tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11787852.post1396041790182273307..comments2008-06-07T01:09:42.117-07:00Avi Abramshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12550929795356812957noreply@blogger.comBlogger75125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11787852.post-84049781332001430842008-06-07T01:09:00.000-07:002008-06-07T01:09:00.000-07:00The cthulhu is actually a leather doll with joints and stuff, not a piece of playground equiptment, it's by this guy http://bob-basset.livejournal.com/Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11787852.post-51110705213344789642008-05-15T10:36:00.000-07:002008-05-15T10:36:00.000-07:00Some crazy stuff.<BR/>Surprised to see the basel one! (6th from the top). Its in a park close to the city, used for massive parties by the international school kids. The hill in the background is usually the epicenter whereas the artsy object can be entered and is usually where the stoners do their thing.Willemnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11787852.post-24493474709139574522008-05-12T12:39:00.000-07:002008-05-12T12:39:00.000-07:00only an american would think that this is horrible or scary, i've been many times to america, to diferent places of it and it always amazed me how everythink looks the same, saving geographical diferences all the country looks and feels exactly the same is like a uniform country made of prefabricated buildings with zero apreciation for any human factor. i am gratefull that i grew up in a variety of places so culturally fullfilling so vast in it's human nature that i can see things in a deeper way, and i feel ashamed to know that i share this world with a society so destroyed as the north american that makes young inexpierienced to feel good about being the though type, like gangsters i mean they actually look up the delincuent life... they see it as "cool", where i come from of course we have crime... A LOT of it, but no criminal or gangster is proud of it at all, they are ashamed, maybe angry that the society pushed them to that kind of life.<BR/>btw i'm not eastern european, i'm southamerican and we have those kind of landscapes in parks and public places too. i think is great.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11787852.post-7777820549521872642008-05-04T15:21:00.000-07:002008-05-04T15:21:00.000-07:00I visited the one with the dragon. All I saw was a whole lot of kids having fun. I saw alot of amazing art when I visited Russia, however, there was not a whole lot of public art. I was taken there by a 20-somthing Russia who expressed how much he enjoyed it when he was a child. I really enjoyed visiting that scuplture, I know those who live around do as well.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11787852.post-32006610469196808772008-05-04T09:59:00.000-07:002008-05-04T09:59:00.000-07:00I found these extremely interesting and so creepy - but I agree that little kids don't see things the way we do - these reminded me of a sculpture I remember playing on as a little kid growing up in suburban Miami decades ago - may be I really only played on it once, but to me it seems like it was many times... I thought maybe it was something I had dreamed of until I found pictures of it online recently:<BR/><BR/>http://www.flickr.com/photos/zwelling/566206994/OrangeCanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13692703378490360697noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11787852.post-86827093803166106322008-05-02T15:26:00.000-07:002008-05-02T15:26:00.000-07:00Stay tuned for the Part 2!<BR/>Even uglier and more entertaining.Avi Abramshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12550929795356812957noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11787852.post-80932472718596733852008-05-02T15:22:00.000-07:002008-05-02T15:22:00.000-07:00I actually enjoyed many of the pieces posted here. Some were a little grotesque to be placed in children's playgrounds, but I think part of that also has to do with the fact that they were marred by graffiti. (However, I normally like "artistic graffiti".)<BR/><BR/>Just because you don't understand a work of art does not mean you should simply cast it aside as meaningless. Art is supposed to make one think critically and invoke emotion.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11787852.post-68516002801406899472008-05-02T04:35:00.000-07:002008-05-02T04:35:00.000-07:00Next up on DRB: photos of Central African mud huts: Holy crap, these guys don't have bidets and air conditioning? Are they retarded or something??Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11787852.post-4354658347230923182008-05-01T17:41:00.000-07:002008-05-01T17:41:00.000-07:00Apart from the sculpture of the woman that was bleeding from the eyes, I didn't see anything particularly wrong with any of these.<BR/><BR/>In fact, many of them were very imaginative and fascinating, albeit a bit rundown, but in my experience, most kids wouldn't care about that at all.<BR/><BR/>Seems to me this is more an example of the blogger's rather narrow worldview - not all playgrounds need to be full of licensed Disney characters.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11787852.post-25856893018147508972008-05-01T02:56:00.000-07:002008-05-01T02:56:00.000-07:00The elephant with the large plastic tube stick out of its butt is in a rather depressing zoo on the island of Majorca.<BR/><BR/>Charming, it is.Scaryduckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11380404154114925293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11787852.post-82834239856319002992008-04-30T14:31:00.001-07:002008-04-30T14:31:00.001-07:00Why is is funny for you to mock the lot of poor people?Ronnie8http://www.blogger.com/profile/05550184273251775097noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11787852.post-86817660775824800022008-04-28T15:54:00.000-07:002008-04-28T15:54:00.000-07:00Deadly Bite - we will investigate. Thank you for the heads-up about this.Avi Abramshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12550929795356812957noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11787852.post-23891955491320003822008-04-28T14:18:00.000-07:002008-04-28T14:18:00.000-07:00Hi there! I read this post some time ago and I was really shocked to see how, yesterday night, spanish TV program Cuarto Milenio [http://www.cuatro.com/microsites/cuartomilenio/] used the most of these "Nightmare Playgrounds" pictures without giving any credit. They didn't use all the pictures, but all the pictures they used were taken from here. They presented it like "stuff you find in the net". They made it sound as though they had been the ones who made the compillation.deadly_bitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13085308781995556856noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11787852.post-63089728541691448002008-04-27T07:30:00.000-07:002008-04-27T07:30:00.000-07:00I have to agree with a lot of the comments here. I think most kids would find a lot of this stuff interesting, not disturbing. I'd take any of them over a plastic ronald mcdonald any day.soshnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11787852.post-49928440722859533152008-04-23T11:22:00.000-07:002008-04-23T11:22:00.000-07:00Kids will be climbing over anything they can and if an adult won't tell them that they should be afraid of those playground then they probably won't be. I am from Czech Republic and they have some really cool playgrounds there. Please, don't judge. Did you maybe realize that in some countries people don't have so much as here in US and they are happy for anything? Maybe people should stop being so spoiled and be thankful for what they have.