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Rivertowns Table Tennis Club
Friendly, fun, challenging... and near you!
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Going for a Record by Will Shortz
[USATT Magazine, July/August 2009]
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Bialowas, Blake wow crowd in table tennis
[The Rivertowns Enterprise, April 4, 2008]
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Old Sound Brings Out Warm Notes by Peter Applebome
[The N Y Times, May 3, 2007]
"You want to hit a little, Amy?" Fred Gordon, a retired engineer, asks Amy Hsu, a nanny who has ranked among the nation's
top 15 women's table tennis players over 50. And so it begins -- much more plock-plack than ping-pong, but still a sound
that reverberates from the dimly remembered consciousness of a million games on a million tables in a million messy basements.
It is shortly after 8 on a drizzly Tuesday night. People are still filtering into the Tarrytown community center, wearing
shorts and T-shirts, some carrying athletic bags containing their rubber-coated paddles. Soon all six dark-blue Chinese-made
tables are filled, the room is a gentle cacophony of celluloid plock-plack, plock-plack, and court is once again in session
for the Rivertowns Table Tennis Club, a counterpoint to the lonely Zen of "Bowling Alone," the 2000 book on modern anomie.
There is, it seems, a minor table tennis boomlet out there -- more clubs like this one in Westchester County, more youth
programs, even a forthcoming media moment in a comic film called "Balls of Fury" about life in the table-tennis
underground. But moment or not, there's a tale about table tennis and a tale that's not about table tennis at all in the
games that play out in the old gym on the ground floor of the community center each Sunday and Tuesday.
There are authors, a mechanic, an education therapist specializing in autism, two doctors and a three-time Caribbean
champion who runs a taxi business in Barbados. There is one 10-year-old and several 70-year-olds. There is the cartoon
editor for The New Yorker, the nation's best-known puzzle maven, a well-known folklorist and an Armenian Orthodox priest.
There is a guy who knows the inventor of the Tickle Me Elmo doll.
The Rivertowns Table Tennis Club began in 1999 with the Two Steves of Hastings-on-Hudson, Stefan Kanfer, an author of more
than a dozen books, and Steve Zeitlin, a folklorist.
They discovered their common interest in table tennis, found a place to play in the community center in Hastings and soon,
without any great effort, attracted eager co-conspirators.
In 2005, when the Hastings center was demolished, they found a new home here as well as another in nearby Ardsley. Now the
really dedicated Westchester table tennis faithful can also play at the Burke Rehabilitation Center, which means that zealots
can play six nights a week.
Thanks in large part to people who find the club on the Internet, there are now 70 members, who pay $100 a year in dues.
What draws them is, of course, the game, something they tend to go on and on about like pilgrims describing a mythical place
of mystery and wisdom.
"The game is fast, but your mind is faster," said Robert J. Bernstein, a therapist who specializes in working with autistic
children. "You have to think in different dimensions, like chess."
Mr. Zeitlin, who admits to replaying in his mind particularly good shots or points, said: "People used to say that when Babe
Ruth hit a home run, people knew it by the sound of the bat hitting the ball."
"Well, you get the same incredible feeling by hitting a perfect shot, what it feels like on your racket, the rhythm,
the sound, the hypnotic quality of it."
But the appeal of the game is more than competition -- it's a dimly remembered connection with childhood stored in
familiar sounds and reawakened muscle memory. And it's clear the appeal of the club is more than the games. In "Bowling
Alone," Robert D. Putnam, a Harvard professor, argued that many of the social groups that once knit people together are
disappearing, making us a nation of people who, to cite one of his examples, bowl alone rather than in Elks Club or
church leagues.
But we're also a nation where anyone, black, white, Asian, famous author, plain old mechanic, can go to the Internet,
locate the Rivertowns Table Tennis Club and find a community of people who share a common passion.
Which is why in the end, there's respect for the skill of Robert Roberts, the former Caribbean champion, who is by far the
club's best player. There's chatter about Mr. Zeitlin's sweeping sideways motion dubbed "the Zeitlin sidewinder;" Alex
Porush's wicked topspin loops; the way Bill Vogel, a wine distributor from New Rochelle, and Will Shortz, the crossword
puzzle editor of The New York Times, employ the rather daring Seemiller style of play, which uses only one side of the paddle.
But it seems there's as much fondness for the unexpected friendships, the shared lexicon of Gordons and Double Gordons
(Fred Gordon immortalized in missed serves), or "going for the injury" -- a tongue-in-cheek explanation for a terrible
shot that sails past the table. It's hard to make friends when you're a grown-up, so as important as the game is the fact
that it happens at all -- that modern life is that ping- pong sound, together as well as bowling alone.
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Rivertowns Table Tennis Club by Judith Doolin Spikes
[The Rivertowns Enterprise, Sept. 8, 2006]
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Table Tennis by Catherine Censor
[Westchester Magazine, April 2006; part of the feature "15 Exciting (Really!) Ways to Get Buff"]
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