Tag: neighborhood

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The Saddest Playground In San Francisco

I’ve seen lots of changes to the playgrounds in San Francisco and a lot of them have been really good. Being a parent and having to take your kid out to a place where they can run around and work off some energy so they don’t destroy your house is always a good thing, but there are some places that still need help. This one is on 24th Avenue and Quintara Street.

This playground, really a mini playground has looked like this for close to 50 years. They did put in some of that spongy stuff down and have replaced the benches, but it’s still the same. For some reason it even warranted a plaque. I’m not sure why because other than a few swings, small slide and sandbox there’s really nothing else left.

It’s also not fenced in and a quick run into the streets. It is also used as a staging point for Abraham Lincoln High School’s PE teachers before making the kids run around the reservoir so when PE is happening the teachers and students don’t really care much if you’re a parent with a child there to actually use the playground. We were lucky in that we only visited this playground when our daughter was very young and she was just learning to walk. Now that she knows how to walk and can run around by herself there are plenty of other places to go to that offer much more energy releasing activities as well a mentally stimulating forms of play.

While there have been great improvements to other Sunset neighborhood parks so as Frank McCopping playground and West Sunset playground, this one has pretty much been forgotten. My suggestion to our local Supervisor Carmen Chu is to either upgrade this mini-playground or just remove it and add in a few of those concrete chessboards and leave it as a meeting place for people who often use it already as a place to meet up and have a chat. It’s a small area so you wouldn’t need much there, but leaving it in it’s current state of looking like it was built during Russian industrial era times just isn’t San Franciscan. Email Supervisor Chu or tweet her about this and maybe we’ll see something get done.

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The Great Quake of 2011

Well, Friday had a little surprise for me. I’m sitting here at the computer like I am frequently when all of the sudden I notice the computer start to shake. Then the walls begin to shake. I immediately grabbed onto and hugged my computer until the shaking stopped. My wife, she ran into the other room and grabbed our daughter to make sure she was safe. OK, BAD DADDY!

Turns out it was only a 4.1 and was ESE of San Jose. It only registered 2.6 in San Francisco which I’m a little dubious of. We might have to make a trip to the Randall Museum to double check their seismometer.

We haven’t had an earthquake to speak of in a few years. Usually they last only a second or two  and you only realize that there was an earthquake after it’s gone. This one lasted about 5 seconds so we had time to register in our minds that we were in the middle of an earthquake. I wasn’t scared at all, just wanting to make sure none of my essential stuff didn’t get broken [i.e. my computer].

People have said to me that they’re rather live in a hurricane area or tornado area or blizzard area than to have to worry about earthquakes all the time. Well, I can assure you, we don’t worry about earthquakes all the time. While my house faired through the big 1989 quake with no damage unlike the Marina house in the picture, we might have a problem if the San Andreas decides to have a little shake, rattle and roll. It turns out the San Andreas runs about 10 feet from our house so if a big one strikes there we’re toast, but this house has been in my family for over 50 years and we still haven’t had any damage from an earthquake.

This doesn’t mean we don’t have a grab and dash bag if something big does hit and we’ve both gone through NERT training so if something bad happens we’re prepared. So don’t worry, be happy. San Francisco will still be around for a few more years. Sorry red states.