Converse & Rick Telander Celebrate the 35th Anniversary of Heaven Is A Playground.
Tuesday night Converse helped Chicago sportswriter Rick Telander celebrate the 35th anniversary of his groundbreaking novel, "Heaven Is A
Playground," at the Converse Energy Space in Manhattan's Lower East Side.
The book, which our 44th President Barack Obama calls "the best basketball book" he's ever read, details the summer Telander spent chronicling the games and lives of the basketball players on the courts of Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant area. 35 years later, the novel still resonates with hoops addicts.
NSNG reader Brad Zibung was in NYC for the event and he told me though the space was small, the crowd certainly wasn't. Sneaker freaks, twenty-something hipsters, hoops fans and even some of the playground legends featured in the book all gathered to remember the days when 'fros were big and basketball shoes were always Chuck Taylors.
