Net Gains

he's got ups: Jeremy Kaplan bestows a golden net upon the court at 19th and Washington.
Photo By: Michael koehler

Why are activist artists stringing up golden b-ball nets at area playgrounds?

by Doron Taussig

It is an urban pastoral: a basketball hoop stripped of its net, standing like a skeleton in a tattered playground. The net might have been cut down by thieves or vandals; it might have been torn to shreds by hands in eager pursuit of a ball. In any case, it is missed. The net serves the practical purpose of catching a successful jumpshot and depositing it conveniently beneath the basket, but more importantly, it adds to the feel of the game. A net is the difference between a score being greeted with a whoosh of praise or with an indifferent silence.

Yet a hoop remains functional without a net, and the Department of Recreation doesn't have time to go around fixing things that aren't broken. Once a net comes down, it tends to stay down. Which is why it seemed strange recently when new nets began popping up on playgrounds throughout Philadelphia — and stranger still when, upon closer inspection, the nets turned out to be painted gold.

There is a clue to this oddity if you can get up high enough. Attached to a middle rung of each gold specimen is a tag with a picture of a winged lion. It is the logo of an "active arts organization" called the Winged Lion Crew. Right now, the crew consists primarily of Michael M. Koehler, Jeremy Kaplan and Jonah Fliegelman, three twentysomething, hip-hoppin' white boys from Northwest Philadelphia with a shared interest in art and a tendency toward simple, earnest community service.

They envision the organization evolving into a fluid, open group with no fixed membership.

Golden Nets, the group's inaugural effort, was conceived about a year and a half ago by Koehler, now a professional photographer, while he was still in school at NYU. (Full disclosure: Koehler has done freelance work for City Paper, and is also my girlfriend's cousin). The gold, he says, represents community service — although it also brings a touch of bling to the playgrounds it adorns.

"It's about putting something shiny and new where something wasn't there before," explains Kaplan.

Early this month, Winged Lion hosted a party encouraging people to "sponsor" a playground. (It costs $5 per net to give the ballers in your park the opportunity to boast of a Midas touch.) Response was strong — 100 sponsorships raised $500 — and last week the team began putting up the nets. (Winged Lion will host another fundraising party at 10 p.m. July 22 at The Blue Horseshoe, 10 S. 20th St., 215-564-9910.)

On a hot and quiet Thursday afternoon, Kaplan, Fliegelman and a friend pull up to a park at 12th and Cumberland in North Philly (Koehler is on the road working). There are four hoops here, and none have nets; the backboards read, "This backboard donated as part of the …" followed by a blank space.

The guys take a worn wooden ladder out of the trunk of their station wagon and walk onto the court, drawing some curious looks from a group of men seated in the shade of a nearby tree. As Fliegelman climbs the ladder, a young man wearing two T-shirts, patched jeans and sandals comes over — he wants to make the first shot on the new net. Asked how long the nets have been down, he says, "Man, since the day they went up." After a couple of tries, he drops in a short set shot.

A teenage girl comes by and, apparently mistaking Winged Lion for city employees, calls out, "You need to fix the goddamn lights." She is referring to the stadium lights high above the court, well out of reach of the wooden ladder. Informed that the visitors are hanging nets of their own volition, she changes her tone to saccharine with a pinch of sarcastic. "Aw, y'all so nice," she says, and, along with the young man in sandals, proceeds to supervise the net-hanging.

Koehler says this is common. When kids see the team hanging nets, "they become the new boss. We come to their court, and they watch and advise." This process, he believes, gives the kids a sense of ownership, and encourages them to take care of their spruced-up court. While some are skeptical at first — "look at these nut white boys with their suspect nets," one said — by the time the guys leave, most are bragging: "We got a gold net."

The teenage girl is exhibiting a jerky three-point shot with picture-perfect rotation that keeps getting caught in the nets, which are still too taut for a ball to pass through. By the end of this week, Winged Lion will have put up 100 throughout the city. And Koehler has his mind on future projects, too: He plans to make giant stickers out of his photographs, and put them up at sites of "urban decay," creating makeshift art galleries. For now, though, Kaplan and Fliegelman climb back up the ladder and stretch the nets out. They want to get this right. "It's a really small detail," Koehler says, "but it goes a long way."