?
Imagine what it must do to a person. To feel so beholden to a job that you decline a brief moment of possible joy while on the clock. To be so conditioned by a doctrine of order that to show a moment of our human inclination to play would be a betrayal. As though a bus full of basketballs arrived to invite chaos.
The Hoop Bus is not chaos. It is not a threat to order. It is a direct link to joy. Joy produces peace. Which is to say, nothing can go wrong in the presence of the Hoop Bus. And nothing did.
The bus found a place to post up a few blocks south of Times Square. A corner I’ve since walked by many times and thought about how that night an onlooker lobbed the ball high against the stone wall of a skyscraper and as it traveled back toward the street, a hooper who goes by Leaky Roof soared in for the alley-oop dunk. The crowd went nuts and smothered him with praise. Earlier, when the bus was stopped at a red light in Times Square a random person with tricky soccer footwork, juggled the basketball with his feet, and then sent the ball up for an oop to Leaky. The whole time the footie dude was puffing a cigar. The show is not planned. The bus simply inspires. That person who you are standing next to and think little of suddenly does something skillful or jaw-dropping.
The hoopers lifted little girls up to the rim to have their first dunk in Times Square. They ignored the police and helped kids get a bucket.
As the bus prepared to head downtown for a Slam Magazine party, I said my goodbyes. Thanked everyone for the lift to my part of town. The remainder of that weekend I worked with Project Backboard, painting a basketball court in my neighborhood. The bus kept on spreading love throughout the boroughs. It invited WNBA draftees and WNBA legend Lisa Leslie to ride along and engage with young girls with hoop dreams. It did big things that looked epic on social media, but mainly its presence was all that mattered. Even if a person only saw the bus passing by, on their way to work, or caught a glimpse of it while daydreaming out the window of the classroom, or a hand tossed a ball out the window at a stoplight to a stranger and said, get a bucket, it mattered. It changed lives for the better.
