New York’s Bowery FC Is More Than A Soccer Team | Mr Porter
Photography by Eric Chakeen | Styling by Julie Ragolia
A familiar scene unfolds in Chinatown on an unseasonably cool Saturday morning in August. Produce sellers and fishmongers set up their stands. Delivery trucks drenched in graffiti unload and cart cellophane-wrapped pallets through crowded sidewalks. Hypnotic sounds of tai chi drift down Sara D Roosevelt Park as a neatly organized group of elders get their exercise.
Though the world has experienced seismic shifts in the months and even days leading up to this particular moment, the longstanding routine of this emblematic Lower Manhattan neighborhood is a comforting sight and proof that even a city defined by constant change can offer a steadfast reprieve from the grind of everyday life.
Part of that routine is taking shape at Lion’s Gate Field, where Bowery FC has played since 2001. Players trickle in and wade through piles of dead leaves as though autumn snuck in undetected. A groundskeeper clearing the pitch claims the towering trees that line the park are all dead, belated victims of Hurricane Sandy. Saltwater got to their roots, back in 2012, yet they still stand tall along the sidelines.
Like those London Planetrees, the pitch itself has seen better days. But the members of Bowery FC have shown up bright and early, glad to be back at their home base.
“The cool thing about this field, it’s like the West 4th Street ‘Cage’ of soccer,” says Mr Carlos Franco, referencing the legendary basketball court in Greenwich Village where spectators, hecklers and beguiled passersby cling to the surrounding chain link fence for some of the most up-close and intense games of streetball one can witness. “Everybody knows about this field. Everybody comes to play here. Everybody wants to check it out and be a part of it. It’s the epicenter of soccer in downtown Manhattan. And we kind of started that.”
Franco would know. He’s one of the founders of Bowery FC, an OG celebrating the club’s 20th anniversary. They often refer to the original members with the same sort of respect paid to an elder statesman – or an older brother you’re taking the piss out of.
Before Bowery FC was a proper football club, it was a simple open pick-up game among university teammates, locals, regulars around the various city leagues, just friends, really. When a core group of those players realised they had a pretty good thing going, something that they could grow and nurture beyond a rollicking round of football, they decided to make things official, and so Bowery FC was born.
