Washington’s most influential are suddenly taking up hoops, all in the hopes of getting a run with President Obama.

As with any long-lived icon of sports, culture, and history, it is nearly impossible to encapsulate all of the thoughts and remembrances of people into one service, one article, one story, one comment. So, I will continue to share topics relating to John Isaacs from time to time, starting with these.

When Kevin Garnett was traded to the Celtics, this became my favorite jersey:

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One of the best articles ever written about Wilmeth Sidat-Singh appears this morning in the Washington City Paper, as a cover story by sports journalist Dave McKenna titled “The Syracuse Walking Dream: The Most Famous D.C. Athlete You’ve Never Heard Of.” Here’s an excerpt:

In October 1937, Syracuse University’s undefeated football team traveled to Baltimore to face the Maryland Terrapins.

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Superstar hip hop artist Ludacris has had nothin’ but love for Black Fives.

This is something about how I got my Black Fives retro gear placed in a classic episode of Pimp My Ride, along with clips of Xzibit wearing it.

If only for the ’70s music, the retro sneakers, and the American Basketball Association nostalgia, the new movie Semi-Pro, which premiered on Tuesday, is worth seeing.

On the comedy aspect, that depends on whether you like Will Ferrell’s trademark Read the rest of this entry »

Lately, it seems like every week another African American pro athlete in the prime of their career self-destructs, or (sadly) worse. Why is that?

There were dozens of African American female basketball teams that played during the Black Fives Era.

One of the very first independently organized teams was the New York Girls, formed in 1907 in Manhattan as a sister club to the pioneering Alpha Physical Culture Club men’s basketball team.

Their rivals, the Spartan Girls of Brooklyn, were the sister team to the Smart Set Athletic Club men’s organization.

A third team, the Jersey Girls, was organized in nearby Orange, New Jersey, and affiliated with the men of that city’s all-black Independent Pleasure Club.

In the early days, basketball among women was all about camaraderie and social networking. It was a chance for a young lady to expand her world not only to other parts of the city but also to other pockets of black people.

This meant, more eligible men to meet … easy because early girls basketball teams were linked to previously established men’s fives. For example, the New York Girls were coached and managed by Conrad Norman, who was also the founder of the Alpha club.

It was common and maybe even encouraged for female players to marry male players on their counterpart teams.

History was made on February 26, 1910, the date of the first recorded basketball game between two independently organized all-black women’s basketball teams, the New York Girls and the Jersey Girls.

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In honor of UniWatchBlog.com, a blog devoted to the obsessive study of athletic aesthetics (in other words, sports uniforms), I am sharing a series of posts I call “Logo C.S.I.,” which stands for Logo Creative Scene Investigation.

The Independent Pleasure Club of New Jersey.

These posts will be about logo forensics — how me and my company, Black Fives, Inc., went about finding, identifying, tagging, bagging, dissecting, storing, and bringing back to life the previously unidentifiable remains of the many dead or missing logos of the Black Fives Era.

Until I visited their site for the first time last year, I didn’t realize how close I am to being a sports aesthetic fetishist myself.

A closeup of the IPC logo.

My first logo “episode” is about the Independent Pleasure Club of Orange, New Jersey (IPC). The IPC possessed the most titillating basketball team name ever. I had to resurrect this logo.

I discovered this team late one night working in the Black Fives creative lab examining microfilm of old Negro newspaper sports pages. I loved the name but wanted a
team photo so I could see their logo.

After some digging I found a team shot (the only known photograph in existence) in an obscure dust covered publication from the basement catacombs of the United States Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. This logo had been missing since about 1912.

Stock colors from a vintage Spalding catalog.

The IPC was formed in 1908 in Orange, New Jersey at a time when sport was still considered a “pleasure.” They stood for “uplifting the colored athletic standard” and staged social events — including picnics, cigar “smokers,” music recitals, dances, poetry readings, and theatrical plays — to raise funds and build camaraderie among athletes.

After procuring special Library of Congress researcher’s credentials to gain limited access to the logo corpse as well as authorization to do an autopsy, I made an image of the published team photograph, which revealed the team logo in a monogram style, possibly hand-sewn by someone’s mother.

IPC game jersey.

I took the images back to the lab, where I used Photoshop to digitally zoom and isolate the logo, and Illustrator to place it into a digital workspace where I could trace its outline. I further isolated each letter of the monogram, then compared these to existing typefaces in order to choose a matching font.

Using this procedure as well as trial and error, I finalized the black and white version of the logo and its corresponding team font.

To determine a color scheme for the logo and uniform I reviewed census records of the individual players to create a psychological profile of the team to get a sense of which color scheme they would have selected from one of the vintage sports equipment catalogs that existed in 1912.

The leading sporting goods manufacturer was the A.G. Spalding Co., and its catalog included blank woolen jersey-knit sports tops available in a limited set of basic athletic colors.

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