Slides used to be dangerous.
After climbing up those sandy, metal crosstrax steps you got to the top and stared down at that steep ride below. The slide was burning hot to the touch, a stovetop set to high all day under the summer sun, just waiting to greet the underside of your legs with first-degree burns as you enjoyed the ride. It also smelled like hot pee, years of nervous children with leaky diapers permanently marking it as their territory. Lastly, to top it all off, there were no cute plastic siderails or encapsulated tube-slides, which meant that if you went too fast or aimed your legs poorly, your shoes would grip-skid on the metal, and you’d spill over the side, landing face down with a sickening thud in a bed of pebbles, cigarette butts, and milk thistles.
It wasn’t just slides, either. Everything in the playground was more dangerous. And they were different and unique, seemingly put together by the neighborhood handymen who in a burst of creative energy one Saturday morning emptied their garages of old tires, 2x4s, and chains and just nailed it all together.
There were wooden tightrope beams suspended high in the air, daring the confident, athletic kids to attempt a slow, heart-pounding highwire walk while other kids encouragingly showered them with handfuls of sand and pine cones.
There were fire poles two stories high — just a cheap, simple pole planted deep in the ground. It was popular, and educational too, quietly introducing children to concepts like gravity, friction, and badly sprained ankles. There was a certain Fire Pole Form too, a kind of arms-on, cross-legged-spider-wrap maneuver that was both awkward and majestic at the same time.
And of course, there was my favorite — the Big Spinner, also known as a Merry-Go-Round, but not the kind with lights and plastic horses going up and down. This was just a giant metal circle that laid about a foot off the ground and could be spun, usually by someone standing beside it. If you were lucky you’d get a pile of kids on there and somebody’s mom or dad would kindly whip you into a World of Unimaginable Dizziness. A couple kids would fly off from the G-forces but most would hang on, teeth gritted, eyes squinted, cheeks flapping wildly against the wind, until the Big Spinner reluctantly came to a slow stop and finally let you off. Then you’d all walk away in different directions, some kids hitting tree trunks head on, others falling down nearby hills.
These days those classic playgrounds sure are hard to come by.
Everything is plastic now — unaffected by temperature, easy to disinfect, and bendable into all kinds of Safe-T-Shapes, the sharp, rusty nail heads of yesterday replaced with non-toxic washable adhesives poured from a cauldron of polymers and Purell. Now not only are our kids getting lame baby-approved fun, but just think what we’re doing to the tetanus shot industry.
Seriously though, new playgrounds sure are terrible. This guy agrees. They say that playgrounds have gotten too safe and become so sterile and boring that kids just walk away from them, preferring instead to hang out in the weeds by the railroad tracks or throw bottles in the alley behind the pizza place. Kids could actually be placed in more danger by these lame plastic netherworlds that encourage more video game time instead of fresh air and bruising. Another blow to childhood struck by overprotective parents and pesky lawsuits.
Well, we can’t change the world, so let’s just enjoy the good news: old, fun, dangerous playgrounds are not completely extinct. Yes, the Safety Conglomerate hasn’t killed all the buzz with their rocking horses two inches off the ground, pillowy-soft imitation sand, and stationary, bolted-on steering wheels. Old, dangerous playground equipment can still be found. They’re out there.
So please — when you find monkey bars taunting you from ten feet off the ground, extended see-saws that allow for maximum elevation, and rickety, sagging rope bridges with planks missing, please, run around like crazy, bump your head a few times, and twist your ankle. Because tell me something– is there anything quite like it?
AWESOME!
This post is in The Book of Awesome
Illustration from: here
I played in a park back in 1975 that had a 3 story rocketship with ladders connecting each level. We would climb up the outside of it. I took my kids to that park recently and it was welded shut. Litigation is evil. Shakespeare and socrates hated lawyers. Lawyers need to be very careful with their power or they destroy society for our children. My father’s band even played in a mental hospital in Napa California back in the 70’s ( watch the video here http://tastym.blogspot.com/ . Now that is impossible.
YEAH! Old dangerous playground equipment was the best!
