I've kicked a ball in an Albuquerque blizzard till it was bigger than a snowman's belly, saved a penalty kick with my backside in East Anglia, played barefoot in an Australian gymnasium, and scored a goal for a Tijuana orphanage in a sandlot pickup game, but the first time I played with the Chinatown Soccer Club puts them all in the shade.

Andrew Sutherland first enlightened me about the CSC. He'd been living in New York for years at that point, but we'd grown up together in Colorado Springs and I've called him Drew ever since I played my first competitive game next to him in central midfield. So when the man called me to rhapsodize about a soccer team made up almost entirely of artists and creatives, I couldn't pass up the invitation. Schedules were worked, airplanes were ridden, and when Drew rousted me out of his apartment at 7:30 a.m. on a gray Brooklyn morning, I went.

We rode borrowed bikes, Drew and I. Well, he did. On the opening grade of the Williamsburg Bridge, my legs gave out and I had to walk my rusted-but-willing ten-speed up in order to coast down the other side and out into the flow of traffic. Drew picked a line through cabs and plumber's vans, tinted-up town cars and jeeps with Jersey plates. I followed, too tired and unfamiliar with my surroundings to do otherwise.

Spiderwebs of mist clung to the ankles of Lower Eastside buildings. Everywhere I looked, the waking city blinked its eyes. Dressmakers opened doors to take in fabric-rolls by the cartload, delivery vans dropped Styrofoam boxes in front of seafood merchants, and when we pulled up to the park we found the entrance blocked by an ocean of arms as seventy people did Tai Chi. For a fat second, we simply sat there, appreciating the simultaneous whisking of clothing.

Beyond these movements, pinned in by fences and surrounded by red-bricked apartment buildings with first-floor stores, the turfgrass field spread itself out like a jade carpet at the feet of bare fall trees. It was one of the finest fields I had ever seen. There is something awe-inspiring about a well-crafted pitch that only those who have skinned knees on asphalt—or dribbled on sand with sunburned toes, or hobbled to a hardwood sideline with ripped calluses—can truly appreciate.

When we saw our path, we picked our way through the practitioners: mindful of our wheels and their movements, careful not to brush extended arms as they turned, flowed. Within minutes of testing the baize surface, I found myself arguing with a commanding Austrian about Manchester United. His speech was precise, and tinged slightly by his time in San Francisco. Like most initial conversations with knowledgeable supporters, it was a test, and how I replied proved whether or not I was worthy of conversation. My answers must have been good enough to scrape a pass, because the Red Devil introduced himself as Gerhard Stochl, self-appointed coach of the Chinatown Soccer Club, and the very man Drew wanted me to meet.

 

        
 

       

RG: What exactly got the ball rolling for the CSC?

GS: We came together back in 2002, when Adidas invited a bunch of downtown Manhattan stores, crews, and personalities to take part in a soccer tournament to coincide with the World Cup in Korea and Japan. Inspired by the upcoming AdiCup and late-night marathons watching live matches from Asia, we started meeting a few mornings a week to sharpen our skills. Kickoff was 8:30 a.m. on a small public pitch in Chinatown, where many of us lived and worked. Our only spectators were homeless guys sleeping off hangovers and Chinese immigrants doing their morning Tai Chi. But the field was definitely special. An oasis of bright green artificial turf, shielded from the surrounding chaos of Chinese grocery stores and fishmongers by a glossy black, chain link fence rising ten meters high. Sometimes the people from the City Parks Department forgot to unlock the gate. But we'd just jump the fence. This was our spot. And after a few games, artist and founding member Ryan McGinness came up with the name Chinatown Soccer Club. In the early days, some of the people behind multimedia design firm Psyop helped get the ball rolling. Jason Goodman, then Psyop's director of animation, assembled a simple email list to call games. And over the next few months, the CSC started to grow, embracing friends and acquaintances from the downtown creative community. Some of us were playing for the first time; others rediscovered skills they'd honed in high school or college. Still others found an outlet for a passion they developed in their native countries: in England and Germany, Israel and Brazil. We were a group of strong personalities, but we always had a true sense of respect for each other and maintained a positive and inclusive atmosphere on the pitch, regardless of individual skill level or gender.

RG: Has it surprised you how far it has come?

