The struggle of finding streetball courts in Wales
Another cold, wet, UK winter day, and another 4 1/2 hours left in work! It’s lunch time again, and time to get going on my new favourite obsession. I’m quite new to Courts Of The World, and I guess so far Im the only person in Wales with a profile on here, although, noticing there are only 9 of us from the UK on this site in total! Still, bet I’m the only one with a COTW vest (cheers Stephan and Claas).
So, I work in an office, not the best job in the world, but it pays the bills, and I do get some internet access, if only a very limited amount, but the powers that be haven’t twigged COTW, so other than the odd browse on Wikipedia, I spend most of my lunchtime reading the articles, and searching in the vain hope that I will find someone else from Wales has signed up, and messaged me for a game! Sadly, no avail as yet.
But, with an hour on my hands of nothing to do but drink coffee and smoke a couple of cigarettes, I find myself searching good old Google Maps to find any courts within a 20 mile radius of my home. This new obsession, I call Searching for the Shadows. I mainly go by myth, or rumor of courts, handed down by a couple of people I know. Sadly, most of these (the ones I’ve added so far) are in school yards, no good for a weekday game, but still, while the caretaker is away, ha ha! I have found many a paint marking on tarmac (even one random hoop in the middle of a field which I haven’t added) which usually indicates that its sadly used for that girly pursuit of Netball (uuurrggghhhh), but on the rare occasion, those shadows from the backboard and hoop grace the pixels of Google Maps indicate Shangrila is not too far away! This usually ends up with me logging straight on and adding what ever decent looking court I can find.
Brothers and Sisters of the streetball world, hear my rallying cry. I urge you all, spread the word, and get as many players to sign up to this site, and go searching for the shadows, so we can know exactly where we can meet up, and go and play some God damn basketball!
This is how a basketball court might look like in Google Maps. Quite obvious, heh?