What was even better was extremely chaotic recess days, when your elementary school put in a brand new jungle gym with lots of bars to hang from and push to get on, kinda like American Gladiators. Or playing a game I like to call “How many 3rd graders can hang on before one falls off?” Whats best about that game was the nice blacktop that was there to cushion your fall. Sadly I ended up losing that game. I did gain a broken arm but sadly rubber padding was put down over the blacktop afterward to do a better job of cushioning falls of others that lost this game.
Actually, my friend also fell (after the rubber cushioning was put down) and somehow broke his arm. Second time he broke his arm in like 2 years. He should have drank more milk. Though, I was just happy to have another 3rd grader to play with in the nurses’ office while everyone else was outside during recess.
An by the way, I did play American Gladiators (on monkey bars) against a friend when I was younger. Lets just say I ended up with a whole lot of sand in my mouth.
Good times, broke my leg falling off an old fireman’s pole.
But hey, it was a rush. Awesome!
Ach. They’ve totally stopped swings all together in my town . Especially at the schools.
Thankfully I got through elementary school before they decided to replace everything.
This makes me think of “Kids Castle” which is a huge playground area. It was made all out of wood and some of the things me and my friends would do were what made it so dangerous haha. I remember those days of splinters, cuts, and bruises.
I am also glad my elementary school kept the little wooden set (with the best swings attached to it) through all my years there. They took it down shortly after I left. That metal slide on it would get BURNING hot.
Hello there, i just now thought i would post and let you know your weblogs structure. It appears really good on the Google Chrome cell phone browser. Anyways keep up the good work.
Its always those dodgy playground equipment items that attract the kids, much to the dismay of the parents. Lets face it folks we were the same when we were that age!
Such good memories this brings back, what fun we had on the hot slide and sailing off the merry go round when it spun too fast and your fingers just slipped off the slick metal. Such a shame for kids today not to be able to experience running up the burning hot slide in bare feet! Nothing quite like it. Awesome!
BEST place to find these incredible playgrounds are old beach towns in the South! The housing development near where I live used to have an “Octopus” but the soccer mom fun-nazis replaced the whole playground. As a creative teenager we can still make some things fun while slightly.. mentally incapacitated. But it’s definitely harder haha. Also, the Octopus was located about 8 feet from the man made lake. Good times :)
Wow, that’s a lot of comments!
I could never slide down the fire pole thingy because I was always too afraid, even up to this day I can’t! It’s absolutely ridiculous!
I’ve never been on a Big Spinner before, and what the heck kind of person would put a ladder that huge on a playground!
This is a very popular post.
I’d like to do apost on my blog about the behind the scenes that went into this dangerous playgrounds piece and link it with current discussions around safety.
Let me know if you’re interested and we can set up a time to talk.
Great blog by the way.
Cheers
Alex
Th ‘World of Unimaginable Dizziness” caused me to vomit out my retainer in the 3rd grade… best time ever cause I got to go home for being “sick”!!
ah i remember those complete metal slides, and merry-go-rounds. i loved them both!
My son is deaf and has a cochlear implant, which is very sensitive to static. So he can’t go down a plastic slide unless we wipe it down first and then rush in to ground him when he gets to the bottom — all very tedious and stressful. We *wish* we could find metal slides these days!
There was this awesome swing at a Park in Thurmont, MD. Every time we went I would hope it would still be there. It had six sides with wooden benches. It went around in circles and back and forth. It could hold 30 kids on it. I was surprised it lasted as long as it did because someone could really get hurt on it. I think last time we were there it was gone. But all my kids got to play on it and I have pictures.
Used to be able to cook your lunch on those goddamn slides.
Here’s some photos of our favourite park
http://jase.geekzone.com.au/st-kilda-adventure-park/
Sadly, the big wooden castle is ‘becoming unsafe’ and is being replaced this year. Don’t know what it will end up being but I’m betting it won’t be as cool. You’re also no longer allowed to take photos there, so I’m glad I got those when I did!
I LOVED my 3rd degree burns from the metal slides. An elementary school i went to still has all of the same playground stuff. I remember we use to fill the swing set full of kids we had like 20 swings and then try and run between them without getting hurt I think I only broke my arm but it was worth it. I miss it all.
