Good Ol Days Playground Equipment

This has been bothering me lately.

Whenever I visit a park from my childhood I notice that the Merry-Go-Rounds, Seesaws/Teeter-Totters and Giant Metal Spiral Slides have all been taken away. I guess all in the name of safety. I visit a shit-ton of parks, probably more than the average person, and out of all of the parks I've been to in the past several years, only one has a merry-go-round (happens to be in my hometown).

This is such a tragedy in my opinion. Merry-go-rounds and the giant metal slides were always my favorite (I still enjoy them to this day) and I don't think I ever got hurt on one. Any of you notice the disappearance of fun equipment? What do ya'll think?

Here's a link to supplement my topic: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/science/19tierney.html?_r=1

You answered your own questions: all in the name of safety.

Luckily, kids are pretty good about coming up with new and inventive ways of injuring themselves while playing.

Yes, they've removed all the fun stuff from the playgrounds here as well. It's pissing me off.

@ Chen: That's bullshit though, in my opinion. It was a pretty rare occurrence for a kid to get hurt by the slides/monkey bars/merry-go-round at my elementary school (I'm not sure if I ever even witnessed an injury). I don't feel that the potential danger of getting hurt is justification for taking the funnest equipment away from a playground. How are people supposed to get their kids outside if the equipment made just for that demographic sucks a fuck?

Also, is this just in America (and Norway), or is this happening everywhere?

there was a massive, beautiful wooden play structure at the park i used to frequent, and i was straight pissed when they replaced it all with plastic.

the wood structure was so much prettier, and more fun. and it had those jangly metal chains supporting the wooden bridge which would rattle as you ran by and made you feel like indiana jones.

*listens to BOC*

I'm not disagreeing with you. I've seen injuries, but like I said, kids will find a way to injure themselves while playing no matter what.

  On 4/12/2012 at 10:46 PM, chenGOD said:

I'm not disagreeing with you. I've seen injuries, but like I said, kids will find a way to injure themselves while playing no matter what.

Precisely why they should just leave the old school awesome wooden playgrounds

Chen: Nah, I know you're not disagreeing. Just was directing the reply at you in addition to adding to my original statement.

Boxus: I remember those bridges. They were an extremely useful way to dodge getting tagged while playing tag. Could either cross, or jump between the chains onto the ground. I remember I scraped my back pretty bad while doing that once. Not that that justifies tearing it down.

it is tragedy! i've so many wonderful memories with the metal twistslide and the coilspring animals. oh' and of course the merry-go-rounds

  On 4/12/2012 at 10:41 PM, Murveman said:

@ Chen: That's bullshit though, in my opinion. It was a pretty rare occurrence for a kid to get hurt by the slides/monkey bars/merry-go-round at my elementary school (I'm not sure if I ever even witnessed an injury). I don't feel that the potential danger of getting hurt is justification for taking the funnest equipment away from a playground. How are people supposed to get their kids outside if the equipment made just for that demographic sucks a fuck?

 

Also, is this just in America (and Norway), or is this happening everywhere?

In the states a big part of it is liability. Us Americans are greedy sue happy bastards who will find any reason to cash in on an accident.

When I was growing up our local parks and rec suffered for a couple years because this whiny kid I went to school with got hit in the face with a basketball being passed to him. His parents sued the city insisting that all children should have been wearing face protection(?) and mouth guards, when really they just had an awkward kid with no coordination and little interest in playing basketball.

They should just have signs at playgrounds that say, if your kid gets hurt it's your (the guardian's) responsibility. And for schools they should just have parents sign a contract saying they won't sue if their kid gets hurt, and if they don't sign their kid gets to play in the sand until the kid complains to his parents to please sign the contract. I dunno how legally sound these suggestions are, but they sound logical to me.

We shouldn't all have to suffer because of some dipshit kids and their dipshit parents, yea?

i got trampled under one of these when i was a little kid (3 or 4 years old). the tire swings rotate around that central beam. i don't remember how i fell underneath it, but i do remember a bunch of feet kicking me as they rotated around.

i have generally had bad experiences with playgrounds. when i was 7, i was hanging out in a sandbox and i remember some kids in yarmulkes made fun of me when i asked to trade pokemon cards with them and then they kicked sand in my face.

  On 4/12/2012 at 11:15 PM, Hoodie said:

 

i got trampled under one of these when i was a little kid (3 or 4 years old). the tire swings rotate around that central beam. i don't remember how i fell underneath it, but i do remember a bunch of feet kicking me as they rotated around.

Do you feel that you getting trampled is justification for the removal the "Flying Wheels Swing Model" from the playground?

