Spurred by a comment in the [chat] I recalled how many cool and creative playgrounds there were in and around my town when I was growing up. Almost all of them were unique endevours, mostly made of wood beams, that offered a plethora of opportunities for climbing and jumping, sliding and swinging. Some evoked images of log forts or even giant wooden teepees. Many had custom built slides with humps and curves. They were structures that, as a kid, I couldn't wait to explore. Only a few places sported the steel modular set with the "four steps up, side, swing and pole" combo that seems to dominate today.
All these cool playgrounds seem to have been dissapearing of late; to be replaced with the same steel tube set up described above. I, and I'm sure no few of you all, deem this a sad state of affairs. I know that the litigiousness of Americans is mostly to blame. Kids must now only run around in a padded universe with no chance of splinters and a skinned knee may be deemed a sueable incident.
I mourn the loss of those great places where I spent hours playing tag, or being a pirate or avoiding the hot lava and I ask if any of you have any similarly great places to share. I regret that it never occcured to me to take pictures of the playground equipment of my youth, but it's too late now. I can tender this description and pics that I posted in the [chat] awhile back from a Japanese school playground where the liability laws are somwhat different.
Additionally I would like to hear ideas on what you think would make a truly awesome playground and perhaps how to set up one that is cool without running afoul of the lawyers.
Anyways;
OK, so first off the school has about two acres of woods adjacent to the soccer field. Fir, pine and birch up to about 40 ft tall. The underbrush is all short bamboo (three-four feet tall). A not too steep ravine (about 8 feet deep) with a small stream at the bottom runs through the middle of it and trails crisscross the whole thing.
Now, this by itself would be a pretty awesome place for tag and hide-an-seek or snowball tag which they are playing today. Many a paintball course would kill to have a layout like this. But that's not all.
There are also many swings, tire and conventional, scattered throughout. This includes a large platform swing you could fit five adults on no problem. Multiple log bridges of varying thickness cross the ravine, some with a handrail, some without. There is also a big, knotted rope to swing across on. A 40 ft long zipline also crosses the ravine at an angle from one of several platforms built up in the trees. Ah yes, the trees.
Over about 1/3 of the total area all the trees have been connected with thick ropes. Each tree is connected to each nearby tree with stout ropes starting four feet off the ground and proceeding at four foot intervals up to 30 feet or so. So , think of a 30ft high, half acre jungle gym. Large logs are also arranged like ramps up into the higher levels of the trees and the multiple platforms.
So if you wanted to play ninjas for example you could easily cross from one side to the other without once touching the ground or you could creep through the bamboo similarly undetected, unless the guy in the trees above you spots you and nails you with a shurukin, I mean snowball.
The kids just swarmed up into the trees like monkeys, boys and girls alike.
Yes,... yes, I agree. It's totally unfair that sober you gets into trouble for things that drunk you did.
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While I can't imagine many parents being happy about their children getting hurt on some the best playgrounds ever, I hate that they're taken out in favour of shitty safer ones.
Fuck those kids, I say. Just worry about the ones who can actually handle themselves having fun. :P
I remember an awesome wooden playground with a couple bridges between three towers, and another tower having a slidebar. Just hop and grab the thing and slide over to the other side. It was so rad.
At what point does looking cool justify an increase in risk to the kids involved? Imaginative they may be, wel co-ordinated they aren't and they don't always bounce
Dutifully, the school spent a year tearing down the playground and building a metal/plastic one.
The couple of years after they installed this, injuries skyrocketed, because kids fall down on playground equipment all the time, but while if you fall down on wood you just get up again, if you fall down on hard metal you are injured.
The result was that in order to prevent their "safe" playground equipment from being a safety hazard entirely unlike any of the unsafe playground equipment they had formerly had, the kids were no longer allowed to run on the playground equipment, or use said playground equipment anytime after it rained.
now... if you look at the ground you'll notice that it is kinda blue. It is about of foot of little tinny rubber cube things. They are fucking awsome. You can tackle someone into them, and it doesn't hurt at all. If you fall of one of the metal dealies, and don't land on metal, they totaly break your fall.
I also found the rope thing kinda neat.
there is a disc golf course there, which is rather keen.
When I was a kid and the log fort got repaced I was so dissapointed, as were all my friends. We were ten or so at the time. I submit that not knowing that there is anything better is not the same as not being able to apprecieate the difference.
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What the fuck? Luckily by then my classmates and I got a bit older and for some reason stopped playing on that. Maybe it was because of the damn wood chips. EDIT: The smell of sawdust and the thought of getting cut/stabbed/splintered by those jagged splintery woodchips turned me off...
It was awesome.
We had to spike the set into the ground though, because it wasn't heavy enough to NOT FALL OVER WHEN YOU SKATEBOARDSWUNG TOO HIGH.
Also, there used to be an awesome wooden playground set/awesome maze fort thing near my cousins house that'd our parents would take us to when we were young.
But then the "oh no wood!" thing came about and it was taken down. I was around 11 and after going on the new "safe" metal and plastic I can affirm that what the shit are they thinking that stuff hurts like hell.
Anyone in Austin care to give me an update on Zilker Park? Oh, also, there was a Sonic in Austin where you would go inside and order from your booth using a phone. Is that place still around?
see, that's some good stuff there
This is the way they should be making new playgrounds.
