After we celebrated our anniversary last week, it went on to be another great week here in the southwest corner of beleaguered Minneapolis. If you pay no attention to the news in the rest of the city, living in my neighborhood you'd have a hard time guessing that anything was less than it should be. We have baseball in the park several evenings a week and the pool at the playground is finally open. The sunsets have been spectacular rose gold affairs, thanks to the enormous Canadian forest fires. We still have the occassional pink, smokey day but over all, it's much clearer. We need rain.
I had #6 with me on Saturday. It was a lovely, hot afternoon so I took her the park. That's the first place where a person might get a hint that all is not well in Minneapolis. There was no one there. On a gorgeous, hot Saturday afternoon, the playground looked like this:
I've been incensed over what the citiots in charge of my parks have done to this one for quite a while. I've lived in my house for over 30 years and in that time, the playground has been redone twice. Once, about 20-25 years ago to replace old, worn out equipment. Some of that needed repair also but it was a fun, challenging playground with spaces for both toddlers and older kids. There was a large, many faceted obstacle course at the end of the big kid section that included a zipline, long monkey bars and swinging hoops that enouraged strenght, coordination and timing. Babalouie spent three years practicing and growing big enough to be able to complete it.
During the pandemic they tore it out and replaced it with this.
Take a good long look at this travesty. Zoom in to get the full boredom of it. I want you to feel the full horror of this next photo:
This "playground" is a microcosm of everything that is wrong with our popular culture.
It is so safe that it has effectively eliminated any chance of actually having fun. Then it proudly claims it was designed for 5 to 12 year olds. I am sure there are some severely handicapped kids who would find this ramp-infested borathon challenging but that excludes all the normally functional kids in the neighborhood. AS if that weren't bad enough, GameTime recommends adult supervision. GameTime would also undoubtedly recommend the masking of little kids and the sequestering of grandparents from society, just to 'be on the safe side'. And did you read as far as the recommendation for helmets? Oh, I meant 'supervised' helmet use.
This "playground" is an insult to healthy, energetic kids everywhere.
Three years old and already bored to tears with GameTime and the Mpls Park board's idea of how kids should play. You can't fool kids: that 'playground' is empty most of the time. I was down there the other day when it wasn't quite empty.
I brought #6 down and put her in a baby swing. There were six other kids at the playground, loudly fighting over the one (yes, that's right ONE) regular swing.
Armatage park has become the poster-child for how to make sure your kids grow up fat, lazy and addicted to screens. They'll be safe from skinned knees, broken bones and the teasing of others but no amount of helmets or masks will protect them from diabetes, obesity, heart disease and online bullying.
Good job, GameTime!!
I am very happy to say that none of my grandkids live in Minneapolis. Boopityboop live near a great park with a splendid playground.
I read that another park a mile or so away has also been destroyed by the safety mavens. I hope it doesn't spread throughout the city but my hopes aren't high. This is Minneapolis: we claim all cops are bad and blame everyone but the people who actually hired and trained the bad ones; we call riots 'mostly peaceful'; we convince ourselves that classical racism and fascism are their opposite because we preface them with 'anti'; we destroy entire neighborhoods in the name of 'justice'; destroy playgrounds in the name of 'safety'; we build residential streets for bicyclists that are too narrow for emergency vehicles and we wore masks while walking around the lake, alone. Then we re elected the very same lunatics who came up with all these inanities.