62 Minutes With …
Brawling children in Greenpoint
On a sweltering summer afternoon, a welter of yelps rose from the playground in the northeastern corner of Greenpoint’s leafy, tidy Monsignor McGolrick Park. The playground had been lined with a sturdy foam in 2018 to soften the landings of children—but there were still injuries to be had. And the heat would not deter the meeting of the Greenpoint Fight Club, a group of 5-to-7-year-olds that gathers after school on most days for combat with the approval of the parents.
Had this been a true fight club, of course, it would have remained secret. As any passing fan of Chuck Palahniuk knows, the first rule of Fight Club is
you do not talk about Fight Club. (It is also the second rule.) But then, on an early Thursday evening in May, a parent posted a question on the “Williamsburg/ Greenpoint Families” section of the Facebook group Brooklyn Baby Hui. “Did anybody see the kids’ ‘fight club’ happening at McGolrick playground today?” she wrote. “I don’t know how else to describe it … I was a bit shocked at how aggressive it was and it was apparently parent-sanctioned as there was a group watching.”
Her post sparked a mêlée among Greenpoint parents on a forum normally reserved for queries about pediatricians and nannies and mysterious but minor sick-child symptoms. At stake wasn’t just the matter of the potential for bloody noses but the use and purpose of public space. What, if any, level of fear or discomfort is acceptable in a park? How, if at all, should one individual’s parenting decisions accommodate the sensitivities of others? And are there any safe spaces left, on Facebook or in McGolrick?
For her part, the original poster had been concerned that her children, who saw the tussling, might feel scared. “I’m all for kids wrestling and having some fun,” she wrote. “My kids do it at home all the time, but watching this full-on fight fest was very jarring and something I wouldn’t want my kids to witness.” She ended with the suggestion that “maybe the parents involved can take the kids to a grassy area instead. There’s plenty of room at McGolrick.”
The comments came fast and hard. Some agreed with her. One parent wrote that “the public playground is a great space for everyone to [blow off steam] but everyone also needs to feel safe doing so and this post is about someone expressing they do not feel safe.”
Someone else added that roughhousing “might not be behavior everyone wants their children exposed to.” Another local mother tartly said, “So you want to make a 6-year-old move to the grass because he wants to play a sport he plays so your child won’t see it. That feels kind of entitled,” before adding, “Lots of things happening in a public park that I don’t agree with. But it comes with the territory of living in New York City.”
Eventually Julie Wilson, the mother of one of the children involved, stepped in to clarify. “Here’s the story,” she explained. “There’s a bunch of kids who like playfighting. Some of them (including mine) take martial-arts classes and use the skills they’ve learned. Some just like to wrestle and jump on each other. Because we all have very active boys, we’re in the park every day. At some point most days, the kids end up fighting, usually on the rubber mats by the tightrope where there’s the most room. As parents we don’t want anyone to get hurt but we want our kids to play the way they like, so we set some rules (no kicks, no punching) and let them do their thing.”
And so it went. Parents offended by the notion of a fight club squared off against parents offended by parents offended by the notion of a fight club. What was clear was that whatever your private parental choices are, in a public park, those choices will be subject to countless other parental choices. As one person put it to me, “I guess you can look at the fight club as an issue of private parenting in public.” In this sense, the post had ignited a debate about whose values matter more on a ground designed to be neutral. Tempers flared. Never has the red-heart emoji been deployed to such passive-aggressive devastation.
I decided to go see for myself. McGolrick Park has an almost small-town feel and is used almost exclusively by those under 15 and over 75. As part of a renovation, two playgrounds had opened on the northern edge just before the pandemic: one for 2-to-5-year-olds and, just to the east of that, one for 5-to-12-year-olds.
It was 2:45 p.m. when I pushed open the creaky gate to meet Wilson, who was wearing a black tank top and khaki scrubs with her curly hair tied back. Wilson, who grew up in Manhattan, has a bit of a “mayor of Greenpoint” air about her. She knows everyone and has an opinion on most things. Her son, Zack, as she mentioned in the Facebook group, is in the fight club, whose total membership, according to Wilson, amounts to fewer than ten. “Usually,” she says, “there are no more than four here at a time.”
The fight club happens in the older children’s playground, which is where I spotted Zack, a spry 6-year-old wearing camouflage pants and from whose black T-shirt poked out a freckly, smiling, slightly mischievous face. Around his lips, the fine dust of just-eaten Cheetos formed a penumbral grin. Next to Zack, in the padded area near the lily pad in the older children’s playground, stood Danny, a 7-year-old a few inches shorter than his opponent. The two were playing seemingly benignly with a broken Skip Ball Zack had brought. For about ten minutes, Wilson and I watched, each of us secretly willing the children to battle. Finally, the two boys began to circle each other. For a brief moment, it looked as if they would engage, but then they took off at a full run. Over and under the climbing structure, Zack pursued Danny. They ran past other children playing peacefully— girls dangling from monkey bars, boys swirling down the spiral slide. Beyond them, around the perimeter of the playgrounds, sat parents, many gazing into their phones, some, no doubt, following the high jinks of Brooklyn Baby Hui. Each, no doubt, held tightly to their own private parenting philosophy but, at least for the moment, kept those feelings to themselves. Apart from the good-natured shrieks of children at play, there was no sign of conflict. Neither parents rushing to confront one another over the use of public space nor children banished to roll around in the glass and rocks.
Eventually, near the monkey bars once again, Zack reached his opponent. Deftly ducking under an outstretched arm, Zack took back control. He held Danny’s arms behind his back and flung the young man to the ground. No sooner had Danny’s torso touched down when Zack again took off like a rabbit. Danny jumped up in hot pursuit. He was gaining on Zack, but just then the shaved-ice cart sounded its far-off chime, and the boys paused, as if dogs distracted by squirrels or sailors by sirens. Zack and Danny stopped in their tracks and ran to their mothers to plead for ices. Fight club was over for the day.
At least it was IRL. But what scrapes and bruises children forget, parents nurse for years. The discussion wasn’t resolved. It was simply fallow. As another McGolrick mother texted when I reached out for an interview, “I’m hesitant to put something out there which might make me some enemies among the ‘park parent’ community. (It’s cutthroat lemme tell you!)”
“I was a bit shocked at how aggressive it was,” complained one parent online. “And it was apparently parent-sanctioned.”