People play street curling in Clinton Hillon Oct. 31, 2021. Brooklyn Curling Center brings its mobile Street Curling unit to all five boroughs of New York City in the summer as it entertains and educates visitors about the sport of curling. Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Curling Center
It’s a business of disappointing people.
And for Than Tibbetts, it all started with a walk in Prospect Park.
“When I first moved to Brooklyn,” Tibbetts told the Eagle, “I walked through the park and low and behold I saw people with curling stones — in Prospect Park.”
An unusual site for sure, especially for someone who called St. Paul, Minn. home – and started the sport of curling at a young age.
Tibbetts, a director of engineering at TED, has spent more than a decade building web platforms for large media companies including Univision, Hearst Television and American Public Media, driving development on projects that reach tens of millions of users.
His first love was curling.
“I began curling at the St. Paul Curling Club, one of the nation’s oldest and largest clubs, and founded Broomfitters, a curling brooms and equipment store in 2020.”
He will be a World Curling Federation-certified ice technician. He holds a B.A. in journalism from the University of Minnesota.
And most of all, Than Tibbetts is a dreamer.
He believes curling will catch on —and has caught on — in Brooklyn.
“The sport of curling is more popular than ever,” he said. “We’re a handful of curlers who think it’s just wild that New York City doesn’t have a dedicated curling facility. We’re going to fix that by building the Brooklyn Curling Center.”
For now, the Brooklyn Curling Club is minus a facility, and participants play the game under the skating rink at Prospect Park. “Nobody knows it’s there,” Tibbetts says, “But we’re usually at capacity.”
In fact, Tibbetts proudly says his club performs under some of the toughest conditions — outdoors, exposed to the…
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