Whereas Hoops

Noah talks to Larry Zarin, longtime St. Louisan, retired former Chief Marketing Officer at Express Scripts, and founder of “The Layup Line," the group that proved instrumental in fundraising and gathering support for the installation of basketball hoops in Forest Park. Thanks in large part to the efforts of Larry and the other members of "The Layup Line," the ground has been broken and hoops are on their way! The basketball facilities should open to the public sometime in Spring 2024. Noah and Larry talk about what the new facilities will look like, what sort of events might take place there, and the story of Nick Booker, the young St. Louisan in whose memory the courts will be dedicated.

Noah talks with Michael Allen, academic researcher, historian, teacher, design critic, public artist, critical spatial tour guide, and heritage conservationist. They discuss what the built environment can teach us, the controversy surrounding the removal of basketball hoops from St. Louis's Lafayette Park in 1997, and how hoops will signal a new era for Forest Park.

Noah and John talk with Nadia Jackson-Fitch, scholar and basketball fan, about researching race and basketball, the aesthetic beauty and political importance of Allen Iverson, and what the outcomes for basketball in Forest Park might look like in relation to surveillance.

John and Noah talk with Geoff Ward, scholar and director of the WashU & Slavery Project, about visual redress, commemorative memory work, the importance of recognizing difficult histories, basketball as graduate school coping mechanism, and encountering Forest Park as a father and a scholar.

John and Noah talk to Kevin McCoy, Work/Play artist and lifelong St. Louisan, about artistic practice, athletic resistance, racial profiling, the importance of uncomfortable conversations, and imagining a better basketball landscape for St. Louis.

Noah talks to Tom Oates, scholar and author of Football and manliness: An unauthorized feminist account of the NFL, about race, sports, and his latest project, which explores pick-up basketball.

Noah and John talk to Curtis Harris, PhD, a scholar and teacher of basketball history, about St. Louis's men's professional teams, the Bombers (1946-50), Hawks (1955-68), and Spirits (1974-76). We talk about Bob Petit and the 1958 Hawks (the last all-white NBA champions), Bill Russell and what could have been, what Marvin Barnes and the Spirits meant to St. Louis, and much more!

John and Noah talk to Abigail Smithson, Visiting Assistant Professor of Art at Lyon College, visual artist, and host of the Dear Adam Silver podcast. We discuss her time in residency at Paul Artspace in St. Louis; her research into the Fort Shaw Indian School women's basketball team at the 1904 World's Fair; mixing media and the relationship between art and research; teaching students about creativity, fluidity, and invention in sports; and much more!

Noah and John talk to Lerone Martin, Director of American Cultures Studies at Washington University in St. Louis and incoming faculty director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University. We discuss the basketball hoops on the WashU campus (near the park), how race, space, and surveillance intersect, and what it was like to witness white sports fans' backlash to LeBron James's infamous "Decision."

John and Noah talk to Lyndon Barrois Jr., Assistant Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon University and a visual artist who reconfigures the language of print, design, and popular culture in order to investigate underlying ideology, ethics, and conceptions of identity. We discuss Lyndon's "Of Color" exhibition for the 2016 Great Rivers Biennial at CAM St. Louis, what it's like to put an asphalt basketball court inside an art museum, noticing the lack of hoops in Forest Park, being an NBA fan today, and how artistic practice can function in the fight for social justice. Artist website: Lyndon Barrois Jr. Dreamsickle at 47 Canal (New York, NY) Of Color at the 2016 Great Rivers Biennial, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis “Kinloch Park's Basketball Courts Are Now a Work of Art,” Riverfront Times, Sept. 5, 2017

Noah and John talk to Jason Wilson, owner of Northwest Coffee in St. Louis, about being a Black business owner, his relationship to basketball, hosting NBA stars Dikembe Mutombo and Jahidi White, envisioning basketball in Forest Park, and reinvesting in North St. Louis.

In which John Early and Noah Cohan introduce the Whereas Hoops Multimedia Project, and tell you their plans for the Whereas Hoops podcast.