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11787852.post-60787239082749953982008-04-23T06:02:00.000-07:002008-04-23T06:02:00.000-07:00These so-called 'artists' could not make a living in the private sector so they asked the government to take money away from hard working families in the form of taxation in order to pay for these butt-ugly creations. <BR/><BR/>Just look at the sculptures that are placed in front of government buildings. They are almost always ugly. The government bought the sculptures with taxpayer money because no one else would even consider buying their crap.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11787852.post-69988912041956224622008-04-22T10:25:00.000-07:002008-04-22T10:25:00.000-07:00They have imaginative parks in the States as well. I grew up in New Orleans and we have a beautiful one there called storyland. It has sculptures of all types of creatures - scary and not. My favorite was always the whale that you can walk inside - a representation of Pinnochio.<BR/><BR/>http://neworleanscitypark.com/storyland_kids.htmlAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11787852.post-82534050248917148152008-04-21T12:58:00.000-07:002008-04-21T12:58:00.000-07:00Has anyone checked out the City Museum in St. Louis? The entire building is one giant playground, with a jungle gym of old jets perched 5 stories about the ground and an entire cave in the basement.<BR/><BR/>Also the turtle park outside the St. Louis zoo is also a little wierd. <BR/><BR/>just my $.02<BR/><BR/>mattAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11787852.post-27547159426956568422008-04-20T13:42:00.000-07:002008-04-20T13:42:00.000-07:00I don't think it moved but when I was in NYC last summer the crocodile with the cutlery was on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, not the Guggenheim. On the other front, people can say your view of art is narrow but they're just trying to put you down because their own view is closed to all but what they think has artistic value.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11787852.post-84709291531705300772008-04-20T00:01:00.000-07:002008-04-20T00:01:00.000-07:00Interesting collection. Thanks for assembling them.<BR/>Many of them beautiful, very few of them scary.<BR/>Says more to me about the limited education of the weberati if the consensus is that these are scary.<BR/><BR/>Scary is: cultural myopia; global blanding; having a functional illiterate in the White House.<BR/><BR/>I know a lot of Europeans who grew up playing in these type of parks. They are, without exception, cultured, bright, modest and hard-working professionals.<BR/><BR/>Thankfully, those qualities will eventually overcome the cultural hegemony of The Land of Dumbo.Hold Them To Accounthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10392178488311537826noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11787852.post-15039991892475860152008-04-19T20:21:00.000-07:002008-04-19T20:21:00.000-07:00Excuse me, what exactly is that "real world" you refer to? A country with 400-year old history -a self-proclaimed world savior? Iron curtain means nothing to you-nothing has changed here since the communism broke down. It's the people on the other side of the curtain are the ones who had lived the real life, not you! Oh, and why don't you check your native language grammar-it is kinda hard to understand your last sentence!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11787852.post-70063991776981926852008-04-19T20:11:00.000-07:002008-04-19T20:11:00.000-07:00Actually, being a Russian and having grown up in Russia, yes, the strong "opinion" in the form of introduction of the article offends me. The majority of the playgrounds' statues found in Russia represent the characters from our good old Russian folklore fairytales. What exactly is wrong with the brown monkey? Oh, it looks old and disgusting to you? Did it even occur to you that the only reason they look so “ugly” is because they are old? Yes, someone should have replaced them, but in the country twice as big as the US, there are other problems more important than renovating the statues of the characters that everybody still loves and recognized. And honestly, it drives me nuts when someone with McDonald’s playgrounds mentioned here earlier goes to the country as old as Russia and begins to critique what they see. Why don’t you critique those “real” playgrounds here that are, let’s be honest here, completely absent from the landscape?! Or shall we look at the lovely schoolyards with nothing but black concrete and wire fences? Or maybe we should look at the private backyards with swings identical to each other because all of them were bought in the same store??!! Please, nobody is perfect!!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11787852.post-23551780235613012402008-04-19T19:50:00.000-07:002008-04-19T19:50:00.000-07:00These aren't scary, not for kids. They are just old and run down. I'm sure they were quite pretty when new. Like someone else said, kids will play on anything and be happy to have something to play on. Something is better than nothing.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11787852.post-7505927644714353722008-04-19T16:16:00.000-07:002008-04-19T16:16:00.000-07:00When we lived in Ukraine, we had a fun but oh-so-dangerous playground in the courtyard of our highrise. It was concrete and metal and designed with ne'er a thought to safety. <BR/><BR/>Hunh. . . don't have a pic online, let me see if I can find one to upload. . .TulipGirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10491713586488210547noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11787852.post-89918019525886421672008-04-19T06:54:00.000-07:002008-04-19T06:54:00.000-07:00Well, to me it seems that these peolpe in these cultures have been hidden from the real world for a LONG time, perhaps behind a curtain!<BR/><BR/>Maybe that curtain was made of IRON!<BR/>Ya think?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!<BR/><BR/>Get a grip on the rest of the world its history, folks!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com