Indoor pickleball is a grindhouse chock-a-block with its own magic. Familiar faces, slashing their way through the winter together, desperately cramming in points before the Step Aerobics instructor kicks you out of the gym.
Spring pickleball, by contrast, is sweet and hesitant. The magnolias are in bloom. The clouds dramatic. Over WhatsApp, you goad three people you vaguely know into an impromptu game. You sneak out of work early. And for a couple of hours, barely aware of the surrounding world, the four of you create something that feels intense and meaningful, before you gradually find yourself swept into some weird formless round robin with people you’ve never met. You lose track of time. "Stay for one more," someone says. You've missed dinner. Someone hands you cookies between games. A slice of watermelon. A cold samosa. And four games later, you're imploring someone else you just met to squeeze out a few more minutes of twilight.
The outdoor season begins differently for each of us. But that sort of indulgent evening is when you know it's on. The whole summer lies ahead of you.
Summer pickleball breathes and even pants. Queen Elizabeth Park in the height of summer is almost too good to be true. Not long ago, the site was a single unused tennis court. On a warm July evening, there can be upwards of a hundred players sharing the space. There's a quiet chaos, and an informal ethos: arrive as strangers, leave as friends. The mysterious board of paddles on the wall moves like a Ouija board, channeling something deep and hopeful, lives intersecting at a moment of time. You'll hear two dozen different languages, each fluent in the universal language of a rally.
Summer pickleball is light and filled with serendipity. You never know who will show up. Sometimes the 5.0 players arrive, and you get a glimpse of the deeper level of the game itself. The breeze carries their delicate strokes from the back of the court, down through the sky like the pappus face of a dandelion. You recognize the structure of their rallies. But the points feel like free flow jazz riffs.
The controlled patter of these riffs, from one little court to the next, the chatter between, creates a warm cacophony—like a plaza in Barcelona at night. Chance encounters. Finding comrades. Hatching plans. Joy! It's the whole point of living in a city. There is no fee for this experience. Everybody is welcome. It's hard to think of a space in Vancouver where so many total strangers regularly gather and share something random and real.
By July, you seem to settle into a crew of new friends. Or rather, you find yourself straddling the edges of several different crews. There are the games you play to engage with those kind strangers—the games you will never stop playing. And there are the games that slowly pull you deeper down the rabbit hole, honing your craft one point at a time.
If only this deeply meaningful shared experience could be duplicated all over the city. Instead of having to drive to Jericho Beah or Queen Elizabeth Park.
Great cities are built from places where strangers keep running into one another until they aren’t strangers anymore.
The Summer Issue Jamboree Shirt pays homage to these long summer days where anything is possible. It’s the shirt you live in — from morning coffee to one more game before dark. Reply with your size and colour. $40. Limited first run. Deep Mocha, Sand, Heathered Midnight. (Limited colours and sizes left.) Or enter our summer photo contest.