On top of a glass counter,displaying goods from New York sports teams such as the Jets or Mets, rests a sleek black laptop computer. Behind its glossy exterior is a middle-aged man scrutinizing what he sees on the screen. Despite the pleasant weather typical of the end of summer outside, the man is too busy to enjoy it.
“Yankee fans are complacent,” he tells a fellow employee, about 30 years his junior, as he browses through a site selling the baseball team’s goods.
Steve Cooper, 59, shows some disdain at the fact that the New York Yankees merchandise that make up a good percentage of his store isn’t as selling as well as he should hope.
The average fan usually buys things such as jerseys, baseball caps, baseballs, and even bats, in as a show of support for their favorite teams. However, with all of the championships and awards the Bronx-based team has won over the years, Steve says that the fans are definitely, “a little more complacent.” They would rather save the money they would normally spend on a new piece of apparel, and continue using and wearing the ones they bought many pennants ago.
This is Sports Fever, a sporting goods store located on Avenue U in Gravesend, Brooklyn. Just by looking inward from the outside, one can understand that this small business embodies the kind of laid-back atmosphere for which the neighborhood is known.
Despite competition from the major shopping centers, especially the Modell’s chain stores found in the Kings Plaza mall in the east and Caesar’s Bay southwest of here, Sports Fever has maintained a presence in the neighborhood at a time when other specialized merchandise businesses are shutting down elsewhere.
It is probably because of this specialized nature, that the brothers Cooper have managed to keep this store afloat in these trying economic times.
The store opened in 1975, at a time when the neighborhood was a bit different than what it is now. Gary, the younger brother, remembers that people actually “lived behind their stores.”
The original focus of the store was that it sold solely men and women’s apparel. Back then, the neighborhood didn’t have many clothing stores, and the Cooper brothers took advantage of that niche.
Its current incarnation opened ten years later for pretty much the same reasons, because “the demand went that way.” Just as the business was renamed “Sports Fever,” everything about the store changed in a pretty instantaneous fashion. As Steve put it, ” we incorporated everything into a whole new design.”
Sports Fever stocks only merchandise for team sports, ranging from baseball to football, as well as hockey. Everything is neatly divided up into departments, allowing customers easy access to products, with football jerseys by the entrance, caps of all MLB teams behind the counter, and sneakers and rollerblades in another side of the store. It also helps that the employees are mostly life-long residents of the area, and that they have played sports .
Steve lived on Avenue V, right by the Marlboro housing project. As a child he played in the parkland that occupies a great deal of the area, using it as his “personal playground.” In his more formidable years, he played sandlot football, also known as “street football,” an activity continued today by the younger generation at Scarangella park. He even remarks that he and some of the other employees closer to his age were scholastic athletes at Lafayette High School.
Despite the changing demographics of the neighborhood, with an decreasing population of Italian-Americans, Gravesend has pretty much “remained the same throughout the years.” Like the neighborhood, Sport’s Fever presents itself with a sort of laid-back atmosphere one can usually find in a southern Brooklyn neighborhood. So laid-back, that Gary boasts that the district has the “lowest crime rate” in all of Brooklyn.
Customers come in and out, and some stay longer to discuss one of many topics. A man comes in and starts on the new quarterback of an NFL team, “He started crying, ‘I’m nervous.'” A woman and her son come in for a new bat and glove and talk about their personal life and how teens are not to be trusted with their own cars and such. It is these ingredients that make Sports Fever an essential neighborhood institution.
When asked if a dark blue cap with an embroidered “B,” on the cover is the only piece of Boston Red Sox merchandise in the store, Mr. Cooper laughs off that notice. “I will only special order from THAT team.”
The quotes really give a sense of what the speaker must be like – it really makes him sound like someone I’d like to talk too. Good work, very interesting.