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July 12, 2002

Kubb

I am not very athletic. I’m currently learning how to play basketball, a sport my fiancée and her entire family are very good at. (They favor college basketball, Tarheels particularly, with good reason: Both parents work at U.N.C, one went to U.N.C, fiancée went to U.N.C, brother goes to U.N.C for his second doctor plaque, family has U.N.C basketball season tickets, father and brother play basketball every week…you can see where this leads. Case-in-point: Upon hearing that his daughter and I are engaged, fiancée’s father quite charmingly told me, ‘Rosecrans, it takes a special kind of man to love his son-in-law, especially when that son-in-law knows nothing about U.N.C basketball.’)

I also run and I’ve recently bought a pass for 10 yoga classes, but, fair to say, sports aren’t really my thing.

Then there is Kubb.

Kubb is an old Swedish lawn game, informally known as ‘throwing logs.’ That’s the entire game, actually: you have six wooden dowels that you throw at five wooden blocks. If your team can knock over the other team’s blocks, you have a chance at knocking over the King (which has to be knocked over by a pin thrown through the legs). If you knock over the King, you win.

There are many people in Williamsburg and Greenpoint who find this incredibly amusing. They’re used to seeing bocce, or softball, even kite-flying in the park, but a group of twenty-somethings tossing wood at one another is enough to stop and wonder at.

Thanks to Petter, for bringing this game to Brooklyn.

Preparing to throw

 

The correct spinning toss

 

White glove optional

 

The King left standing

 

White glove stored in pocket

 

Kids like Kubb

 

The only way to topple the King

 

McLaren Park

 

An extremely fortunate stack

 

Swedish King

 




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RoseLee Goldberg

RoseLee Goldberg is an art historian, curator, and author of Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present. In 2004, she founded PERFORMA, a non-profit arts...