Leister Street Parklet, Spring Hill-City View

Leister Street Parklet, Spring Hill-City View: Leister Street

Leister Street Parklet is a small slip of hillside space with a small, asphalt-covered basketball court. There are two backboards with intact hoops, but that’s it. No markings indicate when you’re in or out of bounds, which must make for some interesting games.

A few cans of soda have been politely deposited in the DPW trashcan, and a few more can be found on the side of the court next to a pile of discarded branches and yard debris. I look through an opening in the rusted and broken fence and see large, jagged sections of the hillside that have fallen away. It won’t be long before Mother Nature is standing courtside.

A hundred years ago, before the concept of neighborhood basketball courts was born, this spot was Brickell Street, which curved downhill to meet Quebec Street. The blurry aerial mapping photos of this area from the 1930s, ’50s, and ’60s show a twisted tangle of streets with houses and structures, but much of what was once East Street Valley is long gone, seized by governments and politicians (and their constituents) eager to build a highway, destroyed by landslides, or abandoned.

Standing on the basketball court today, it’s hard to imagine what all of this looked like a hundred years ago. I think about the people who once walked up and down Brickell Street and all their stories, slipping away like the eroding hillsides.

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