Post AN0CEFF2V8s1FRSCNE by greg@cybre.space
(DIR) More posts by greg@cybre.space
(DIR) Post #AMzgtV5RITuPjMakl6 by ifixcoinops@mastodon.social
2022-08-28T17:41:17Z
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Highland Park Super Playground, a great huge wooden castle-like structure with tons of nooks and crannies and tunnels and hiding places and secrets, got torn down and replaced with some unremarkable same-as-every-other-playground crap, and the thing my daughter and I are most annoyed about is the surfacing.Aye it's time for Angry Internet Rants About Playground Surfacing Choices: Guy Who Fixes Pinball Machines Edition
(DIR) Post #AMzgtWpunAgB9nLNq4 by ifixcoinops@mastodon.social
2022-08-28T17:45:40Z
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WOODCHIPS: Soft. Made of wood. Absorb rain and dew. When they get baked in the sun, they get dry. Replace annually. Cheap. Not thermally conductive.RUBBER: Soft. Made of tyres. When it gets baked in the sun, it gets incredibly hot. When the sun goes behind a cloud, it remains incredibly hot, and continues to radiate.
(DIR) Post #AMzlljWGFj9hwlFl3I by ifixcoinops@mastodon.social
2022-08-28T17:50:20Z
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This playground used to be a place you could go on a 30 degree day, and feel cool and shaded and chill. All that moist wood just sucked the heat outta the surroundings, constant state-changes going on and eating thermal energy. Now it's damn intolerable, and all so we can kid ourselves into thinking we can do anything good with rubber tyres apart from making fewer of them to begin with.Gonna be a lotta kids sweating when they could be cool, just to do PR for the likes of Michelin and Goodyear.
(DIR) Post #AMzlljwUgC8hG7WhwO by ifixcoinops@mastodon.social
2022-08-28T18:32:52Z
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The play equipment itself is pretty dull. It's the same structures as other nearby playgrounds, made out of the same connecting-bracket-and-panel kinda assembly, but they've used wooden planks in place of plastic panels, as if what was cool about being in a kid-scale castle full of secret toys and tunnels and passageways too small for a grown-up to fit was that it was made of wood.
(DIR) Post #AMzllkM19IYWXHT5iy by ifixcoinops@mastodon.social
2022-08-28T18:34:02Z
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That's some friggin' bureaucrat saying "Don't worry, we're going to keep the spirit of this wooden playground intact, see, it's made of wood!"
(DIR) Post #AMzllksdC2dyAQj8Yi by ifixcoinops@mastodon.social
2022-08-28T18:39:24Z
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There are genuinely people out there who think that kids to to playgrounds in order to interact with playground equipment, and one of them built this disappointment.Clue for ya guy: kids go to playgrounds to play. Watch kids play sometime. They need high places, low places, places they can hide, places they can see and not be seen, places to rest and chat, places that are hard to get to, places that feel safe, places that feel dangerous, places that calm and places that challenge.
(DIR) Post #AMzsqrWec0gNuApVa4 by El_Jefe@noagendasocial.com
2022-08-28T20:01:00Z
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@ifixcoinops How about the invisible fumes from the heated rubber. "breathe deep, take it all in"
(DIR) Post #AN0CEFF2V8s1FRSCNE by greg@cybre.space
2022-08-28T20:45:34Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
@ifixcoinops I recently learned that a whole bunch - hundreds to maybe thousands - of those "wooden castle" playgrounds from the 70s were the work of (mostly) one guy, Bob Leathers. He'd travel to different cities, spend a bit of time "consulting" with kids to figure out what they wanted in a playground, then in a four day blitz of community volunteer labor and donated materials they'd build a playground from scratch. His work is all over the US and Gen X / elder Millennials probably played on one of his creations. Each one was a real community effort and personalized to the kids' wishes.As they had an estimated 25 year lifespan, many have been bulldozed and replaced with bright metal painted safer equipment. Some still remain in active use though, or have gotten a refurb by the community!(Excerpts from a 1980 NYT article about his constructions)
(DIR) Post #AN0Q2oOrM8yYAnUQHQ by ifixcoinops@mastodon.social
2022-08-28T18:45:23Z
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They even hecked up the swings, made them normal. The old Highland Park Super Playground swings were the best in town because they were set into the landscape; the fore and rear of the path in which the swings move was elevated, so you swung in a valley, which meant that they could use chains twice as long as other swingsets for proper long arcs. The parent pushing the kid at the back of the swing would have their feet half a metre higher than the kid's head at the bottom of the arc.
(DIR) Post #AN0Q2oxbGylTuXkAQi by ifixcoinops@mastodon.social
2022-08-28T18:52:06Z
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And these new swings are just... swings. They didn't dig anything out or raise anything up to put these swings in, they just plonked them down on flat ground and went right, black rubber seats in full sun, chains about five feet long, job done, that is indeed A Swingset.
(DIR) Post #AN0Q2pOXeoJdG6LgQK by ifixcoinops@mastodon.social
2022-08-28T18:57:08Z
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One positive I can say about this new playground is that it seems nylon slides are finally going out of fashion, and that's an unqualified Good Thing. Those damn things kick up sparks big enough to fry cochlear implants, and they're just too damn slow to slide down.There's a weird myth that plastic slides don't get as hot as metal slides, perpetuated by parents who don't touch them?
