Wednesday - August 26, 2020 - Lighting up the grid: The NYPD Affirms that Black Lives Matter @ Manhattan Plaza - 43rd Street (Between Ninth and Tenth Avenue).

For three hours this afternoon a group of five to ten members of the NYPD, either from Manhattan’s Tenth Precinct, which covers most of Chelsea, or from the NYPD’s Community Affairs Division, played basketball with children, boys and girls, black, latino and white, from as young as about seven to as old as about fifteen, who live in Manhattan.

After a few minutes of stretching, practice shots, generally warming up, and choosing teams, the action began. First the teams played two half-court games, and then the entire court was opened up, for an up-and-down, full-court match. All the while, the children’s parents watched, cheering loudly, and often, when three-point shots were made from distance, and ooohing and aaaahing just after acrobatic drives to the basket were punctuated with graceful and ballerina-esque lay-ups off of the glass. The officers didn’t do so bad either, though they drew less cheers.

The venue, a second floor landing wrapped within Hell’s Kitchen’s historic Manhattan Plaza, provides a front-row view of Midtown-West’s skyline, including a glimpse between buildings of the on-ramp that leads toward the Lincoln Tunnel.

Manhattan Plaza, owing to a plan devised by real estate developer Daniel Rose in 1976, served as a home and a hub for performing artists who were cementing their lives as well as their careers, and making their names known in New York in the 1980s and ‘90s. Names of notable former residences include Terrence Howard, Alicia Keys, Larry David, and Samuel Jackson ––– who worked there as a security guard, and who no one must have crossed.

Throughout the afternoon, the sun remained high and bright in the sky but did not beat down upon the basket-ballers and spectators, as it was paired with a cool breeze, which, on-and-off, swept across the court as well as the nearby playground.

Before the children and the officers broke into their four separate teams, they gathered on the courts’ most western end for a photograph. Everyone fit into the frame. And on more than one occasion, a parent or family member who was holding their camera phones toward the group would offer an instruction, “Now, say Black Lives Matter!” And everyone would. And everyone did.