Saturday, January 13, 2007

The playground - again

Yes, the playground at the South Street Seaport continues to generate quite the buzz...there's yet another article in the New York Times.

Surprise, surprise: This was tried already in Queens, and it failed miserably, reports New York Magazine. But this time it will work, because more people care about the double-wide stroller set of Manhattan than about immigrant kids forced to play in community gardens in Astoria.

The city is seeking private donations for an endowment for the park: Imagination Playground
(Point to ponder: Why is it that in the graphics all the "workers" seem to be minorities but the kids at play are all white?)

How many parks in Queens have endowments? By the conditions most appear to be in, we're guessing that the answer is none.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I remember when several hundred thousand dollars was spent on Arrow Park in Astoria. It was beautiful and attracted little kids and their moms.

Then parks took over and put up basketball hoops right in the middle of the plantings and grass. Guess what? Like so many projects here in Queens, it starts good and looks like a slum in no time at all (funny, the reverse is true in Manhattan and Brooklyn, ever notice?) Littered grounds, trampled plantings, learing punks and a parkie that resembled the locals.

Ah, but it is important that the kids have a place to play. An empty Dutch Kills playgound a few blocks away notwithstanding. And of course, no one took the councilman who wasted all that tax payers money to task. In short order, everything was pulled up and paved over.

But again, this is Queens, they don't know any better out there, right?

Anonymous said...

It is, indeed, curious that in the computer graphics design model of this newly proposed park (playground) that there are no "minority" kids pictured at play. Only "white-bred" children. I guess that the only "people of color" you're likely to see here are the "nannies or service -folks" that will be picking up after these "privileged" kids after they leave the sand box and go home for milk and cookies!