Anywho what I am really wondering is how did the tube slide survive. It is this orange completley closed in tube slide. So like if you get in you cannot see the bottom. This leads to numerous people being at the bottom of the slide when someone flies out and smacks right into them. Or people climbing up the inside and then someone goes down and they all fall. In this age of everything has to be safe and impossible to get injured on I have no idea how this made it. They have removed everything else from the playground that was there in my day, how did this survive? Remember the rolling pin slide where your fingers and sticky skin alwyas got caught in between the roles? That's gone but someone this thing survived. It sticks out like a sore thumb with the new plasticy safe looking equipment cuz it is made of metal and rusty looking.
here is a picture of a similar slide

and here is a kid about to be plowed down by the person coming down the slide without realizing

That kid is toast.
I read an interesting article :::link::: about how playgrounds are undergoing a renaissance these days. The new thing is "cushioned rubber flooring," which makes sense considering sand can get pretty nasty. Still, whatever happened to grass?
The only first-hand experience I've had with local playgrounds was when my niece and nephew visited in 2002. We hit every damn playground we could in four days, and even fit in a few tourist attractions. You do meet some interesting people at playgrounds, like the Asian family taking their disabled bunny for an outing. I had to take a picture of the bunny in the home-made wheelchair :::link::: they fashioned for him.
oddly enough...Mang Park with all its hazards was much safer than our school park which was completely on blacktop and included just this spiderwebby cube thing you climb to the top adn then just fall to the ground from....but we all survived...it made us tougher i think..i know when you think kids from kenmore you think tough!
long live mang park and its many, many safety hazards! i'm surprised we all still have ten fingers from the rolly slide! that exercise area was the best...and did anyone ever see anyone ACTUALLY using it for exercise?