Manhunt Manhunt 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2-3, The Best Link Ever and an Elk’s Run Plug

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

So much to talk about, let’s get right to the goods.

Manhunt, the greatest game of all time. It was like tag on steroids. There are several games that children in Brooklyn play that seem more popular in the borough: Stickball, Suicide (and the less popular variant, Homicide), Stoopball…but Manhunt was the grand daddy game. You needed twenty players or so to play it right and the proper environment capable of hosting the game.

Two teams, let’s say ten vs. ten but I’ve played in games that had twenty vs. twenty, usually during block parties. One team goes out and hides, usually gets about five minutes to get a good spot. The boundaries are generally 1-4 square blocks, enough to really spread the hiders out. My block was perpendicular to the BQE and growing up the Brooklyn-bound side was closed to traffic for about two years. We could simply walk from our block onto the highway and play Manhunt amongst construction equipment, good times.

So we all go out and hide, the other team comes and finds us. When one of us is spotted we have to run for it. The person looking for you has to grab you and hold on while saying, “Manhunt, Manhunt, 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2-3.” If he loses his grip it doesn’t count. The strategy was to run full steam into a Manhunter and try to knock them over. Manhunters usually paired up, making it harder to break through them. One slowed you down while the other tackled you.

Once you were caught you went to jail. The goal was to have the whole team of hiders in jail. The Manhunters assigned guards to the jail because if only one player got close enough to “tag” the jail everyone inside got free. Everyone had that moment, 19 players in jail, 10 people (or more) looking for you. You make a break for it, bobbing and weaving and dive for the jail as a plethora of people grab hold of you and scream the manhunt chant. But you tag it; all 19 teammates scatter like roaches. You end up in jail but it was so worth it. You better believe your teammates are going to treat you to a Quarter Water.

One time while playing Manhunt my cousin Steven was hiding out in the basement pit to some apartment. Apartments in Brooklyn sometimes have a pit of sorts to the left of the stoop that goes down to a basement apartment. They make for good hiding spaces. He was spotted, he jumps over the wall of the pit, the wall that had iron spikes protruding from it. He falls, quickly gets up. Runs to the jail, no one stops him. Tags it, no one scatters.

“What?’ he asks us. Steven looks down at his leg and there is the biggest fucking gash I have ever seen in my life. Flesh ripped out, blood pouring from his leg. He crumples to the floor, crying. His parents take him to the hospital.

But that’s what happens in Manhunt. It’s not a game, it’s a fucking war, and in every war there are casualties.

Feel free to share some of your own favorite childhood games.

Ok, best link ever, the place where you can find hundreds of covers like this one:

Superman is a dick.

And as for Elk’s Run, here’s a link to the trailer we made. It’s huge so be careful, only recommended for broadbanders. The trailer will be premiering next week on Comicon Pulse, I wrote a little “Behind the Scenes” for it.

read a book, fanboy: Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

turn off the metallica, fanboy: By all Means Necessary

Labels: mitc

posted by Jason at 9:42 AM 11 Comments

11 Comments

 Jorge Vega said...

"You better believe your teammates are going to treat you to a Quarter Water."

Don't know why, but this line made me laugh 'til I cried like a bitch. Maybe because it's so dead on. Manhunt really was the grandpappy of all street games.

1:56 PM  

 Jason said...

I wonder how extensive it was. I always considered it a "Brooklyn game" but already Queens is chiming in.

4:29 PM  

 Jay said...

Every culture's got a flood myth. And every group of kids played some version of Manhunt. Down here in the Dirty South, it was Capture the Flag, and instead of Brooklyn streetcorners, we ran through woods straight out of Deliverance. Same principle, same basic rules.

And if we got bored with the whole "structured play" thing, we'd play Kill The Man With The Ball--or "Smear the Queer"--football without downs, or plays, or even different teams--whoever was holding the ball was fair game.

11:11 PM  

 Jay said...

Oh, and what the hell is a "Quarter Water"?

11:11 PM  

 Jason said...

Quarter Waters where those little colored sugar drinks that cost a quarter. Also called "Junky Juice" or classified by their respective color or suppossed flavor: "Lime Juice" or "Green Juice", "Cherry Juice" or "Red Juice".

12:43 AM  

 Jason said...

We had some version of Smear the Queer but it had a different name, you know, being progressive and all. I forget what it was called.

What about Suicide? Throw a ball against a wall, catch it. If you drop you you need to run to the wall, touch it and say "Suicide" before someone picks it up and pegs you. If you get pegged three times you get "booties", you need to stand against the wall, ass out, while every player pegs the ball at your ass (or lower back, that was the goods) three times. If you flinch it starts over. Homicide was the pussy version, the ball had to the hit the wall before you touched it and said Homicide.

Anything like that in the dirty south?

12:49 AM  

 Jason Copland said...

As kids, up here in Canada, we just played hockey. Although, recently, I've noticed this insidious game called Basketball slowly taking over kids' play time.

Another example of this horrible thing called Globalization......

1:24 AM  

 Jason said...

Or, maybe they play basketball because they're forgetting what hockey is. I know I am.

8:43 AM  

 Jay said...

"Suicide" sounds like a hell of a lot of fun, but we never played that Down South. (You know, the Bible told us Suicide was wrong, but Smearing Queers--hey, that's cool.) We played plain ol' Dodgeball, though unlike the movie we would have the "dodgees" in a circle while the ball-throwers were around the outside of the circle.

And I have never played an instant of hockey--it just wasn't done when I was growing up. Would have loved to do it; just never had the opportunity. I'll smoke y'all's Yankee and Mountie asses on the basketball court, tho.

1:33 PM  

 Jorge Vega said...

Suicide?! Yeah, we played Suicide in Far Rockaway, Queens. But, Far Rock always had to take things to the NEXT level... and, yes, by "NEXT" level I mean the extremely stupid, borderline-kidney-shredding level.

Most folks played suicide with a blue handball, or maybe, for extra sting, a tennis ball. Well, behind the stone institution known simply as J.H.S. 180, we played with a small, black, paddle ball.

Anyone know how hard a paddle ball is? You might as well be hurling Ben Grimm's left nut. The shit kills. I got hit in the throat once by a kid named Louis Taylor (but his suicide name was "Booty"). I fell to the ground and, I swear, I couldn't breath for almost three minutes. The swelling looked like I had a goiter or maybe Qwatoh, from Shwarzenegger's "Total Recall", hanging from my neck.

By the way, my suicide name was "Speedy Gonzalez". The black kids I played with thought it was hilarious. S'kay, I threw a couple of nigger chasers at them and we were all square.

This blog is speaking universal truths, Jason.

2:26 PM  

 Jason said...

Let me remind everybody that Jorge is half-black and is therefor allowed to say "nigger" plus, he was referencing today's posting.

And he's violently racist.

2:32 PM  

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