I once saw a girl get all her hair stuck in the middle of one of those merry-go-rounds..she had to get all of it chopped off…that merry-go-round still exists 1oish years later
I’m still afraid of see-saws.
…
I had a really bad accident half-falling off of one of those really tall, thick-wooden-plank ones when I was younger, had I been a boy I would have castrated myself or something like it. It was so painful, I think I had to be carried home by my parents.
Even so, I’m upset about all the wood and steel playgrounds being replaced first by the all-steel ones in the early 90’s (those weren’t too bad, still had some good things about them, like a large steering wheel that could turn, and the awesome metal slides with about two inches of rail on either side) and then the boring, cookie-cutter plastic monoliths that have been appearing everywhere for the last 10 years.
I miss my dangerous slides (and climbing UP them was a favourite pasttime of mine) and the incredible G-forces of the merry-go-rounds. I miss the random tires and chains to climb up, filled with gravel and the occasional piece of glass that you had to try to avoid. I miss the sand.
What is up with all the foam-a-bounce grounds now?
And, even though I’m kinda emotionally scarred by the see-saw… Even though it was nearly 15 years before I finally braved one again (and it was worth it, but still scary as all hell!), I miss them too.
What happened to the creativity?
… When I have kids, I’m going to build them some big unsafe thing, and/or make sure they have some trees to climb.
Because you know what? Dealing with fear and pain is part of life.
We took our 5 year old son to Russia when we were adopting our daughter. All the playgrounds in St. Petersburg were the old kind, with the very high, very slippery metal slides; the sit-n-spin metal merry-go-rounds, where you have to hang on for dear life as another kid runs around pushing as fast as they can; and the real old-fashioned teeter-tots where if you are not careful, the fat kid can make you go flying.
My son said he never had so much fun in his life as at that playground. He started our family tradition of pointing out all the awesome things ruined by “Safety Police”.
As a kid who has only grown up knowing the “safe” playgrounds, I am REALLY REALLY ANGRY that you people got to experience all the fun! Nowadays I can barely find a kid to go outside with me, let alone go on an old playground.
i know, hard to find a good bunch of outgoing risk taking kids these days to play with, thatd be the best days of my life
i know, hard to find a good bunch of outgoing risk taking kids these days to play with
I love “old, dangerous playground equipment.” When I was in Elementary, our playground were wooden and metal with old style sand. In the summer, the slides were hot, the monorail sometimes made you fail, and you also got kick in the face because a bridge is right under monkey bars. Even the monkey bars were about 3 meters (9 feet) off the ground. I’m in high school soon to be in university. I still think of my Elementary’s “old, dangerous playground equipment.” (P.S. except for the kicks in the face)
These are one of my all time favorite things…I am 23 and will still jump on a Merry Go Round if I find one! A friend on mine got her head stuck between 2 monkey bars as a kid and just hung there by her head…if that’s not awesome I don’t know what is!
Two words. Tire Swings. What ever happened to those magnificent circles of joy?
Greetings Neil, I too arrived in 1968 and was 23 years old, with VERY little money in my pocket….I have two no-name sons in their 30’s and one in his 40’s…Love ’em dearly…Love The Awesomes, I sneaked a quiet moment in the bookstore chuckling over the MANY stories the other day while ‘looking after g/sons’…(Next time we will have g/children FIRST…..) Wonder if there are others out there in Canuckland who arrived in 1968, at the age of 23?????We ALL, officially join the Senior Citizen/OAP category this year………!!! What a Wonderful World…David C. Bird…….. D.O.B. 23/02/1945
When I was in elementary school, there was a long tube slide. It started about five feet off the ground, and the end of the slide was two feet off the ground. My friends and I used to lay a game called “Jacob’s Ladder.”
Let me explain how to play: The first person would hang from the top of the slide by their fingers. The next person down would hold onto the first person’s legs. And so on it went, until the last person reached the bottom of the slide. As soon as the bottom of the slide was reached; the last person had to climb back up to the top, and take over from the first person.
Good fun.