(DIR) Post #AN0Q2pv9hYP4tFbjG4 by ifixcoinops@mastodon.social
2022-08-28T19:07:16Z
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Anyway the slides and swings are secondary, the point of a playground isn't to give the kids equipment to play with, it's to give them cool and interesting ways to play WITH EACH OTHER, my god why is this so hard to grasp. Your playground needs a kid-scaled nook where there's a counter and a window and they can roleplay being an ice cream merchant. It needs a tower where there can be a dragon.
(DIR) Post #AN0Q2qNrynN8KJ2f0y by ifixcoinops@mastodon.social
2022-08-28T19:11:58Z
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So it's got a slide, awesome, but what's the point of the slide? Is it to climb up and go down? That's just a slide! BORING! Place it inside a larger structure where it's a daring do-or-die escape from the Big Bad Wolf! Kids chase each other, give them multiple different exciting routes of escape! Integrate the equipment into the stories the kids make up FFS!
(DIR) Post #AN0Q2qxJqzjE6FcyGm by ifixcoinops@mastodon.social
2022-08-28T19:25:51Z
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Watch some kids in a playground sometime, if they're having a good time look how they use the slides. The more laughs and squeals you hear, the less they're using the slides as straight-up slides and the more they're using them as ways to move quickly towards or away from each other.
(DIR) Post #AN0Q2rRo1e7BcntJmy by ifixcoinops@mastodon.social
2022-08-28T19:30:37Z
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Some parents push their kids on the roundabout.FFS THE ROUNDABOUT IS FOR TEACHING NEGOTIATION AND FAIRNESS. How the hell do you expect kids to learn to take turns pushing, or go slow when there's a little kid on, or balance the wants of the whole group, or team up for more speed, when you're just turning up with your Grown-Up Strength and an answer for every unasked question? If you wanna push 'em, push 'em on the swings, that's what they're for.
(DIR) Post #AN0Q2rqyW4FQsrfQ1I by ifixcoinops@mastodon.social
2022-08-28T19:46:40Z
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Look I'm not saying Make Playgrounds Dangerous Again, or bleedin-elfin-safety-I-survived-so-cheesegrater-slides-are-fine or whatever - (although where I'm from the current trend seems to be going back the other way towards letting kids get the odd bruise here and there so they learn how to handle risk and don't die in a stupid car accident the moment they turn 18) - I'm saying that playgrounds need to be made for kids, and that the equipment is to help facilitate the sort of play that kids like.
(DIR) Post #AN0Q2sLSgidOPPvlXU by ifixcoinops@mastodon.social
2022-08-28T19:52:15Z
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(but yeah on dangerous-vs-safe playgrounds, I hope (and suspect) that we'll soon reach an ideal equilibrium between the broken-bottles-and-broken-arms of the 80's and the wrap-them-up-in-cotton-wool plastic-and-rubber boringness of the 2000's-2010's. Like, bit of bruising or scraping but no broken bones or enough blood to drip)
(DIR) Post #AN0Q2sosvKAbsfhGOu by ifixcoinops@mastodon.social
2022-08-28T19:55:08Z
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Me: Playgrounds can be fun and exciting and the kids don't necessarily HAVE to get hurt for that,Crocky Trail bloke, picking up a kid and throwing him in the lake: U WOT M8
(DIR) Post #AN0Q2tIf8bzPN1d2oa by ifixcoinops@mastodon.social
2022-08-29T01:55:32Z
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(the Crocky Trail bloke really did pick an older kid up and chuck him in the river. Kid was being a bully, apparently)
(DIR) Post #AN0Q2tmnKa5msTj6mW by ifixcoinops@mastodon.social
2022-08-29T02:08:21Z
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AND ANOTHER BLOODY THING. There is a desperate shortage, an increasingly relevant shortage, of cool places to go on a hot day within urban areas around Pittsburgh, maybe around the US in general. I think the idea is that on a real scorcher of a day you're supposed to hide indoors and use air conditioning to dump your heat outside to be Someone Else's Problem™ but there's a playground near us with treeshade and a creek that makes MUCH more joy
(DIR) Post #AN0Ql4Au4CFTq841UO by ifixcoinops@mastodon.social
2022-08-29T02:14:00Z
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Gonna be folk holing up indoors because the outside is all concrete and glass and it stays untouchably hot six months of the year, the outside is an inhospitable environment. Go ten miles out the city and there's a wooden playground, shaded, woodchips shedding their moisture into whatever dapples of sunlight reach through the oak and maple canopy, and if even THAT's too hot you can walk in the creek five metres away, get cool running water on your ankles and let the river run your heat away.
(DIR) Post #AN0Ql5bWkh8iGzWncu by ifixcoinops@mastodon.social
2022-08-29T02:18:05Z
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Why do I have to drive ten bloody miles for that? Why are there only trees between the road and the pavement in posh areas, like trees cost money?THEY GROW THEMSELVES FFS. It takes effort to stop them!Trees aren't optional extras for the rich, they're a basic necessity, we've got to start acting like it.