Pickleball Forever Wars: Grudges Persist at Carl Schurz Park

The pickleball wars at East 86th Street’s Carl Schurz Park have deadlocked into a simmering stalemate, or so it seems, with a new Parks Department sign telling everybody to stay in their “designated play spaces.”

The park’s recreational blacktop, which is split between three recently installed pickleball courts and a generalized play area (including basketball courts), has occasionally been the site of passionate disputes over the fair usage of public space—at least since the informal arrival a couple of years back of “picklers,” who were rewarded with their official courts by the Parks Department last year.

Some residents have said that the pickleball community has colonized the formerly wide-open public play area, while picklers have expressed joy that they have a free space to play their beloved sport; many others certainly have no dog in the fight.

Now, the Parks Department sign confirms why an odd square of fencing was symbolically put smack-dab between the two spaces last month: “This fence is here to establish designated play spaces. ALL pickleball activity must remain behind this fence,” it reads.

While the sign suggests that pickleball players should rigorously observe a hard limit on where they can play, some players who talked to Our Town suggested that the presence of the sign and the fence cemented their rightful control of the space. Chris, who was waiting for his turn on the courts, said that critics “are used to how it was for a long time. . . . People don’t want things to change.” He loved the sport, he added, because it was a “much easier and approachable version of tennis.”

One player, who spoke anonymously in order to be candid, said she had been around during the fiercest stretch of the pickle wars in early 2023. She affirmed a previous Our Town story, which reported on scuttlebutt that much of the controversy had been ignited by a local dad, who was angry that he couldn’t play catch with his son.

The man would “play catch in the middle of our games,” she claimed. “You’d have kids coming with their scooters, and their skateboards, while we’re playing games. It was crazy.” Before the Parks Department stepped in to paint official courts, the informal “courts” that allegedly infuriated the local dad were set up by a man known as Albert, who called himself the “Pickleball Doctor.”

While the anonymous player hadn’t yet seen the fresh sign on the fence, she added, she felt vindicated by it: “The city did the right thing. We have the right to these courts. This is now ours, this is the pickleball area, and you have all of that area.” The player stated the belief that the scooter-riders and the catch-players could interrupt them all over again, if they got the chance.

In an intriguing bit of gossip, the anonymous player told Our Town that while virtually all of the park’s picklers agreed that Albert had kicked off something “amazing,” he had since alienated some.

”I think he felt like he built it, and he has the power. Other people felt like, ‘No, you don’t—it’s public courts and we’re not giving you this power,” she said. The largest consequence was that some of the players have reportedly split off from a group chat that Albert created, developing an alternative one on WhatsApp.

Meanwhile, the blacktop on the basketball courts has not been repaved in years and the hoops long ago saw nets disappear. That has been a lingering complaint for the many people who shoot hoops there. One basketball player named Chase told Our Town that he had been coming to the courts for around a decade, and that he’d seen no substantial improvements in that entire time.

“There are little patches of black on the court. That’s them ‘redoing it,’” he said, referring to the Parks Department. “I think they’re more slippery, so that’s why I never go on them.”

He pointed behind one hoop, which had no net, and noted that there was often a large puddle there: “Let’s say you swish the ball, and there’s no net . . . it goes right into the water.”