The Greenpoint Kids' “Fight Club”

Watching a group of 5-to-7-year-olds tussle in a park while their parents brawl online over whether that should be allowed.

- By Joshua David Stein

ON A SWELTERING summer afternoon, a welter of yelps rose from the playground in the northeastern corner of Greenpoint’s leafy, tidy Monsignor McGolrick Park. The playground had been lined with a sturdy foam in 2018 to soften the landings of children—but there were still injuries to be had. And the heat would not deter the meeting of the Greenpoint Fight Club, a group of 5-to-7-year-olds that gathers after school on most days for combat with the approval of the parents.

Had this been a true fight club, of course, it would have remained secret. As any passing fan of Chuck Palahniuk knows, the first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club. (It is also the second rule.) But then, on an early Thursday evening in May, a parent posted a question on the “Williamsburg/ Greenpoint Families” section of the Facebook group Brooklyn Baby Hui. “Did anybody see the kids’ ‘fight club’ happening at McGolrick playground today?” she wrote. “I don’t know how else to describe it … I was a bit shocked at how aggressive it was and it was apparently parent-sanctioned as there was a group watching.”