The secret of metal slides was sitting on a wax paper bag (used for lunch sandwiches before plastic). Reduced friction to close to zero, which on the two story high slide at my elementary school could really get you going!
We used to throw sand down the slide–that not only helped you go faster, but it sort of neutralized some of the heat from the metal ones.
Haha, I remember bashing my head good while riding on a tire swing. I was sure I’d have a concussion, but I was just fine.
Falling off the top of one of those fairly tall enclosed, tube-like ‘tornado slides’ is in my memory, too. Though that would be because I had the brilliant idea to climb up on top of it. Managed to get almost all the way up before I fell off, whacked my head on a metal bar, and landed on my arm in the gravel.
I went to London a few weeks back to visit some loved ones. We were walking behind a group of flats when we found something amazing: it was a Beatles’ Yellow Submarine inspired playground and it was TOTALLY unsafe by today’s standards. Without a doubt, it made the top 10 coolest things I have ever seen :)
At a playground near the park (I guess it couldn’t really be called a playground because it only had a swing set and a slide) there was a huge monster truck tire. Kids would climb up it and hide inside of it. But that playground is no longer there.
There was also a playground at the elementary school that was all wooden and metal. There was the steps that were put together where you could go from one end of the structure to the other, with various slides and poles along the way. There was the merry-go-round that spun kids so fast that we all ended up throwing up in the end. Of course there was the swings where kids got hurt jumping off of them (even though we had the rubber bits on the ground). There was also a jungle gym that was shaped like half of a circle. We would climb to the top and at the top there was an open space where one person would sit on each side. We would hang upside down, without our feet holding on to anything, and swing until we could get enough leverage to swing off the apparatus and onto the ground. Sadly, when I was in 5th grade I think, a couple of the 6th graders burned it all down and now it has been replaced with the requisite plastic playground. Lame.
ya know it’s nice to come across a post that actually grabs my attention
Thank you so much for bringing back some of the best memories of my childhood with this one!!
Does anyone remember a piece of backyard play equipment from the 50’s, that you sat in (not on) and pumped and pulled with your feet and hands to make the cage swing back and forth until you got it to go upside down. Sort of like the old amusement park ride called the,”Looper”or “Hamster Cage”, only this was for your backyard. My parents got rid of it, after my sister broke an arm.
one cool spring night, i wanna go on top of a really big steep hill, roll some big plastic film stuff on it, pop the sprinklers and just slide on our asses in our bikinis in a party. thatd be one of the best fun n0n safe days of my life. i want to be out going, but i dont have the money to go places :[
If it isnt dangerous, its not fun!
I used to climb trees when i was a kid. Untill one day i fell out and almost lost my arm. It hurted like hell, but I’d do it again anytime! :)
Anybody remember that metal climbing rainbow with the gap in the middle? What was the purpose of the gap – to have little kids try and climb over it? (which I did, once, when I was 7, only to fall through to the sharp gravel below, bloodying my face…) I remember the big metal slide, where you would hope that the friction wouldn’t make you bare legs stick on the way down and cause burns? Were adults trying to test Darwinian theories on us??
Oh, god. I remember that we used to have the spider at my elementary school— ya know, that gigantic dome made of crossed bars that you could crawl on. One kid fell off the top and broke his arm, and my friend fell off and knocked out his two front teeth. After that, it was uprooted and replaced by a caterpillar (a curvy, horizontal ladder-thing), which was significantly less fun.
Gooooood times. XD
I was Googling some of this old playground equipment and came across an old book called Playground Technique and Playcraft – VOLUME ONE A Popular Text book of Playground Philosophy Architecture Construction and Equipment by ARTHUR LELAND.
Its kind of interesting and it actually shows how to build some of these pieces of equipment including the Giant Stride! (Or at least how they built them in 1913)
http://books.google.com/books?id=kFZLAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Playground+technique+and+playcraft&source=bl&ots=WeiSVgnbRw&sig=EZ7w1EPr-RRrCE0JvpY2CG9Ii9c&hl=en&ei=ywNfTMjpDZ3YtAOUpYnmDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBUQ6AEwAA