"The monkey instinct strong in all human beings"

October 25, 2023 5:52 AM

The jungle gym turns 100 (NPR, Chigago Tribune, Winnetka (IL) Historical Society, Tom Scott on YouTube, Smithsonian Magazine).
posted by box (18 comments total)

The first jungle gym is nearly just like the one in my school playground, except for a coat of white paint and bright colors on the joints. The concept is sound! Also, I don't know if there was pea gravel in old playgrounds, but whatever pea gravel offered in terms of cushioning falls was outweighed by abrasions and ad hoc projectile usage. Still remember picking it out of my knees after throwing myself off a swing -- not that I regretted it.

I feel like the nerfing of modern American playgrounds is partly an indirect consequence of the health care system. Playgrounds don't want to get sued, but most people don't file suits because they're greedy or stupid -- they file because they need to pay enormous medical and care bills, years into the future. (Plus insurance companies might subrogate and sue on their behalf after paying them.) Years-long or lifelong disabilities cost millions, and someone has to pay. When you hear that Americans are soft whiners who won't take the risks their grandparents did, it often started as a conservative talking point.

Meanwhile, I see photos of playgrounds in other countries and they look pretty badass. Not that you can judge from the best examples, of course, but still.
posted by Countess Elena at 6:50 AM on October 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

I fell off a climbing bars onto my head in the first grade. My family insists that this explains everything.
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:48 AM on October 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

A friend and I were talking the other day about how everything on our 1960's school playground was made of two inch steel pipe and was on asphalt.

Scars abound in my generation.
posted by ITravelMontana at 8:01 AM on October 25, 2023

When I was in elementary school, we had a jungle gym as part of our school playground. I remember very clearly that there was a raised platform and then a fireman's pole that you could slide down to the ground (that ended in a giant chunk of concrete embedded into the earth). I was - for some reason - completely obsessed with the idea of going down this pole head first.

And after a few tries, I did - I went straight down and bashed my head on the concrete foundation of the pole and... yeah, I'm not sure how any of us survive childhood.
posted by kbanas at 8:17 AM on October 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

The apartment where I grew up was built in the mid/late 60's and it had a big concrete bag yard. The playground had this odd mod climbing structure that was like a steel shell with holes for hand and foot grips punched in it. I don't think safety was considered and I didn't like it, I felt like it hurt more to play on and was sorta more dangerous and less fun then the classic stepped tower of a jungle gym that was on my grade school roof.
posted by Pembquist at 8:27 AM on October 25, 2023

Yeah my western Mass. elementary school in the 70s had the iron pipe structure embedded in concrete. Kids got fucked up all the time, yet it was kind of a badge of honour to have said you broke your arm or leg falling off it or twisting the wrong way. It never occurred to us kids that the thing shouldn't be there, it was just part of the playground, and if you were brave enough you climbed it. (I did not.)
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:22 AM on October 25, 2023

Most of the climbing structures I've seen go up around here in the past decade have a few solid members and the rest is rope-- actually nylon-wrapped steel cable-- giving the kids a complex webbing to climb. It's super great! Way safer, and much more fun to navigate. It's kind of nuts to think back to the 70's and 80's when just about every kid I knew had scars and broken bones from playground accidents, and we all thought "oh, hey, it's just a normal part of being a kid." It turns out severe injuries are not normal! And as much as I enjoyed Action Park, I'm so glad it's gone.
posted by phooky at 9:35 AM on October 25, 2023

I remember our neighborhood playground...Lower middle class area. No jungle gym, but teeter totter made of rough wood plank( slivers)...Swings with thick chain link guaranteeing some pinched fingers...That round think you pushed and then jumped on (sheet steel got very hot in summer), and a huge sandbox that all the neighborhood cats loved to relieve themselves in at night...fun times..
posted by Czjewel at 10:18 AM on October 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

Meanwhile, I see photos of playgrounds in other countries and they look pretty badass. Not that you can judge from the best examples, of course, but still.

My school playground had the low rent-versions of the Japanese stuff, lots of stuff made out of buried telephone poles and big concrete pipes but none looked like animals.