GS: Absolutely. What started as a semi-organized pick-up game, chronically short in numbers, has evolved into a full-fledged club. These days we have a full squad of players—many of whom have shared the field in Chinatown for years. Plus, we figured out basics like using different colored pinnies to separate the teams, playing with a proper ball, getting rid of cleats in favor of turf shoes, and obtaining permits to reserve the pitch. And even though the average skill level has improved, our games are still super-mellow without any unnecessary dangerous tackles or people yelling at each other. It's pretty amazing that more than eight years after our informal inception and even in the dead of winter, the love of soccer still gets us out of bed for a friendly match before heading off to work. Then again, there is just no better way to start off your day than by having a kick-around and a laugh with your friends.

RG: How would you describe the community aspect of the club, and how exactly did it evolve?

GS: There are two aspects to this. One is the community of friends that has formed in and around the CSC, and the other is the role the CSC plays as a part of the neighborhood many of us live and work in. Both are equally important. Since the club grew organically by accepting only friends of friends, there was a basic system in place that ensured a community of like-minded creative individuals who understood that our games aren't about who could score the most goals or dribble from one end of the field to the other. The result is a really positive atmosphere on the pitch—and on the sidelines—with people encouraging each other and having a chat between games. Our annual awards banquet serves as a good example of how these ideas are put into practice. We honor the player with the freshest legs, the longest commute, and the most improved skills, among others. It's most definitely tongue-in-cheek, but the awards are also meant to encourage people to keep playing and acknowledge each other's skills and dedication in the most casual of atmospheres. Plus, it's important for people to get to know each other off the field as well. A good number of us are relative newcomers to Manhattan in general and Chinatown in particular. That is why we have worked hard on forging a strong bond with the community. We regularly play friendly matches against some of the local Chinese teams and make sure that we act and behave respectfully. Plus, one of our longtime members is a 62-year-old Chinese coach who not only keeps up with the speed of games played mostly by guys half his age but also brings along some of his students for a kick-around from time to time.

RG: How important do you think it is to the long-term goals of the club that it stays community-based?

GS: The CSC is quite literally married to the neighborhood we play in—so it is imperative that we stay both true and connected to those roots. Part of the attraction of our midweek games is the fact that they take place only a short bike ride from where we work and live, and we obviously plan on keeping it that way. Plus, the diverse crew of artists, photographers, designers, skateboarders, fire fighters, and others who make up our members comes from all corners of the globe, which is something that can only happen in a melting pot like New York City. At the same time, the idea behind the CSC—of creating a positive environment for a sport that all too often gets taken over by jocks and soccer moms—is something that echoes far beyond the borders of the five boroughs. Ever since we started to export our vision of soccer via our blog, publications, shirts, scarves, and collaborations with other companies, we have gotten encouraging feedback from like-minded individuals around the world who share our interpretation of the game. Some of them are forming similar clubs in places like London and Berlin, which is really amazing and helps grow a grassroots soccer movement outside the mainstream.

RG: Do you feel that being part of the club has helped your own artistic endeavors or even compelled you to explore new possibilities in your art that you might not have pursued otherwise?

GS: I'm a photographer by trade, but over the last few years I have inadvertently taken on the role as the club's coach—although we use that term very lightly—and, aside from organizing games, I maintain the club's presence on the web, write our blog and occasionally function as the CSC's spokesperson, especially when we collaborate with brands on soccer-specific products. The custom bag we recently released with Incase is an example of this. All of these endeavors have been highly enjoyable and enabled me to explore new boundaries with my photography, in chronicling the club's exploits and travels. I have also been fostering my previously dormant skills as a creative director and project manager of sorts, driving our haphazard clothing line forward, and making sure that our vision is firmly in place when teaming up with outside companies for temporary projects. The CSC Clubhouses we constructed in Vienna in 2008 to celebrate the release of our sneaker with Adidas and across the street from our home field here in New York during the spring of 2010 to mark the launch of our bag collaboration with Incase are two examples of this. More recently, I served as the editor of the special Arkitip World Cup issue we put together, coordinating the content and working closely with CSC design director Justin Fines who was in charge of the layout.

RG: How do you think the teamwork on the field has shaped off-the-pitch collaborations?

