UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Who’s Got Next? Social Integration at a Public Park Basketball Court A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology by Michael Francis DeLand 2014 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Who’s Got Next? Social Integration at a Public Park Basketball Court by Michael Francis DeLand Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology University of California, Los Angeles, 2014 Professor Jack Katz, Chair This dissertation examines the ongoing formation of a public park as a particular type of public place. Based on four years of in-depth participant observation and historical and archival research I show how a pickup basketball scene has come to thrive at Ocean View Park (OVP) in Santa Monica California. I treat pickup basketball as a case of public place integration which pulls men out of diverse biographical trajectories into regular, intense, and emotional interactions with one another. Many of the men who regularly play at Ocean View Park hold the park in common, if very little else in their lives. Empirical chapters examine the contingencies of the park’s historical formation and the basketball scene’s contemporary continuation. Through comparative historical research I show how Ocean View Park was created as a “hidden gem” within its local urban ecology. Then I show that the intimate character of the park affords a loose network of men the opportunity to sustain regular and informal basketball games. Without the structure of formal organization men arrive at OVP explicitly to build and populate a vibrant gaming context with a diverse array of ii others. Through forming teams, developing strategy, and enforcing rules players at the park construct the very context in which they mix together. Through this portrait of pickup basketball at Ocean View Park I show how the integrative potential of a public place is held in a fragile balance. In its historical formation, the park was created to provide public access but without being so open that the scene would be undone by the chaos of the public sphere. The network of men who participate mix up together but never integrate so completely that they efface their differences and become a uniform social group. The outcome is a form of park use in which a Buddhist philosophy enthusiast, Israeli immigrant carpenter, a black hip hop band leader, a white real estate developer, and a Latino bar tender arrive at the park to build, populate, and dwell together inside a vivid gaming context before bidding farewell and re-entering their separate biographical trajectories. Accounting for pickup park use as a form of social integration has important implications for understanding urban social life well beyond the particulars of the case. iii The dissertation of Michael Francis DeLand is approved. John Heritage Jeffrey Prager Jason Throop Jack Katz, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2014 iv Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction………………………………….…………….…1 Chapter 2: A Tale of Two Courts…………………………………...….. 28 Chapter 3: The Canopy in Play…………………………………………..64 Chapter 4: Synchronizing Phases of Attachment………………………..107 Chapter 5: Basketball in the Key of Law……………………….……….146 Chapter 6: Conclusion…………………………………………………...175 References……………………………………………………………….197 v List of Figures Figure 1. Ocean View Park Lawn……………………………..……….….2 Figure 2. Beach Parking Lot………………………………….…....…..…3 Figure 3. Ocean View Park Basketball Court…………….………………6 Figure 4. Map of Coastline………………………………..……………...30 Figure 5. Map of LA Region………………………….………………….43 Figure 6. Early Drawing of Ocean Park Redevelopment Project........…..45 Figure 7. Park plan for Coastal Commission application (1976)………...53 Figure 8. Settlement Agreement Plan (1982) …………………………56 Figure 9. Photographs from the Park……………………………………190 vi Acknowledgements First and foremost I would like to thank all the hoopers at Ocean View Park who participated in the study and tolerated my presence. This dissertation would not be possible if they were not open to the questions of a young sociologist trying to understand the social world they build together at the park. In truth, the men’s openness that facilitated this study is the same openness that sustains the park’s charming character for so many others who arrive in search of a “run”. I hope that in some small way my own participation in the games has facilitated the same kind of fun for them that I have found while amassing wins, losses, arguments, and injuries over the last several years. I also must thank all the people who contributed to my understanding of the historical formation of Ocean View Park and the Venice Beach Recreation Center. Ruth Galanter was critical in turning me onto the complex history of the Ocean Park Redevelopment Project and putting me in touch with a number of other critical participants. The