Urban Street Games: Ringolevio 1-2-3!

How the heck did he know that? He didn't know, my visitor answers with a kind and knowing smile. My "guide" told him...

Dang!

***

"In playing, and perhaps only in playing, the child or adult is free to be creative."
-- D.W. Winnocott

During one hot summer day, I walked into my son’s room only to find a huge group of 9-10 year olds playing video games. I was shocked. When I was a kid, being cooped inside the house, while games raged outside my window was the ultimate form of punishment. Not only did these kids not want to go outside, I quickly discovered, they thought it was an unusual question, as if going outside was something not even contemplated.

That was the last straw for me. I shut off the video game and ordered everybody out my fucking house. “Go outside and play! It’s summertime!” Of course, I quickly morphed from “Ian’s Real Cool Dad” to Ian’s Asshole Father” but I didn’t give a fuck. Go outside dammit! HAVE FUN!

LMAO!

After some time, I was curious and when I went downstairs to check on the group, they were just moping around, doing nothing, talking about – you guessed it – a video game (insert cliché about leading a horse to water here --->___). Defiant little motherfuckers that they were, they propped up my son, Ian, as their spokesperson and he presented a compelling case for everyone to be let back upstairs (something about “nothing to do”).

 I struck that down quickly, much to everyone’s dismay, but I told them that instead, I would tell them a story. This was met with a loud round of jeers. So we stood there doing nothing for a minute or two. Finally one f the braver of the group questioned the wisdom of my decision (something about forcing them to do nothing – boy! This was fun!) and challenged me when I answered that there’s a lot to do!

Eventually, we struck a compromise: if I could come up with something to do, everyone would cooperate and do an activity I would come up with. If they didn’t experience “fun” doing my chosen activity, then everyone could go back upstairs and like a bunch of girls, sit around and scratch and sniff their arses while playing sissy games... Actually, it wasn’t a compromise, but nobody fucked with me because they all knew I didn’t put up with too much bullshit.

 The activity I chose was a game called Ringolevio…

 Ringolevio (also known as Cocolevio when I played it in the Lower East Side – Loisada in Nuyoricanese) is a game that originated in the streets of Depression era New York City.

(Photography: Martha Cooper, Street Play)

It’s a variation of tag – or what I call today looking back, “tag on steroids.” It was a game of close teamwork and strategic planning of military proportions. When I was growing up, it was rumored that there were games of Ringolevio that sometimes took days to play. As I wove my story, I could sense the interest growing among this unruly mob. While outright mutiny was still an option, some of the kids became interested…

 So I told everyone that we needed more people, to call everyone up “… and get them down here now! We’re going to play ringolevio!”

 Kids that age are too easy. Soon enough, I had about a group of twenty kids outside on the street. It’s summer in the city, hot and humid. Other kids on the street got curious so we enlisted them too! “We’re gonna play Ringolevio,” my group now tells curious stragglers.

 “What’s ringolevio, one young girl, a Mr. Softie ice cream dripping down her arm, asks.

How to Play Ringolevio

 Ringolevio was my one of my favorite street game. It took planning, strategy, political intelligence, and geographical awareness to play. First, two sides are chosen, more or less even in number. One side goes out, while he other counts to some number like 300 and then goes looking for them.

 Anyone on the pursuing side could catch anyone on the pursued side by grabbing hold of them and chanting "Ring-O-Levio 1-2-3!" three times in a row, while holding them. If the person pursued broke free at any point during this brief recitation, the person was not considered caught. If caught, the pursuer took the pursued to an area called “home base.”

 Home base was any confined area, usually (in our version) within a penned area in someone’s stoop. Any free member of the team that was out could free all team members in home base by barging into home base without being caught and shouting "Free all!" or "Everybody Free!" This meant that all members of the team in home base were free and would have to be re-caught.

 In our version, the pursuing team could not obstruct the home base within line of sight. That was considered cheating and huge arguments would ensue regarding pursuers standing too close to home base.

 The game ended when one team caught all the members of the opposing team at which point the captured team reversed roles and counted while their opponents hid.

(Photography: Rebecca Lepkoff. Girls jumping rope: 1940s, LES, NYC)

 Now the real fun was in coordinating plans to free the captured. We often employed military strategy using our knowledge of the “terrain” and engaged in various maneuvers and “fakes” that resembled a battle. The games were never violent and I never witnessed a fight during ringolevio. As we grew older, ringolevio also was a way for the members of the opposite sex to expend the sexual tension pre-teens and teens experience with one another. The actual act of running after someone, grabbing them and yelling out “Ringolevio 1-2-3! Ringolevio 1-2-3! Ringolevio 1-2-3!” at the top of your lungs induces laughter to the point that sometimes youcouldn’t finish your capture.

 Growing up, I heard tales of games of Ringolevio that lasted for weeks, and I participated in some that lasted days (in fact, it wasn’t unusual to have someone tackle you out of nowhere yelling out ringolevio 1-2-3, for a game you had forgotten about!). But most of the time the games lasted a few hours. The duration of play was determined by the agreed-upon boundaries at the start of a game as well as the number of players on each side. I heard of some games that had been played with citywide boundaries and with up to 100 players! These games had rounds lasting for weeks with suspension of play for a half hour before, during and a half hour after school hours.

 Well, what of my ragtag Nintendo-playing mutineers, you ask? I had to drag them back indoors when it got dark! LOL. They wouldn’t let me play, but agreed that I could be a “referee” to settle disputes, since I was the Ringolevio expert. That game lasted hours and when I asked my group  if they would rather go upstairs and play video games, they paused (apparently mulling over any adverse precedent this may cause) and said -- no. Did teaching them that creativity and ingenuity trumps technology stop them from preferring video games over street play? No, but it became an option when the video games bored them. Then one day, they asked me, “Teach us another game, Mr. Rosario,” and Stickball in Jackson Heights was born...

(photography: Martha Cooper, Street Play)

... But that’s another story for another day.

 Smooches,

 Eddie