Playgrounds of the Minefield
Jan. 11th, 2007 09:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jamesqI hope this isn't a repeat. I just have the uncomfortable feeling of deja vu with this subject, like I've written it before. Maybe I've just thought about writing it before.
At any rate, this is a riff on the subject of playgrounds and on how they've become antiseptic in their safeness and sameness.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mallt wrote about it in her blog and it's also being discussed on the circus with regards to building a playground at the Quad War site.
As far as the philosophy of playgrounds is concerned, I do feel that we've lost something with the vanillaization of playgrounds. I can't remember the last time I saw a spaceship climber, or a solid wood teeter-totter or a spinner. Spinners were the best, nothing like making one of those things go insanely fast, then hang on to the edge with your head hanging down. I'm sure they resulted in many many dirt filled wounds in their time.
If anyone know of any of these around, I'd love to know where they are so I can get a photo or two before they disappear forever.
Kids like excitement, and physical danger is certainly exciting. I don't know that today's playgrounds offer the same level of excitement. Certainly the danger has gone down. That the kids haven't abandoned them entirely is astonishing. I guess that childhood is so short compared to "progress" that today's kids simply don't know what they're missing. I expect that when they get completely bored they'll do what kids have always done - make their own entertainment. Some kids do still play with their neighborhood cohort - they're not all growing pudgy and pale in the basement playing online games.
My Dad worked with Katimavik and one of the things they had the volunteers do was build "big toys" (my Dad's name for the giant tinker toy style playgrounds that were popular in the eighties and nineties). He thought they were pretty cool, but then the sixties/seventies style playground that I described above was completely skipped over by the old man. He grew up in depression era Winnipeg, so his playgrounds were the streets and back lots of St. Boniface. Big Toys would have impressed him, especially if he had a hand in building them. Plus making things for kids was exactly the sort of thing the old man loved.
The best playground in my neighborhood growing up was about a kilometer from Casa Cyr. The school that held the playground was fairly mundane physically. It did have the distinction of being neither a Public nor Separate school - It was always an independent school. When I was a kid it was Calgary's only Jewish elementary and when I was older it was a Waldorf School. Today the site is gone, replaced by townhouses.
What made it so cool was the fact that it was easily the most dangerous playground I've ever encountered. The only way it could have been made better was to find a construction site or simply play on the freeway!
The centerpiece of the park was two massive metal silos. The first was about ten feet high and ten feet in diameter. The second was somewhat taller (fifteen feet) and narrower (six feet diameter). A slat-and-chain-link bridge connected the two cylinders at the top. Both silos had (easily climbable) post-and-chain-link barriers welded to the top as guard rails. The taller silo had a metal ladder welded to it so that one could get up and down. The shorter silo had three key features: 1) a sloping stack of upright telephone poles (no doubt loaded with creosote) imbedded in the concrete along one side that you could use to scramble to the top. 2) a hole in the top with a fireman's pole in the center leading to the concrete base below. 3) a slide welded to the top that was twice as steep (seriously, I think this thing was at 60 degrees to the ground, whereas most slides are 30 degrees)as any normal slide. It was also taller then most slides - you'd hit the ground at warp speed!
I cannot remember any kid that I played with growing up who didn't get injured in this park at least once. I myself twisted my ankle on it something fierce. Playing tag on this structure was awesome.
It was dangerous as hell, and I can't help but feel that kids these days are missing out by not experiencing something like it.
At any rate, this is a riff on the subject of playgrounds and on how they've become antiseptic in their safeness and sameness.
mallt wrote about it in her blog and it's also being discussed on the circus with regards to building a playground at the Quad War site.As far as the philosophy of playgrounds is concerned, I do feel that we've lost something with the vanillaization of playgrounds. I can't remember the last time I saw a spaceship climber, or a solid wood teeter-totter or a spinner. Spinners were the best, nothing like making one of those things go insanely fast, then hang on to the edge with your head hanging down. I'm sure they resulted in many many dirt filled wounds in their time.
If anyone know of any of these around, I'd love to know where they are so I can get a photo or two before they disappear forever.
Kids like excitement, and physical danger is certainly exciting. I don't know that today's playgrounds offer the same level of excitement. Certainly the danger has gone down. That the kids haven't abandoned them entirely is astonishing. I guess that childhood is so short compared to "progress" that today's kids simply don't know what they're missing. I expect that when they get completely bored they'll do what kids have always done - make their own entertainment. Some kids do still play with their neighborhood cohort - they're not all growing pudgy and pale in the basement playing online games.
My Dad worked with Katimavik and one of the things they had the volunteers do was build "big toys" (my Dad's name for the giant tinker toy style playgrounds that were popular in the eighties and nineties). He thought they were pretty cool, but then the sixties/seventies style playground that I described above was completely skipped over by the old man. He grew up in depression era Winnipeg, so his playgrounds were the streets and back lots of St. Boniface. Big Toys would have impressed him, especially if he had a hand in building them. Plus making things for kids was exactly the sort of thing the old man loved.
