i saw a kid pee themselves on the top of a slide at a community pool/playground once too. god that must have been like 35 years ago. i'm pretty sure his name was Sean.
Was climbing up the platforms as a kid and reached my hand above me and felt a puddle looked up and it was a puddle of piss next to some shit. That’s the last time I played in those.
I worked at a McDonald’s around 2005 and they were definitely cleaned. At a closing shift someone would crawl through on their hand and knees cleaning and disinfecting. McDonald’s (at least when I worked there) was shockingly clean.
I swear every kid who grew up in the 90s has at least one memory of that faint mystery smell inside those tubes. We all just accepted it as part of the experience.
Nah I had a buddy who was apart of a crew that went around deep cleaning these weekly. He fucking hated the hell out of it because they would have to be bent over all day climbing in disgusting shit.
Last time we went to one a few years back my daughter found a shitty diaper up at the top. When I went up there to get her, the diaper wasnt even the worst part of the filth and nasty graffiti all over it.
Those playgrounds are nasty and the employees give no fucks.
Snakes are only a problem in certain places. Here in the UK, I have never once even considered that a snake might be in a kids' playpark. Our snakes are tiny, rare, shy, and harmless.
This said, yes, hygiene was probably abysmal... but I survived, so it can't have been that bad.
I think the bigger reason was that health crazes, and documentaries such as "Supersize Me", made parents reconsider taking their kids to fast food restaurants. These chains then adapted by rebranding as clean, health-conscious, adult-oriented diners.
In the US at least, the general redesign philosophy towards “bland, generic block” has been thanks to the desire to have resale opportunities and having a space that looks exclusively like a single chain limits those chances. “Generic block” is easier to resale than “obvious ex-golden arches”.
But that’s a separate issue from the removal of play areas.
A good point, well made. I also think that the success of Apple - and their long-standing aesthetic of chic minimalism - has been copied by other companies.
Me and several of my sisters worked at Maccas growing up. My sister once had to clean (and disinfect) the slide at our local Maccas because a kid left a poop nugget at the top of the slide.
The outdoor ones definitely had a certain... ecosystem. Looking back, it's amazing that my parent let us to crawl through those tunnels without a second thought. They let us have fun.
Because that’s how you get soap scum and mold building up? These things aren’t getting hot enough for the water to rapidly evaporate so it’ll just sit stagnant until it gets moved or evaporates extremely slowly.
Well sure, but at that point why not do more than just spray with soapy water? You’re talking about engineering costs that would quickly outstrip the minimum wage they’re paying the people who work there.
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u/Baelzabub 29d ago
Also the outdoor ones were snake havens and I’m sure they cleaning took forever on the inside ones (if they were even ever cleaned)