On the banks of the Hudson River, in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, the Riverbank State Park welcomes some three million visitors per year. Its riverfront landscape provides a scenic backdrop for an otherwise innocuous piece of property. New York City is called a concrete jungle for a reason; here, you can find concrete flanked by basketball hoops, or covered by a layer of unforgiving Astroturf, creating valuable green space for local residents.
If you were to visit here in the mid-1990s, no matter the day or the weather condition, chances are you’d find a young boy and his father at either location – sometimes playing basketball, but most often playing soccer on the turf, every day.