abstract

Outline of a Practice of Theory: Everyday Land, Labor and
(Social)Capital in a Public Recreation Center

Public recreation centers are boring to look at, smelly to be in,  overdetermined, puritanical, masculinist and expensive to maintain.
What's more, most programs cost money, which leaves us wondering
exactly what makes them public to begin with. Many centers are also
immensely popular places for young people and young adults to
socialize after school and on Saturday afternoons, often a rec center
is an everyday stop for young people on their ways home from school.
In early 2009, 11 public recreation centers in Columbus, Ohio closed for "lack of funds." This project has been under way for as long, not only to find

ways of advocating for public space, but also to investigate what
everyday lives are produced in a recreation center. My operating

assumptions are that we're missing effective modes of introducing the
value of these facilities into political machines, and that that has
more to do with the shift from Reformist to Neo-Liberal
styles of urban governmentality than it has to do with any budget
crisis.
My work is presented as a critical introduction to a series of
original short stories and interviews inspired by extensive fieldwork,

organizing efforts, conversations with public officials and many hours spent in select centers.  The inversion of Bourdieu's title speaks more to my impatience with disciplinary canon than it does to my gown's theoretical underpinnings. I draw more inspiration from Donna Haraway and Kathleen Stewart, both of whom embrace storytelling in their critical theoretical work to produce a "contact zone for analysis" (Stewart, 2008).

football practice

On the first day of football practice Coach Davis introduces the kids to Mr. Alex. Most of them just want to be in the basketball clinic that Coach Kibbe is running but Kibbe and Davis say that no one can be in the basketball clinic if they're not playing flag football too. Davis says the kids won't do anything but play basketball if someone doesn't push them to do it. It's about not being one-dimensional. He'll teach them golf and badminton, too.
He lectures them all about sportsmanship and preparation and not calling each other weak. The teams are going to be balanced so no one wins all the time.
The field is huge and sits a good 5 feet above the streets on either side. Mr. Davis and Mr. Alex keep telling the kids, anywhere from 7-11 years old, to stay behind the line until it's time to run the drill. They listen, most of the time, but lines like these lines in the grass must not have the same significance for kids as they do for adults.
Maybe that's what they're learning - or not - moreso than passing or catching. Everyone is watching or ignoring whoever's running next. No one's paying attention to the teenager smoking a Newport and watching practice, or to the kids hanging out on the jungle gym they've well grown out of. Every time the whistle blows the lines still creep forward a step or two.

big papa puff

It probably looked big before they built the mammoth middle school next door, especially with the soviet-styled solid brick facade, windows on the second floor that still don't open, metal doors with little squares of plexi to look through.
I hoist my bike up the stairs to the entrance and pull the door open. There are only two people inside, and they're both inside a booth: 4ft of painted concrete topped by thick glass to the ceiling. There's a little sliding rectangle of space that I have to lean down to talk to the man in the chair inside. Folks must've been shorter in the 50s.
"Hi, can you tell me what kinds of programs you're offering here?"
The man reads them off for me, most of them, because I didn't ask for anything specific, but he doesn't mention the sewing circles or cooking classes, just the sports. We're almost yelling even though we're only a few feet apart. The other guy disappeared into the back somewhere. I get this talk when I walk into a place unannounced and undetermined. Do I have kids? Do I live around here? What am I looking for?

The conversation picks up when I mention that I'm a researcher with the university. I tell him I'm doing my work about rec centers in Columbus and he starts describing his work, giving contacts and telling me about the neighborhood. His name is Mr. Davis, and the disappeared man is Thomas.

We chat through that rectangle for half an hour before he stands up and comes out of the glass office. He's 6 foot 7 and some kids call him dad. The only thing that got him up was the opportunity to retrieve a collection of thank you cards that young kids had made for him over the years. He held up a poster board with cards stuck to it, pointing to them, reading them out loud, smiling the whole time.
We must've talked for over two hours, me saying almost nothing. Sometimes it felt like he was making a case for the place. I'm used to that like I'm used to the disaffected concentration when I ask a rec employee what goes on in their center. I'm used to being seen as a journalist initially.
He says he wants kids to not be "one-dimensional," teach the value of preparation, keep them out of trouble, learn to cooperate, learn to get on with each other. It's not about competition and it's not about the money.  He told me how one of the kids he used to work with is a state employee in some pretty high up spot, and how this guy thanked Mr. Davis by name in his acceptance speech, cuz he "couldn't have done it" without him.
He also told me about how a reporter and a city official came through when they were deciding which centers were closing last winter. To prove his value to the kids he took the two into the gym packed with kids playing.
"Hold up, y'all" he bellowed.
Then he sang "Say my name say my name," just like the Destiny's Child song.
All the kids yelled back, in harmony: "Big Papa Puff!"

a weighted reeling present

"This book tries to slow the quick jump to representational thinking and evaluative critique long enough to find ways of approaching the complex and uncertain objects that fascinate because they literally hit us or exert a pull on us. My effort here is not to finally 'know' them--to collect them into a good enough story of what's going on--but to fashion some form of address that is adequate to their form....In this book I am trying to create a contact zone for analysis."

Those sentences center the introduction of Kathleen Stewart's Ordinary Affects. (2007) Ostensibly a cryptic bundle of strangely engaging short stories, OA tells us about TVs, shopping malls, trips to 7-11, quiet drunks and the plastic talking owl that appeared at a Laurie Anderson concert.

I won't try to tell what it's about, much less what it means, even if I think I know. I will say that I am interested in storytelling as a genre, and I'm interested in learning about storytelling by telling stories. I'll also tell you that Stewart's stories are to be read in concert with several rock star theorists including Lauren Berlant, D&G, Raymond Williams, Roland Barthes, and Nigel Thrift.

There we have two reasons for me to read this book. The third is its preoccupation with the Ordinary, which I feel free to lump loosely with the Everyday, which happens all the time. Soon I'll have to make explicit the points of contact between Everyday Life and the object of my research (my field), or admit that I'm only called to study EL because I find the object of my research to be hopelessly boring, banal, and devoid of scholarly sex appeal.

ladies, you know

 Kory:  hi are you there?

 me:  sorta

what's up?

 Kory:  just saying hi

i haven't talked to you in a while

 me: it's a bummer, really

that we don't talk so much

 Kory:  i know

for me too

how are you?

 me:  are you ok?

>_>

i'm good

Kory:  i'm ok. very very sleepy right now.

 me:  ya me three

Kory:  homework?

 me:  ya

i'm taking a class where everyone reads each others' papers

 Kory:  oof

 me:  and provides comments and suggestions

I haven't presented yet

 Kory:  that's worse then just the teacher reading it, for sure

 me:  I can't decide if I'm gonna backtrack or present something new

 Kory:  i mean, not worse just you need to put more effort

 me:  sure

and be more clear

cuz there's no guarantee that the folks in the class have any idea what I'm talking about

 Kory:  i got an a on my last paper and i was worried about it

 me:  that's mo[s]tly why I'm thinking about writing a new one

just for class

Kory:  what are you talking about? in your paper

me:  what are you writing papers about?

gosh

we're on the level

 Kory:  ladies, you know

 me:  right

I'm writing about dudes, mostly

 Kory:  i figured! i'm writing papers about chicana feminists right now.

 me:  oh neat

 Kory:  and their art

xicana, really

 me:  I'm writing about rec centers

 Kory:  i knew it!

 me:  and reformist --> neoliberalist urban spaces

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