The Playground of Doom

We have a playground at the apartment that when new (in 1988, according to the date written in concrete), was a tribute to the grand tradition of Soviet physical fitness. It hasn’t had much maintenance since. In true Soviet style, it has all the components necessary for play, but they are just not…quite…right. The monkey bars, for instance, are pretty ingenious—they’re circular shaped, have gymnastics type rings around the outside and ladder type bars to the inside so that you can go around on either apparatus. They also appear to have been designed for actual monkeys, because they stand about 11 feet off the ground. The kids have to climb up a ladder to get on, and if they run out of steam before they get all the way around they have a 5 foot drop to the ground. It was designed with motivation in mind…”Either tough it out or live with shattered arches.”

The swing sets have no swings on them, and it’s probably a good thing because they are set close enough to each other to make mid-air collisions between opposing swingees a real possibility. Judging from how everything else is made, I can predict that the original swing seats were 6 pound welded steel monsters with pointed ends and bits of scalp and hair stuck to the bottom.

Most suburban playgrounds in the US are deep mulched with either recycled rubber or smooth wood mulch, so Jr. won’t hurt himself when he falls off the swing. Here, it’s just candy wrappers, plain old hardpack dirt, and a little broken glass thrown in as incentive to help you decide to keep your shoes on.

The slide is a metal unit that will sear the bottom of any kid who dares to use between late spring and winter. Summers are hot—we were told that Taraz averages 40 days over 40 degrees C (about 104 F). You are bound to suffer serious blistering if you’re wearing anything less than asbestos pants. One of the safety rails is bent up into eye poking territory for smaller kids, and the bleeding eye theme is carried through the sculptures that dot the playground (see photo).

There also an architectural feature that serves no purpose other than to look threatening. It’s 3 big, rusted steel pipes that stick out of the ground and come to a ragged, but sharp point about 8 feet in the air. Luckily, it is too high for real harm, but it does make a statement—a statement like “Prepare to be skewered, ye who enter here”.
Maybe that’s where they hide the bodies when things go wrong.

The best thing about the playground is that dozens of kids use it every day, have a great time and go home without permanent damage. Our American kids even like it. Our Kazak kids are accustomed to this sort of thing, and I am anticipating some eye rolling when they hit the reality of our ”helmets, knee and elbow pads” requirement for U.S. childhood.
Russ