The best playground in my neighborhood growing up was about a kilometer from Casa Cyr. The school that held the playground was fairly mundane physically. It did have the distinction of being neither a Public nor Separate school - It was always an independent school. When I was a kid it was Calgary's only Jewish elementary and when I was older it was a Waldorf School. Today the site is gone, replaced by townhouses.
What made it so cool was the fact that it was easily the most dangerous playground I've ever encountered. The only way it could have been made better was to find a construction site or simply play on the freeway!
The centerpiece of the park was two massive metal silos. The first was about ten feet high and ten feet in diameter. The second was somewhat taller (fifteen feet) and narrower (six feet diameter). A slat-and-chain-link bridge connected the two cylinders at the top. Both silos had (easily climbable) post-and-chain-link barriers welded to the top as guard rails. The taller silo had a metal ladder welded to it so that one could get up and down. The shorter silo had three key features: 1) a sloping stack of upright telephone poles (no doubt loaded with creosote) imbedded in the concrete along one side that you could use to scramble to the top. 2) a hole in the top with a fireman's pole in the center leading to the concrete base below. 3) a slide welded to the top that was twice as steep (seriously, I think this thing was at 60 degrees to the ground, whereas most slides are 30 degrees)as any normal slide. It was also taller then most slides - you'd hit the ground at warp speed!
I cannot remember any kid that I played with growing up who didn't get injured in this park at least once. I myself twisted my ankle on it something fierce. Playing tag on this structure was awesome.
It was dangerous as hell, and I can't help but feel that kids these days are missing out by not experiencing something like it.
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no subject
Date: 2007-01-12 05:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-12 05:50 am (UTC)Needless to say I got spun off at great velocity... but not before one of the very solid metal rails nailed me on the side of my head. Ronya later reported that her very first thought at hearing the clear, metalic note my head played on the railing was "oh god, I've lost my husband!"
Needless to say I survived... and relatively unharmed, near as I can tell.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-12 12:44 pm (UTC)I see parents of these wee little bas...errm...darlings who run around behind their little brats with antiseptic cleanser, spraying and sanitizing every little thing they can so their precious little monsters don't get ill. Then they sit there scratching their heads and/or asses (they're both interchangeable these days) wondering why their monsters come home with more colds from school than any other little monster does...
Anyhow, enough of my ranting...
no subject
Date: 2007-01-12 03:55 pm (UTC)My neighbour lady is dubbed " Bleach Mom". Her kids get a cold and she bleaches the walls in her home and keeps them home from school. NOTE - imagine! her kids get sick a lot. Hmmmm lets ask why shall we?
My boys? Hell.. If it ain't broke, needing amputation, or a funeral home? Suck it up.. you know where the bandaids are.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-12 03:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-12 01:11 pm (UTC)Sadly, I don't think it would get passed the planning stage nowadays. I think parents need to remember that cuts heal and chicks dig scars.
However I do realize that part of the reaction to these great playgrounds was because no school or municiaplaity wanted to get sued. Blame our litigious neighbours to the south because that fear has spread up here. (I love our American neoghbours but their sue happy ways get a little crazy at times)
no subject
Date: 2007-01-12 03:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-12 03:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-12 02:30 pm (UTC)You call merry-go-rounds, spinners?
no subject
Date: 2007-01-12 02:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-12 10:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-12 03:46 pm (UTC)I agree... I think of "merry-go-rounds" as the fairground type... but for me "spinners" are "round-a-bouts"! I flew off one of those aged between 2 & 3 years old... some bigger kids showed up, spun it too fast & I couldn't hold on... I landed on my hands, still have the scar where the gravel embedded itself into my palm but that didn’t stop me playing on them for the rest of my childhood.
The most "dangerous" and therefore the first thing removed from our playground was the "witches hat". if you can imagine a cone made out of metal poles suspended from a pole (at least 1 1/2 stories high) that went up the middle & attached to the top... that is a witches hat. not only did it spin... it "wobbled" too... awesome to play on!
We had one of those super high, super steep slides too... all metal & polished by countless backsides for speed that meant you had to land on your feet, running when you hit the end!
no subject
Date: 2007-01-12 04:05 pm (UTC)"...I don't know that today's playgrounds offer the same level of excitement. Certainly the danger has gone down. That the kids haven't abandoned them entirely is astonishing. I guess that childhood is so short compared to "progress" that today's kids simply don't know what they're missing. I expect that when they get completely bored they'll do what kids have always done - make their own entertainment. Some kids do still play with their neighborhood cohort - they're not all growing pudgy and pale in the basement playing online games."
Have you met my boys? ROFL. OH ya.. they find excitement. The new playgrounds have it NOT because of the equipment.. but because of the users. If you give two groups of 8 children one a baseball bat and one a pool noodle.. I can GUARANTEE both groups will find some way to send someone home needing medical attention. OH wait.. better analogy!!!!
If you give two groups of SCA fighters a bucket or a spear... they will both find ways to get HAMMERED and require medical attention!!!
User based issues! Not Equipment based! LOL