There's a playground at an elementary school near my house that has an awning over the entire rubber-coated, rounded edge structure to keep the precious snowflakes from melting in the summer sun...

What happened to cool playgrounds like this from the 70's and 80's? (yes, this is a BoC image)

I once found cat poo in a sandpit when I was a kid.

I'm sure most of us did.

Disturbing experience.

  On 4/12/2012 at 11:40 PM, rumbo said:

I once found cat poo in a sandpit when I was a kid.

And?

  On 4/12/2012 at 10:35 PM, Murveman said:

This has been bothering me lately.

 

Whenever I visit a park from my childhood I notice that the Merry-Go-Rounds, Seesaws/Teeter-Totters and Giant Metal Spiral Slides have all been taken away. I guess all in the name of safety. I visit a shit-ton of parks, probably more than the average person, and out of all of the parks I've been to in the past several years, only one has a merry-go-round (happens to be in my hometown).

 

This is such a tragedy in my opinion. Merry-go-rounds and the giant metal slides were always my favorite (I still enjoy them to this day) and I don't think I ever got hurt on one. Any of you notice the disappearance of fun equipment? What do ya'll think?

 

Here's a link to supplement my topic: http://www.nytimes.c...erney.html?_r=1

In my hometown there was a long metal slide that went from a lions club park, which had the usual bbQ and swings and see-saw and stuff, all the way to the beach. There were no sides on the thing and it dropped quite a way down. By the time we were old enough to think about using it. It was pretty battered and to be frank, rather frightening a concept to consider using it.

I liked it when life was use at your own risk. and society paid the hospital bills. And no one was getting sued, because they had let inattentive trolls on their property. And insurance companies weren't allowed to dictate the boundaries of fun. Then ring fence it in barbed wire, so that no one can have any.

I'm a landscape architect. Part of my job is to create playgrounds. It's a really tough issue. My personnal favorites are natural playscapes. They are inexpensive and do a lot for the creativity of kids. But at the same time you can't do them everywhere.

It's not just about safety vs letting children experience life in their own way. It's also that you battle against cities with really impossible urbanistic rules. So you can only go one way, which is what the companies offer as a product. They have created an oligopole, there ain't much of them (speaking for North America, I know that Europe has less strict rules and some amazing playgrounds).

But at the same time, you can easily search on the intarwebs for amazing playground experience for kids in North America. Even with all the rules, you probably have some of the most amazing work ever done *right now*. Just in New York (the mother of all place for ADA-appliance playground), there is some mind-blowing experience for kids to learn. Teardrop park, Imagination playground, etc... Or Garden city playground in Canada. Or that city museum in St-Louis.

Just check out this website for BOC-inspired nostalgia : :) http://playgrounddesigns.blogspot.ca/

This is inspirational bitches :

This is stupid child nostalgia that's dangerous and cheap :

Dangerous and cool you mean. And the danger makes it more realistic, "Luke put his life on the line battling the Deathstar... now you to can play to galactic odds with the all new Command Walker Scout Tower"

Also that slide to the faux beach was like the one i was talking about.

People are nostalgic over it, because it was fucking cheap and dangerous. None of them ever lasted over 2 years, nobody has it anymore.

All the local parks around here I've taken my 2 year old nephew to have merry go rounds, large metal slides and wooden structures. He loves them and hasn't yet been hurt. Granted the jungle gyms like the one in the nytimes article have been removed, but recalling from memories from when I was a kid they were pretty damn dangerous

  On 4/13/2012 at 12:11 AM, Philip Glass said:

But at the same time, you can easily search on the intarwebs for amazing playground experience for kids in North America. Even with all the rules, you probably have some of the most amazing work ever done *right now*. Just in New York (the mother of all place for ADA-appliance playground), there is some mind-blowing experience for kids to learn. Teardrop park, Imagination playground, etc... Or Garden city playground in Canada. Or that city museum in St-Louis.

 

Just check out this website for BOC-inspired nostalgia : :) http://playgrounddesigns.blogspot.ca/

That blog is cool. I wish those designs were more widespread. That nature-y one was such a creative idea.

  On 4/13/2012 at 12:43 AM, Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald said:

All the local parks around here I've taken my 2 year old nephew to have merry go rounds, large metal slides and wooden structures. He loves them and hasn't yet been hurt.

Jealous

UK isn't filled with ADA-required-somebody-please-think-of-the-children-soccer-mom-driving-suburban-playgrounds.

Heck at this moment I'm doing the landscape architecture of a vast new hospital, and within it there is an exterior playground. You should see how it's depressing, it has to be ADA-designed (and even more). No child will ever have fun there.