Squat Racquet

Clubhouse?

My favorite building on Staten Island is this one-story mystery at 259 Victory Boulevard on the hill coming into St. George. It's zoned for commercial use but it's pretty obvious it hasn't been open for business in a while. If you Google the address, you get a reference to the "Green House," but nothing more. A real estate site informs us that it was built in 1900 and sits on an "irregularly shaped lot." Current property value: $60K.

Court 1?

Can't we find a use for this uniquely squat building?Then it hit me. What is Staten Island missing? (Don't answer that.) But would it be big enough? I took a walk around the corner, and just as I hoped: a half basement and narrow back yard a full story below the entrance on Victory Boulevard. Plenty of room for an international standard court, plus changing room, club room, and library.

Reader, you are looking at the future home of the Tompkinsville-St. George Squash Club. Sure, it might take a bit of retrofitting, blowing out walls, and what-not. But if you're a squash player from Staten Island, South Brooklyn, Bayonne, Perth Amboy, or Elizabeth, and you've got a couple thousand dollars to spend, here's your chance to play in a building that is one year older, yes older, than the original Yale Club (now the Penn Club) in midtown. True, you may have a hard time finding a place that mixes your post-match martini the way you like it or serves a crisp Goose Island IPA, but you try ordering sambar vada at the Yale Club.

The competition

(This post dedicated to the founding, and only, members of the BQSBC: the Brooklyn-Queens Squash Book Club.)