Those were the days

Chances are if you were born in the early 80s and grew up in New York City you were invited to a birthday party at Hackers, Hitters & Hoops at some point. Hackers, located in the rather random location of 18th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues, was truly a unique facility for Manhattanites. Inside one could find a full-court basketball court (of course, this being the interior of a building in New York City, there was approximately one inch between the sidelines and the wall, ostensibly making diving for loose balls a death sport), a craptacular miniature golf course that essentially wound its way throughout the entire layout, batting cages, arcade games, and, most importantly, a cage populated by three “trick” low basketball hoops.

I say “trick” because the hoops all had these oddly shaped backboards that you were theoretically supposed to use to make weird-ass shots, which is about as satisfying as a hand job. Fortunately these hoops were all also significantly lower than the NBA 10-foot standard, enabling even the shortest of white boys to experience the awesome feeling of throwing down a nasty dunk.

This was a match made in heaven, as all throughout high school my friends and I were more obsessed with dunking than sex. Well, maybe that’s not quite so accurate, but we certainly experienced 100% more dunking than fucking. Quick, what’s more fun than throwing a two-handed jam down on one of your best friends in the world? Exactly.

The search for low basketball hoops in high school led us far and wide, and there were only two real mainstays discovered aside from Hackers: the dunkable rims in Asser Levy Playground on 23rd Street, and later on, Chelsea Piers. Both sites presented their share of problems, however, as Asser Levy’s backboards would come all the way down after hanging on the rim unless you wedged a rock just so in the height adjustment mechanism, and Chelsea Piers’ hoops, while awesome in their glass backboardedness, were only lowered maybe 25% of the time we bothered to go, and sessions were also often hindered by constant tapings of "Law & Order."

All of these factors made The Cage at Hackers the king of low hoop basketball. During junior and senior years of high school, we literally went to Hackers every Friday after school (yes, we were that cool) and had countless steel-cage death matches in The Cage. Not only were the hoops dangerously low, but The Cage was actually quite small, ensuring considerable bodily harm during the pseudo full-court games we played. Additionally, the cage cost something like three tokens for 15 minutes, which I believe was the equivalent of about $1.50, but they never seemed to care that we would generally stay for well over an hour.

Hackers later added Top Skater, which raised our collective obsession with the place to astronomical heights. It may be difficult for those of you who were never 16-year-old boys to understand, but between playing an arcade game allowing one to simulate the most insane skateboarding tricks in the land, and viciously dunking on and taunting your friends, Hackers was pretty much the greatest non-drinking establishment ever. For fuck’s sake, we were so apeshit about Top Skater that we spent a good deal of time plotting the best way to steal the machine (for the record, the plan required a forklift and our buddy Scott’s parents’ house’s den in Jamaica Estates).

However, all good things of course must come to an end, and on a return trip to Hackers during freshman year at college, we found the entire place gutted, with nary a trace of Top Skater in sight. Learning of the destruction of Hackers, Hitters & Hoops was a dark, dark day, and that void has never been filled. I suppose there’s not much of a demand for an indoor basketball/mini golf/batting cage/Top Skater mecca in New York City, and given its demise, it probably ain’t the soundest of business models, but it still won a place in our hearts.

A glimmer of hope has been established upon the news that Times Square will be the recipient of its very own Dave & Buster’s, seemingly the closest thing to Hackers, since, well, Hackers. Regardless, unless D&B re-introduces low-hoop, steel-cage basketball to the masses, it will only serve as yet another painful reminder of what once was and what could be.