archivists working for the cities of Santa Monica and Los Angeles were invaluable. The staff at the California Coastal Commission was extremely helpful in facilitating my archival research. Among those who spoke to me about their personal involvement in the parks’ histories, Liucijia Baskauskas and Stephen Anaya deserve special mention. For the time, documents, and concern they gave me, I cannot thank them enough. The Department of Sociology at UCLA and the entire College of Letters and Science has provided an extraordinarily supportive and stimulating academic environment. I received three years of academic fellowship from the Department of Sociology and a Dissertation Year Fellowship from UCLA Graduate Division, all of which were critical in supporting me through this work. I also want to thank the Department of Sociology and UCLA’s General Education vii program for putting me in classrooms in front of undergraduates, providing me the opportunity to develop myself as an instructor, and therefore as a person. And thanks to all the students who populated those classrooms. I hope you learned as much as I did. I owe so much of my intellectual development over the last decade to Jack Katz. In addition to years of guidance, support, and encouragement, he has imparted in me an intellectual sensibility that, having grasped once, will provide a lifetime of re-grasping. Learning to study processes of becoming has facilitated my own such process. Inevitably that journey continues and I cannot possibly turn around quick enough to catch it. I’m grateful too that he opened his office and library to me. I gained much insight from the random encounters facilitated by simple proximity. I had the good fortune of learning from many other professors at UCLA as well. I’m grateful to Robert Emerson for, among many other insights, encouraging an early dedication to and clarity in writing field descriptions. For their insistence on studying action in sequence, John Heritage and Manny Schegloff were fundamental to my development as a sociologist. Jeffrey Prager gave me my very first taste of sociology and continues to be an inspiration. Zsuzsa Berend saw an early spark in in me as an ethnographer and her support has stoked the fire. In the five years I spent at UCLA with Mel Pollner I regret missing my opportunity to engage him in person. Still, his writings have inspired me and I will proudly play my small part in making his legacy live on. My fellow graduate students have been constant sources of inspiration and emotional support. The UCLA ethnography and conversation analysis working groups were very important spaces to me over the course of this project. Jooyoung Lee, Iddo Tavory, and Brandon Berry provided me with early role models as graduate students and gave memorable feedback as I was viii just starting to find my way. David Trouille always provided the clarity of comparison and the supportive musings of a fellow “jock sociologist”. For their friendship and support I also want to thank Anup Sheth, Laura Loeb, Lisa Kietzer, Anne White, Chase Raymond, Caitlin Patler, Hyeyoung Oh, Rennie Lee, Elena Shih, Joe Skala, and Kate Ceredona. I could not have completed this project without my family and friends. My parents were always there, never so close to crowd but never so far that I couldn’t reach them. My brother Matthew has also been there. He and Sophie have given themselves to me as amazing role models and sources of much needed reverie. And thanks to all my friends whose presence inspired and pushed me. Ari, Robert, Sam, Danny, and Dawn were like siblings. Derek and Eric taught me about myself both on and off the basketball court. And a special thank you to Liat, whose timely arrival to my life eased the final push over the hump. I couldn’t have made it without her. Every research project is the product of a massive collective act. While all of the inherent weaknesses are strictly my own, the completion of this dissertation is a testament to the strength and support of the context in which I’ve been working. ix Vita EDUCATION 2009 M.A. Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles 2007 B.A. Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles PUBLICATIONS 2013 “Basketball in the Key of Law: The significance of disputing in pick-up basketball.” Law & Society Review 47(3): 653-685. 2012 “Suspending Narrative Engagements: The Case of Pick-up Basketball.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 642(1): 96- 108. x Chapter 1 Introduction: A physical and social ecology Sitting in my car on the east side of Barnard Way in Santa Monica, California, I quietly took in the scene. Barnard is a two lane street that runs parallel to the Santa Monica beachfront. Behind me, the street hits the Santa Monica-Los Angeles municipal border and turns sharply inland toward Santa Monica’s Main Street, a popular stretch of restaurants, bars, shops, and art galleries.