Good-bye Graffiti Park

This is the playground we discovered last December with my mom. It's a lovely place right in the middle of Soho, with lots of finely dressed children running and sliding and swinging. It has a clean fence that surrounds the area to keep little ones in, and passers-bys out.

This is the playground closest to my house:

We call it Graffiti Park.

Actually, I should say this was the playground:



I mean - really? You have to tag the playground equipment?

With absolutely no notice, the city recently ripped out the playground equipment. I was there on a Sunday with my son and a friend's baby, and when I drove by on Tuesday it was gone. That was March 22nd, and a month later the city still has no plans about when the replacement is going in. I drive by each day on the way home from work and see children playing in the dirt - they really have no where else to play. I should be thrilled that the playground is being replaced, but I'm not. There don't appear to be any plans to fence the property, or otherwise attempt to exclude the ne'er-do-wells who will again sully the new equipment.

I shudder sometimes to think of where I'm raising my son. For example, this is my neighbor's property:


Note how the siding is peeling from being cleaned of graffiti so often. Why would he bother to replace it? Would you, knowing it would be tagged again?

I wonder, very often, why some areas are better maintained than others. Why some people will drop their litter on the street, while others don't. Why some cities do something about said litter, and others don't.

On a lighter note, before the playground was ripped out, BabyMan figured out how to climb the steps, walk across the platform, and slide down the slide all by himself.