{"id":637,"date":"2007-07-25T22:42:26","date_gmt":"2007-07-26T02:42:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.IreneEng.com\/2007\/07\/25\/nyc-parks\/"},"modified":"2007-07-25T22:42:26","modified_gmt":"2007-07-26T02:42:26","slug":"nyc-parks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/?p=637","title":{"rendered":"NYC Parks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ireneeng.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/07\/cimg5713.JPG\" title=\"cimg5713.JPG\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"left\" width=\"143\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ireneeng.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/07\/cimg5713.JPG\" hspace=\"8\" alt=\"cimg5713.JPG\" height=\"91\" style=\"width: 143px; height: 91px\" \/><\/a>Irene L is the one who got me started to play in the\u00a0city parks.\u00a0 It&#8217;s more expensive than our home courts, $100 vs $35 annually, hard court vs har-tru.\u00a0 Many times, the courts can be messy.\u00a0 But I enjoy it, for the company, except <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ireneeng.com\/?p=469\">only the ugly man<\/a>.\u00a0 There is a huge contingent of Filipino players at Cunningham.\u00a0 Most of them play at arond 3.5 and 4 level.\u00a0 They&#8217;re fun to play with and to be around.\u00a0\u00a0I&#8217;ve heard from other players that there are few city courts on the USTA ground.\u00a0 Today I got a chance to check it out.<\/p>\n<p>Years ago when Dinkins was the mayor, I saw him playing at the USTA often, in the late mornings.\u00a0\u00a0Watching him play was painful, his style was more of taiji quan, slow and measured; and the entire city was in disarray under his reign.\u00a0 Supposedly, he rushed to negotiate the USTA contract before being beaten by Guiliani (Rudy probably could have beaten him on tennis court as well, won with his left hand, lol) which put NYC in disadvantage.\u00a0 I&#8217;m not sure the city courts were there prior to the new contract.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ireneeng.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/07\/cimg5714.JPG\" title=\"cimg5714.JPG\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"right\" width=\"148\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ireneeng.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/07\/cimg5714.JPG\" hspace=\"8\" alt=\"cimg5714.JPG\" height=\"107\" style=\"width: 148px; height: 107px\" \/><\/a>Burt is an elderly gentleman working at the park office.\u00a0 He couldn&#8217;t stop talking. I only had couple of questions, but within 15 minutes, I learned about all his family, grand kids included.\u00a0\u00a06\u00a0courts in front of the office are newly done, with 5 layers of rubbers, used by Reebok urban youth league.\u00a0 Reebok is still in existence?\u00a0 The other five are re-surfaced, open to public.\u00a0 I got to hit with Vicky, a college girl on the Stoney Brook&#8217;s team.\u00a0 She has the build of Amanda Coetzer, bit looks like her too.\u00a0 What strikes me the most was her lifeless demeanor.\u00a0 Finding a player there is hard, Burt said everyone comes with their partners.\u00a0 Oh well, I have 10 days to go, maybe I should put an ad on Craigs List, looking for temp partner.\u00a0 I saw Paul and Xiao Lee when I went to pick up.\u00a0 Should ask them to come early, :).<br \/>\nContrary to Vicky, this busload kids screamed in joy when they saw the courts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Irene L is the one who got me started to play in the\u00a0city parks.\u00a0 It&#8217;s more expensive than our home courts, $100 vs $35 annually, hard court vs har-tru.\u00a0 Many times, the courts can be messy.\u00a0 But I enjoy it, for the company, except only the ugly man.\u00a0 There is a huge contingent of Filipino [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}