Danielsaurus

McDonald’s Unveils New Senior Citizen PlayPlace

The Onion:

In an effort to accommodate an aging customer base and make the McDonald’s experience “super fun for seniors 65 to 95,” the fast-food chain unveiled its new Senior Citizen PlayPlaces Wednesday. “The ball pit has a special winch to lower seniors into and out of it,” said day-shift manager Will Earle, adding that the tunnel-maze has multiple exits in case seniors become disoriented or scared. “We have a slide wide enough to accommodate wheelchairs, and on Saturdays, Ronald himself stops by to make balloon animals and just talk to the old folks. They like talking to Ronald.” McDonald’s confirmed plans to open even more senior PlayPlaces by 2013, saying they provide a space in which children can enjoy a meal and still keep an eye on their elderly parents or grandparents.

Simply priceless.

Children’s Playhouses, Serious Grown-Up Cash

A feature in the Times about the booming ‘playhouse’ construction business, that’s taken off despite the recession:

Mr. Dwyer has installed playhouses that look like pirate ships, windmills and castles at the homes of several film and sports stars who asked not to be named to protect their children’s privacy.

“Only a certain kind of clientele can afford what we offer,” he said. And few have backyards big enough to hold it. Red Beard’s Revenge, for example, is a $52,000 playhouse in the shape of a 12-foot-tall, 18-foot-long pirate ship, complete with a crow’s nest, upper and lower decks made of mahogany and leather benches in the captain’s quarters that double as beds. […]

Barbara Butler, an artist and playhouse builder in San Francisco, said her sales are up 40 percent this year, and she has twice as many future commissions lined up as she did this time last year. Not only that, but the average price of the structures she is being hired to build has more than doubled, from $26,000 to $54,000.

It’s probably easy to see the ludicrousness in all of this – but let’s take a stab at it, shall we? Real imaginative play is almost directly antithetical to predesigned, adult-built structures, which lack all of the opportunities for a child’s agency and control over the environment that, say, a plain stack of scavenged wood, a bucket of nails, and a little paint might offer that child. In fact, while the obligatorily-quoted psychologist in the article, Dr. Steven Tuber of City University of New York, notes that “over-the-top playhouses may do something for the parent’s sense of grandeur, [but] certainly are irrelevant to the child’s needs and desires for a play space,” I’d go further and say they’re not just irrelevant but are directly obstructive to children’s play – adulterating it with preconceived expectations about what that play should be, to say nothing of shifting the control and maintenance of the environment over to adults.

What strikes me as more ludicrous, though, are the dominant reasons people seem to be buying – and builders seem to capitalize on while selling – these expensive playhouses:

“Childhood is a precious and finite thing,” Ms. Butler said. “And a special playhouse is not the sort of thing you can put off until the economy gets better.”

Not to go on an Old Sociologist Guy rant here, but – well, yes, to go on a rant… Let’s just be clear on something. “Childhood” = not about how fancy of stuff you had growing up, while “being a good parent” = not about simply outspending your neighbors on fancy playhouses and Baby Einstein DVDs. And there’s nothing “precious” about childhood; that’s just you being stupidly drunk with nostalgia. To the point: while some of these playhouses might look cute, and even be fun for children (for a while), they ultimately only undercut children’s independence, creativity, and control over their play – whereas these kids might just be better served with a bike and a summer of free afternoons where they can do whatever they like, and scavenge for spare materials and loose parts to build their own playhouses.

If there’s one silver lining to all of this, it’s that I think kids see through all this BS quite clearly. The kids from the families featured in the article might be too young now, but it won’t be long before they’re 10 or 11 years old and taking a hammer and saw to the playhouse because they know that can build something that’s better.

Showcasing Modern Playscapes

Paige Johnson, author of the indispensable Playscapes blog, showcases seven great modern playscapes for Dwell Magazine:

From playgrounds that derive inspiration from nature to pop-up urban installations, spaces for play are transitioning away from traditional manufactured solutions—ie. the ubiquitous plastic and/or metal jungle gyms one spies at most playgrounds—and getting the attention they deserve as exciting design opportunities. I use the term playscapes to highlight sites that move beyond the playground fence to become total landscapes for play.

My (absolutely biased) favorite of the bunch is the last one – a Pop-Up Adventure Playground built by kids while provided for by a new organization I’m involved with, called Pop-Up Adventure Play. Paige captures what we try to do with a Pop-Up perfectly: “It lets kids do what they love: make their own spaces for play!”