So I'm sitting here waiting to play some basketball. There's people playing but I'm gonna wait for the good players to show. Which us pretty ironic cause I'm basically at the Ruckers Park (look it up) of Tirana and I'm one of the hardcore "good" types. Ironic because, well, I'm not that good at basketball. But I decided with all my free time I'd get better this summer. I went out, bought a ball, decided I was gonna spend my afternoons shooting around, possibly with my shirt off working on my tan. What followed was two extremely depressing afternoons walking around the city, shoes in bag, ball in hands (too hard to dribble cause the sidewalk is so uneven. If there is a sidewalk,) asking strangers where I can play some basketball. First off, either everyone I talked to was visiting from the villages that day, or no one really knows the city that well. They'd send me one way, say 200 meters, I'd walk 200 meters, ask someone else, and promptly get sent in the opposite direction. Next, whenever I did find a place, the rim was ripped down, or it was locked up. Now this is what ticked me off the most. It seems to me that when they got rid of communism, Albanians devolved into this infantile form of super capitalism. They went from owning nothing to trying to seize upon anything they could get their hands on and monetizing it. If they couldn't monetize it, make sure no one else can enjoy it. You got a property? Wall it up. Want a bigger courtyard? Block the road. You want a store? Build it on the sidewalk. You want to extend your balcony over the street but there's a streetlight in the way? Build it around the pole. The point being, everybody's out to get theirs. After communism, previously empty streets turned to open air markets. Everyone with a basement apartment won the lottery, cause now you have a store front. Knock down the wall, put your knick knacks behind glass. And to the locals this seems to be the pinnacle of capitalism. Seeing a successful store, deciding to copy them, hanging a shingle, wait for customers. A really see little in the way of industry. Nothing much gets produced. Everyone just wants to buy a pencil for a dollar and turn around and sell it to his neighbor for a buck ten. So I found the one set of basketball courts that are open to the public. I show up and they're padlocked. I ask around, people tell me that the guy who runs them should be around. He wasn't. I called the phone number which was written there, guy says he won't show up till 5pm when it's less hot. I'm at my peak of frustration now for a couple of reasons.
1. Of course the courts were pay to play.
2. All the time walking around this place made me realize there is zero city planing. None. Outside the center of town, there's no public parks, fields, courts, wading pools, jungle gyms. Nothing. Private monetized? Sure. Public, no. Kids play in gravel roads and alleys.
3. Albanians are lazy, don't do their jobs, and are petrafied of getting to hot or cold. Can't possibly play ball in the afternoon.
So of course, I'm a jerk. The old guy shows up and he's in a wheelchair. Turns out he was a good player back in the day, got in an accident, and someone at City hall decided to let him run the
courts. And they're only fifty cents an hour....
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Well I still stand by my first two points though.
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