After filming the kid’s lemonade stand story, the vendor next to them says. “Have you heard of Skelly?” I said you want to share a story. “It’s A New York City Street Game that all the OGs and old school grew up on. What I did was patent it and made sure everything we did in the street we can now play in the house, in the schools, YMCA and after school programs.”
MY SMALL STORY
Over the past 15 years I have traveled, filmed and and acquired a library of over 6,000 hours. From the recording studio in NYC to South African Safari’s, I have filmed my conversations and watched my library grow. On April 26, 2010, I launched www.MySmallStroy.com in NYC as a way to share insight. My Small Story contextualizes life through a collection of unscripted filmed conversations with small businesses, entrepreneurs, artists and everyday people filmed, edited & shared weekly by LaRon Batchelor – a videographer/ethnographer with 15 years experience filming conversations in 4 continents.
MY SMALL STORY: Over 300 Filmed New York Stories 
13 responses to “Skully Games “It’s A New York City Street Game””
My favorite game as a kid growing up in the Bronx
Absolutely a great game. I remember playing this game with my friends in the projects in Brooklyn. I grew up playing it. All the kids played it, didn’t require any special athletic skills, just a bottle cap (we used to use the soft plastic caps from medicine bottles and fill them with window putty. Bottle caps filled with tar were hard and would bounce if shot too hard, medicine caps would just “glide”, hence, we used to call them “gliders”). Ahh, what memories. My hats off to the Entrepreneur, make a little money while preserving a little of inner city culture..
I think i can beat that guy at a game.
My block elder ave was a hard block to beat.
This game was also called Lodies…in Harlem my block Edgecombe ave had some of the best skully players…me being about the best…damn those were some good days!
Did this game really originate in New York? Who invented it? Please educate me. We use to play it in Baltimore as well.
It was definitely a NYC original
This game is apart of the birth of rap graffiti and break dancing the Italians played stick ball and the Ricans played hand ball and the crazy Ricans who were affiliated with the blacks played skelly and the did break dancing and graffiti this is the 1980’s before we were the boogie down Bronx we were the burnt down Bronx facts
One of the best games ever! But don’t forget spinning tops…In skully, there was definitely a degree of skill involved to win consistently…also the creativity in making the tops to play with was ingenious…from wax or gum filled bottle tops, to scrapped off bottle top rims, to colorful poker chips held together by gum…each player had his favorite…wow, what a game! We would play for hours…all you needed was chalk, blacktop and a playing top…another excellent game was spinning tops or crack top! Another high skill level game.
In Crack Top, wooden cone shaped tops with flat heads and sharp rounded tips were used…a string had to be wrapped around the top and attached to your finger…a circle was drawn on the ground and the top was thrown on the ground with a lot of force and aim to make it spin…once spinning, the next player would try and knock your top out the circle while keeping his top spinning…if aimed perfect, you could hit a top in just the right place and it would crack! This became the object of the game…thus, Crack Top!! Only the real OGs know about this game…shout out to HarlemWorld !!!
I would’ve like to get the seller’s name, website, amd or contact.info so.i can buy the game
Raj Gardner on Facebook that guy in this story is a phony
“I patented it”. Nothing in the USPTO search for “skelly+game”. He got a nice box set printed up though
This story is not true rajah Gardner of Eastchester PJ’z in the Bronx created this game it’s still available thru him he’s on Facebook @raj Gardner that dude is just hustling we’ve grown up over 40 yrs playing this game using milk tops shaving cream tops and Flintstones push pops inside tops filling them with colored clay or melted wax this game was pattend around the gun hill Rd area of the Bronx