I think US playgrounds are fine, except the age limits for them is really low, as someone with kids. They age out of the play equipment by like 10, and get bored with playgrounds after that. They still find swings fun, but for 5 minutes. I'm not a park designer, I don't know what to add, but some research has to have been done to build 'playground' equipment for kids aged 10-15 or 20.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:58 AM on October 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

the ones at my LA elementary school (in the kindergarten yard and the main playground) were shaped like Saturn and iirc were surrounded with black rubbery padding.
posted by brujita at 11:04 AM on October 25, 2023

I remember there was a park by my first elementary school with a fairly high platform you needed to climb a ladder to with slides and maybe a pole to get you down. It also had a ladder that took you even further up to another slide. It took me a while to work up the courage to make it up there and then slide down.

My biggest playground injury was actually from running on the wooden border of the playground in grade 5 or 6. The border was just a series of 6x6s and I slipped on it and it somehow took a chunk out of my knee. Nothing broke but even now there's an area of my knee that's missing the regular amount of nerves.

I think my favourite playground surface is mulch. The gravel they had when I was a kid worked fine but yeah it was too easy to throw it at each other or coat snowballs in it. Mulch doesn't work as well as a projectile. A couple of parks have this bouncy rubber which is pretty neat but boy does it get hot in the summer.

I take my kids to a local parkour gym whenever they have a free weekend morning (which isn't very often). That way we all get to indulge our monkey instincts. I highly recommend taking a class or two at a parkour gym if you haven't. Its pretty fun (even if it makes it really apparent that I need to work on my upper body strength) and then makes goofing around on regular playgrounds more enjoyable because you can try out some of the techniques there.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 11:44 AM on October 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

Someone needs to tell Smithsonian that jungle gyms and monkey bars are two different things. And 10 year old me will not listen to any debate on this.
posted by TedW at 12:06 PM on October 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

I really want someone to start a trend of jungle gyms for grownups. Hear me out: a variety of fun slides and lots of different ways to get to the top (maybe one of them you walk or run up along a ramp that wraps around the outside walls of the gym, one you can boulder to get to, one is at the end of a parkour course, etc.)
posted by rivenwanderer at 1:49 PM on October 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

jungle gyms and monkey bars are two different things

The Smithsonian article tries to hide its ignorance by using the terms interchangeably. The Chicago Tribune is accurate, complete with picture. For those still confused, Monkey Bars are like a ladder, suspended above and parallel to the ground.

How I used to envy the kids who could swing from one rung to the next, alternating arms, going the whole length, then running back around to do it again. If I let go of one hand I'd fall, I was so weak and feeble then. But now my health club has a grown-up version which I swing the length of, with gusto.
posted by Rash at 1:52 PM on October 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

I really want someone to start a trend of jungle gyms for grownups.

This is pretty much a parkour gym. The one I go to doesn't have any slides but it does have a place where you can jump down maybe 10 feet onto a huge crash pad. I always feel a tingle in my feet before I'm about to jump off it even though I've done it tons of times and know it's safe. After our lessons my kids and I will usually play tag for a bit and run around the gym.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:12 PM on October 25, 2023

The jungle gym at my elementary school in the 60s looked a lot like the original. It had a supercool Batman/Firepole down the middle of it. On Asphalt of course. As was 50% of the swings' "landing areas". Good times! Many abrasions, head wounds, lost teeth, blood...

It was a great jungle gym. Two slides!
posted by Windopaene at 4:53 PM on October 25, 2023

I love the fact (from Tom Scott's video) that a mathematician who was a fourth dimension expert and inventor of the term Tesseract (a big plot point of many Marvel movies) invented the jungle gym to teach kids to think in four dimensions. I grew up playing on jungle gyms. I wonder if my brain thinks in four dimensions?
posted by eye of newt at 8:30 PM on October 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

Beloved?! Not strong enough a word. As a kid, an interesting jungle gym was one of the most exciting things there was. We had other bars for brachiation, and we judged each other on our ability to do it. Thanks for the fond memories :-)
posted by Goofyy at 2:05 PM on October 26, 2023