GS: That has happened in several ways. With so many of our members making their living in the creative industries, a good many of them have worked together on various commercial projects after getting to know each other during our morning games. Perhaps more interesting though are the collaborations that have grown directly out of our love for soccer. As far back as 2003, we organized a CSC group show that featured artwork by a number of club members. The overriding theme was that the submitted pieces had to be inspired by our morning games. Peter Sutherland and myself came up with the idea, simply based on the fact that most people we played soccer with were also visual artists of some sort. The clothing and other items we have produced so far were also all conceived, designed, produced and funded by people within our community who work on different aspects of the production process depending on their particular skill set. For example, CSC stalwart and designer Justin Fines dedicated dozens of hours of his time to drafting our crest, scarf, and other clothing items. In the spring of 2006, Arkitip Magazine ran a big feature on Peter Sutherland, which included a photo essay about the CSC. Then, in 2007, Peter had an exhibition in the Netherlands and in conjunction with that, the Swiss art book publisher Nieves put out a book with his photographs of the CSC entitled Game. Meanwhile, another book we released about the 2006 World Cup in Germany was a direct result of a CSC group excursion to that tournament. It's called Home and Away and was published by Throckmorton Press, which is run by CSC member Joel Barnard. More recently, both the sneaker collaboration with Adidas (which saw a club delegation travel to Vienna during the European Championships in 2008) and the bag we released with Incase included not only working together on designing these products, but also building the previously mentioned site-specific installations to help launch them. The most current example of our combined efforts is the special issue of Arkitip Magazine released in time for the 2010 World Cup with contributions by a number of club members as well as friends and family. The only reason we have been able to make all of that happen is because we have such an amazing group of talented people willing to dedicate their time off the pitch after getting to know and respect each other on it.

RG: In a similar vein, do you think that having so many talented creative minds in one place has helped forge an identifiable aesthetic for the CSC, and would it be fair to label the club a brand at this stage?

GS: As I said above, everything we have produced so far has been conceived, designed, produced and—except for the collaborations with Adidas and Incase—funded by people within our community. That's the main reason we have been able to form such a strong identity. Labeling the CSC a brand has been something I shy away from, if only because there are so many brands out there that were launched simply to sell product. With us, it was the other way around. The CSC is an actual community of people playing soccer in downtown Manhattan, not some sort of marketing gimmick. If you look at the history of soccer clubs, you'll notice that there is always a point when it becomes more organized, usually followed by a desire to rally around a common identity and what you, quite rightfully, called an identifiable aesthetic. We're excited to have a crest, a local field, and a neighborhood we call home, and that's something we try to share with a larger audience via the creative projects and products we put out there.

RG: You mentioned earlier that similar-minded clubs are springing up in Berlin and London, that Peter Sutherland had an exhibition in Holland, and that a club delegation visited Austria, so it begs the question: do you feel CSC has a role to play on the global level? And if so, do you feel your international members are a big reason why?

GS: It would be pretentious to claim that we play any kind of role on the global level. All I can say is that we have gotten positive feedback from Rio to Shanghai, Tokyo to London. Just last week, I got emails from people in Canada and Norway who are planning on visiting New York this year and wanted to find out if they could join us for a morning match. As creative people trying to put forth an alternative and inclusive view of the game we all love, it's amazing to realize that there are people around the globe who share the same ideas. And yes, of course the fact that we have a good number of international members has helped spread the word. I just need to look at myself, having been born and raised in Vienna, Austria. Taking a CSC delegation to my hometown in 2008 was fantastic as was being able to share some of our creative endeavors with the people I grew up with. I know some of our other members feel the same in regards to their own native countries.

RG: What does the future hold for the CSC?

GS: Right now we're fine-tuning our web presence which turned out to be more work than anybody could have imagined. We are also planning another run of club gear, and possibly a more permanent location to house our common creative endeavors in the neighborhood we all call home.

I wished Gerhard luck with everything and I still do.

As for my debut: my teammates graciously allowed me to laze about up front and chase the game offensively. I scored two goals in that role but missed a hatful of chances, prompting catcalls from an elderly Sikh man clad in a ruby headscarf.

"Only in New York," one of my teammates said.

After two more sore misses, I'd have enough. I shouted so he could hear it across the field: "What do you want from me?"

"I want you to put the ball in the goal!" He laughed maniacally at this—and he wasn't the only one—but he laughed the longest, and as he did, his beard puffed and shook on his chin, bigger than a full bag of groceries.
When we finished and I grabbed water only a few feet from his spot behind the fence, his voice grew softer.

"It's okay," he told me. "You come back next week. You'll be better. I can already tell."

Ryan Gattis is the author of the novels Kung Fu High School and Roo Kickkick & The Big Bad Blimp. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches Creative Writing at Chapman University.