Published: May 29, 2008 11:33 pm      

PROBLEM: LaSalle resident seeks help with street ballin’

Mike Emanuele has heard more than his fair share of basketballs bouncing.

“I spent 40 years listening to basketballs at work,” the retired Falls Board of Education maintenance man said as he sat in the living room of his 80th Street home on Thursday night.

Now he is again being bombarded by the sound of bouncing balls at all hours of the afternoon and evening.

Next door to his home, and a few doors down, neighbors have erected 12-foot high portable basketball hoops and placed them on the curbline. Emanuele is far from thrilled with having a pair of homemade hard courts right outside his front door.

“I wouldn’t mind it if it was two hours (of basketball activity) and done. And if it was just the kids next door,” Emanuele said. “But (the kids) are coming from all over and they’re playing for hours and it is so noisy.”

It’s not the environment he expected when he returned to his hometown from Grand Island, three years ago. Emanuele moved to 80th Street to be near his son, who also lives on the street and his daughter who lives on 63rd Street.

He’s spent a lot of time and invested a fair amount of money to renovate a home that might have charitably been called a “fixer upper” when he bought it. One year after he moved in, the hoop next door appeared and the second hoop popped up this spring.

“It’s made (living on the street) miserable,” Emanuele said. “(Your home) is supposed to be your castle.”

Instead, he says young hoopsters practice their dribbling skills and jump shorts from late afternoon into nighttime darkness, aided by illumination from street lights. Additionally, groups of teens create a hazard for local traffic.

“Everybody has to slow down or stop because they’re all blocking the street,” Emanuele said.

The baskets are weighed down by piles of rocks which have supplied local vandals with the weapons to smash car windows in the neighborhood. The baskets tilt precariously over the roadway, so Emanuele says at least two of the scarce parking spots on the street are unavailable.

“No one wants to park under those things,” he said.

With a full set of basketball courts not that far away, at 73rd Street and Stephenson Avenue, Emanuele can’t understand why he should have to put up with hoops on his street.

“That’s what that is for,” he said. “Why don’t they go there?”

When the Gazette took Emanuele’s problem to city police and building inspectors, they immediately sounded alarm bells.

“You can’t have that there,” Inspector Dennis Virtuoso said. “The city doesn’t want something (like a portable basketball hoop) in it’s right of way. If (the hoops) are there and they fall on a kid or a car, then the city could be liable in a lawsuit (for damages). You don’t want anything in the right of way.”

Virtuoso said city engineers, if they are alerted to the presence of the hoops, will issue a removal order to the property owner.

“(The engineers) will inspect (the hoops) and send a registered letter to the property owner telling them (the hoops) have to be removed,” Virtuoso said. “If they don't remove them,the city will pick it up and remove it.”

Cataract City cops also said the curb side hoops are a hazard.

“I would think (the hoops) would be a problem because the kids (when they’re playing) are blocking traffic,” police Superintendent John Chella said. “I think it could be a safety hazard. You can’t block vehicular traffic.”

Someone who blocks traffic could be arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. Chella said he would refer Emanuele’s problem to the Traffic Division commander for further investigation.

“I understand this might not be the most important thing for police,” Emanuele said. “But it’s quality of life. If you don’t correct it, it builds and it builds and it builds. Then what do you do?”