UPTOWNflavor

Kevin Davis respects the streets of New York. The former semi-pro football star pays homage to local Uptown neighborhoods with his own personal campaign to bring skully, one of New York’s great 1930s street games, back from the dead.

Played with bottle caps on the street with a chalk-drawn field, skully’s return has been met with enthusiasm by local schools, churches and the Harlem YMCA. Davis even has plans to get it off the streets, inventing an indoor form of the game that can be played in gyms, hallways or living rooms.

The rules – players slide the bottle caps through a field with 13 open spaces, going from 1 to 13 and back. Once completed, they knock the other contestants off the board, becoming the “killer.”

Now, before you start thinking the game has negative connotations, Davis has made a positive addition to today’s version of the game.

“We took the word killer out,” says Davis. “Now it’s called Eliminator. Also, the 9 and 11 are in the same box in skully. On our boards, we place a ribbon in that spot to honor those killed on that day.”

So why skully, why now?

“It’s like life,” says Davis, who still has scars on his knees from playing so much of the game as a kid growing up at 165th St. and Amsterdam. “You have to go from one place to another, you work with other people and you’re strategic.”

Davis’ next skully tournament takes place at the Harlem YMCA on Oct. 4 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. For info on the game go to www.play-tops.com.