A few weeks ago I took Liam to the park on a Sunday evening when he was wired to the max before bedtime. We hadn't been over there in a while because of the heat the past couple months, so I was surprised to find a much different play place for my child when we arrived. Actually, it wasn't worthy of my child playing on any of the equipment. I will spare you the additional photos I took of all the grafitti and filth scribed into every nook and cranny of the steps, slides, tunnels and platforms... nevertheless I sent these photos to the city and I have yet to go see if anything has been done about it.
I was doubting much COULD be done since the "gang" that did the damage literally whittled into the plastic slides and wooden benches... how do you sand down plastic so the F word doesn't show? And is it even worth doing if the city isn't surveillancing the area at night when the immature and bored go out and do this stuff? It just blows my mind that kids have no respect for even an area that toddlers should be playing by day. I think the only solution to the problem would be to illuminate this park with many street lamps so the shady folks can't hang out there at night after they have snuck out of their parents homes to meet up with their delinquent "friends."
I'll update later on any progress.
10 comments:
That's such a bummer! I remember taking Taj there and the F word was HUGE on the slide. :(
You are so much more proactive than I am! That sounds like the two parks near us. When is really inner-city-ish with a boarded up slide and grafitti (bad words) and trash everywhere. Oh and the doped-up teens that scatter at 6 o' clock when the parole officer makes his rounds. Nice. The other one is in very nice condition, nice neighborhood, except for the grafitti of bad words and scribbles of private parts and so forth on the play equipment. I think it can be hard for the city to keep up with it. It's expensive to fix and it just gets vandalized again anyway.
I'll check and see what they are doing about it Monday, since they are closed on Friday AND I am making a killer treat for Blog Fest tomorrow!
I have a little park in my back yard with no F-word (or I'd have some beating to do!). You are welcome to come by anytime. Dog is always in the house when we are gone.
Soooo frustrating!!
GAH!!!
That really stinks. I'm so sorry to hear that. We have the same thing at our little neighborhood park. One would think that parents could teach their tween/teenagers better, but even adults do this sort of thing.
Do they have things for the older kids to do around there? I don't know how much that would help because some kids are just prone to vandalize. I know that there's nothing for the tweenagers to do around here but get into mischief. We had a couple of teenagers come by and smash our front window out while I was sleeping, with my pregnant belly, underneath the window. Jeremy went running out as soon as it happened but the kids were hopping into their car and driving off. It was so scary and honestly gave me some feelings of indifference to all teenagers for awhile after that. I couldn't sleep for days and paced around the house with all the lights on waiting for some punks to come back and do more. I think they had the wrong house and probably realized that when they saw Jeremy running out.
I don't know why I shared that other than to let you know I totally can relate to that frustration. I hope that the City can do something to rectify this. Good luck!
That's awful! I don't remember it being there when we lived there. I hope that someone is able to do something about it. Is the neighborhood watch still going on?
It can't be for a lack of better things to do. The city in question has tons of fun, safe and cheap things for people to do-at all times of day and night. Grr.
Thats so irritating!!!
I'm so sad to hear of the demise of the "purple park"
I actually felt a little emotional and sad after reading your post. It's upsetting that there's not much we can do about grafitti. It's such a pointless, thoughtless way of entertainment. In fact I don't see how it is entertaining. I mean, are these kids proud of themselves after they write, or chisel, the F-word onto a childs slide? Stupid...just stupid.
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