Review: La Jolla Recreation Center
Home to the rich and famous, La Jolla is a resort neighborhood with striking ocean vistas. It takes some time to get there from the highway, so it is easy to suppose that most patrons of the La Jolla Recreation Center are residents - the aforementioned rich and famous - and they are probably there to play tennis. Something about being in this atmosphere of wealth is conducive to a sort of internal transformation. A person who leads a comfortable lifestyle in reasonable prosperity, may begin to believe that he is underprivileged, and perhaps feel a slight resentment toward these opulent surroundings.
This phenomenon can be used to the advantage of a person who enjoys pickup basketball. During those times when you've lost your swagger, and the bullies, egos and trash talk of a typical pick-up venue have got you down, there can be no better remedy than a couple games amongst opponents who may possibly be perceived as "softer" than you. The experience can really provide that chip on your shoulder that has been missing from your game.
The basketball courts at the La Jolla Recreation Center are therefore worthy of mention. It begins before you even get out of your car. Maneuvering into a parking space b
etween a Bentley and a Maserati, your perspective on life changes: Suppose that you departed from your home in a freshly washed Saturn, still under the manufacturer's warranty. Well, you've now arrived in La Jolla, driving a vehicle that you may simply refer to as your "hooptie" (a large older automobile, often in poor condition).
"NO GOLF" is the message of the sign attached to a rugged chain link fence, overlooking the facility. These forbidding words are driven home, so to speak, by the image of a golf ball, overladen in red with the international symbol for "No". If there could be an opposite to a graffiti covered "No Hanging on the Rims" sign, this is it. Golf must be the main game here, most likely followed by tennis, with basketball pretty far down the list - after shuffle board and croquet. There is presumably little risk that the rims here will be bent by ferocious dunking in the absence of a prominent "no dunking" sign.
So even if you don't have a lot of experience, you can be pretty bold on these courts. Start working on some of your still-in-development moves: Dribble through your legs, dribble through the defender's legs, work on your off-the-backboard passing.
Best of all, there is a very real chance that you will break some rules while playing basketball here. "Pushing" is prohibited, according to the sign posted at center-court, and sportsmanship must be maintained "at ALL Times", so it's not out of the question that a generally law-abiding person, with no criminal record, could get to experience rebellion against oppressive rules from The Man.
New experiences like this are invaluable in the formation of the playground basketball player, and hopefully, when it's all over and you climb into your Saturn hooptie, your newly acquired rugged, rebellious edge will carry over to your home court. Just to be safe though, leave the off-the-backboard passing in La Jolla.