My school didnt have playgrounds, just giant tires which was fun till they were taken out too. grrrrr
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A few years back ,they replaced it with some faggoty playground metal bar construction that resembled the fire engine.
WHY??
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My old school did the same thing. A mom complained about black stains (rubber which washes out no problem) on her kids pants. She was high enough up in the school PTAish thing to get them removed.
sheesh
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Here's one reference to wooden playgrounds, a few years ago.
Edit: Well, this is denying a ban, I need to learn to read. But the schools might have taken them down for that reason, beside splinters. Or maybe they had termites, no idea, my playgrounds have always been the ugly metal things.
I came across that as well while looking for info on the "wood ban" then I remembered that most, if not all of the structures I remembered had been standing so long that the origional preserveitive had long since leached out of the wood. I think that most of the "ban" just came from a few lawsuits over spinters somewhere and many towns and schools just decided to do away with the wood structures as a precaution angainst lawsuits.
edit: Ima go hunt up some more pics
I am liking the mini climbing walls too
long slide
Had a lot of fun on there as a kid. Then they took it away around 1997 or so. Oh no! Then it came back but was all painted up. A couple years it disappeared again, this time for good.
Highland Park is now dead and hardly ever visited by families anymore. They took out the swingsets too... I think the only thing left is a slide.
Oh, and across the river in Council Bluffs they had an awesome playground called the Dream Playground. Huge wooden fort kinda thing, as big as a house. Had two main parts and a bouncing bridge that went between them. It sucked when I got too old to play in it, that thing was fun, but they're kinda letting it fall into disrepair It was so badass that there was actually secret hallways/passages you could find that we would hide in and kids could never find you. Plus an alternate way to get between the two main structures was about a 12 foot high monkey bar span.
All the other city parks have become those lame Park-in-a-box with the hot metal decks and lame tic-tac-toe board things.
go to Japan
go to Hokkaido, the northernmost island.
go to Sapporo, the largest city of the island, in the southeast quadrant.
go zoom in on the red dot that denotes the city center.
just to the north of the dot is a green strip running roughly east-west.
near the center of this strip there are two paved areas showing concentric circles.
to the left (west) of the circles is a large, white crescent.
this is a slide
I have slid on it. It is an entire fake hillside made of some slick, hard substance. With good balance you can "ski" down it in your shoes.
Kind of off topic, but does anyone remember those laser tag guns that had the sensors that you attached to you head? When you got shot it vibrated right on the temple.
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(or whatever the "flying to another country" version of a road trip is)
They should totally have playgrounds like these for adults
Dinosaur slides and all
Whenever we were coming back into town on the train we had to stop by on the way home and fool around with it for a while.
That's one of the big things that really hurt playgrounds everywhere.
I've watched the playground at my old elementary school shrink and shrink over the years.
One of the best parts was the giant vertical cargo net, about 20' high that linked two halfs of the structure. It was cool when you were playing tag and you could see the other players but couldn't reach them. It was, of course, tons of fun to climb on too.
That was the first to go.
There was also a swinging bridge, about 10' long that you could jump and bounce on. That went next, replaced with a rigid bridge.
Eventually the whole thing was replaced - which admitedly was necessary as it was more than 20 years old - and the new one consists of a lot of those plastic segments and is a shell of its former self.
There was another playground that was possibly even cooler - multi-level wood structure, spiral slide, another swinging bridge, etc. etc. That was completely bulldozed one day and replaced with a much smaller plastic thing.
Holy shit man. If you ever get down to PA, Check out sesame place.
it is pretty massive, and they have all sorts of big over sized playground stuff, including this massive elevated cargo net thing. See... the idea is that you can go on the crap with your kids, but...
fuck... The website is shitty, and I'm not having a lot of luck with GiS, but that shit was AMAZING. and like, they only let a certian number of people into the park at a time, so there arn't much for lines. god... it is great.
edit: guh! bullshit. NO decent pictue. All fucking kids and wienies in constumes.
OH MY GOD THAT THING WAS AWESOME
Going to Zilker park was the be all and end all of class trips. Oh freakin man.
Things have changed there my friend. Things have changed.
The sand pits with the hemispherical metal cages, large and small, the carousel-like spinning vomit machine, the standard chain and rubber seat swings, the metal spring rocking horse dealies, and the overhead ladder-thing.
But the main draw for the older kids were the two structures just adjacent to the sand pits.
One was a large circular stand, about 15' across, that only had poles to climb up onto it and down from. It was a test of skill to get up there.
The other was a two story metal rocket. I kid you not. Bottom floor held a ladder to the second, where you could either slide down, or climb up to the third level and be pilots. The structure was made with little space between the bars, in an attempt to keep kids from climbing the outside. Didn't work to well. Many a broken arm from that structure, I'm sure.
It's all gone now. Replaced by your standard orange and blue "Pepsi Playpark".
*sigh*
Hey, didn't the creator of "Katamari Damacy" quit the buisness and go off to design playgrounds?
Flying Fox is what we call those here.
I also remember hearing one referred to as a "zipline" or something on American Gladiators.
How have they changed?