A recent destination wedding in Puerto Rico led to some seriously overdue bonding with my 8-year-old cousin, whose whole elementary school social experience was severely impacted by the pandemic. Bobbing around in the pool of a rented Caribbean villa isn’t a bad way to spend third-grade spring break. But our play in the sunshine turned a conversational corner when comparing our childhoods: my 1970s “old days” vs. her Generation Alpha wonder years, full of Trumpism and global contagions she’s innocently soaked up as normal. She had no way to compare to modern times. So I cued up Crooklyn.
“On your mark, get set… go!” In the opening credit sequence to director Spike Lee’s semi-autobiographical follow-up to Malcolm X, kids yell, racing around a Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn block circa 1973. His montage veers from children playing street games like freeze tag, hopscotch, and skellies to just jumping rope, flying paper airplanes, and bouncing Spalding balls off of brownstone stoops — all images that were completely familiar to me and totally foreign to my transfixed little cousin. She couldn’t believe all this stuff would happen at the same time, and I had to admit it probably wouldn’t have — unless there was a block party.
