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Building a community of game-players in The Bronx has been chess, not checkers, for Rabbi Mekael Levy, 70, who opened with just a couple chairs, a table, a board and pieces back in 1990.
“I started with one table, and then I advanced a little bit and started bringing two tables, three tables. All the kids used to come from school to sit down and play chess,” Levy told THE CITY on Wednesday, referring to P.S. 214, a Kindergarten-through-eighth school a block away.
His tables have long been part of the chess scene in The Bronx and Northern Manhattan that includes well-loved spaces in Marcus Garvey and St. Nicholas parks in Harlem, and Project Pawn, which has been teaching Bronx students the game for the last 11 years. Chess lovers often celebrate its ability to sharpen one’s mental fitness, and a study published last year by the Journal of the American Medical Association found that engaging in “active mental activities” like chess is associated with a lower risk of dementia.
Every weekday during the warm months of the year, members, mostly Black men, play chess matches until about 6 p.m. on East 178th Street and Boston Road, right below the West Farms Sq-East Tremont station on the 2 and 5 trains, just south of the Bronx Zoo. They slide, slam and capture chess pieces with authority while talking trash and discussing strategy.
Levy, a Black Hebrew Israelite who worked mostly as a vendor before retiring, is at his tables from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. or so, Monday to Friday, from the spring through the fall — so long as it’s not raining. Games move to a room at the Wings Academy High School a few blocks away during the winter.
The idea, he says, is about the game but also the players, as many regulars have been facing off with each other there for years or even decades.
“I’m still doing it and I’m never gonna stop,” he said. “This is my pastime and I love it, and I’mma keep playing this game until I can’t play no more.”
After growing up and living as a young man in Harlem, rising rents led him to move to West Farms in 1977 to raise his three young children. Thirteen years later, he began setting up his table to play chess with neighbors.
In the early years, Levy recalls some hiccups. Drug dealers would pretend to play as a way to try and blend in while selling their product, and he had a hard time keeping them away. About 20 years ago, he said, the police made him move the tables across the street, to a more visible corner, because of local complaints about those dealers, who eventually drifted away.
Levy has been at that spot ever since and has no intentions of leaving.
“We believe in giving back to the community and helping the community,” Levy said. “They come here not just to play chess but ’cause of the atmosphere itself. It’s very sociable.”
‘Everything Is Evenly Matched’
The atmosphere at the West Farms chess tables can be intense. A radio speaker tuned to WBLS blasts classic hip hop and R&B tunes, from Groove Theory’s “Tell Me” to DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince’s “Summertime.” Beside a table of incense, oils, butters and other items that Levy has been selling since 1990 sits beside it, chess veterans sit at their own tables, some of them blowing cigarette smoke that rises toward the elevated train tracks.
Three umbrellas are pitched over four chess boards atop two foldable tables, surrounded by several chairs. Levy brings all of the equipment out of a storage unit once a week. He asks players to put up at least a $1 donation to help support the cost. One of those players moved into the neighborhood about a year ago when the group caught his attention.
“One day I was coming home on the train — I think was coming from uptown. I saw through the window, ‘That looks like chess players,’ Darrin, 59, told THE CITY, who declined to give his last name. “I got off the train and seen the tables here and I lived in the neighborhood, so I started to come by.”
Darrin shows up nearly every day now to get in some matches. He learned the game from his grandmother when he was about 8 or 9 years old and developed his skills all over the city, playing in Fordham and Burnside, in addition to some of the popular parks in Manhattan.
“I liked everything about it. It’s a board game but everything is evenly matched. There’s no physical limitations. You can play with anybody who knows how to play. I don’t need a height advantage. I don’t need an age advantage,” Darrin said, highlighting how chess requires concentration, dedication and focus similar to learning a musical instrument.
But, he said, “music is so much more popular. You not gonna go to a party and bring a chess board.”
The parks have always had their chess gatherings, though, including the one Levy convenes now. He recalled learning chess as a teenager growing up in Harlem in the 1970s from a “mastito” playing in what was then Mount Morris Park and is now called Marcus Garvey Park.
“That’s the slang name for master,” he said, who noted that his favorite opening is the queen’s gambit, where white offers a pawn early to try and gain control of the center of the board. “If a brother doesn’t know how to defend it, I’ll run right through him. It’s not a passive opening.”
Other players at Levy’s tables said they favored the Italian game, an opening for white using a pawn, knight and bishop combination to develop a quick, strong attack. Another praised the French defense, where black pushes to immediately challenge white’s center.
Charles, who declined to give his last name, has been helping out at and playing at the West Farms tables for about 25 years. He likes the Colle system, a style of play that quickly develops the pieces on the king’s side of the field.
“I bust people’s ass with that,” Charles, 67, told THE CITY on Thursday. “You got to pick a system. You got to perfect it. You gonna get beat, but you got to perfect it.”
Whatever opening a player prefers, “as you progress playing with chess, you’re learning all about your life itself and how to make long-range plans,” said Levy
“You play the game that you feel comfortable playing. Find you one good opening and one good defense and play that,” he said. “Find something that suits you.”
