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How Urban Legend Destroyed the Ball Pit

meghanboilard.substack.com

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Re: How Urban Legend Destroyed the Ball Pit

#91

Post by SamBam »

Traubenfuchs wrote: post #16
Cockbrand wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But… the children! Won't somebody think of the children! Oh, they did, you say? I see :)

To be honest, that thing is scary even for me as fit adult male. One little mistake and I could seriously hurt myself. Same for the children. I would be very uncomfortable letting my own child climb around on this to be honest. I would probably let it, but feel bad the whole time.

They are significantly easier for kids to climb on than adults. And kids generally have a good sense of their own limitations. Most playgrounds nowadays are deliberately designed with different levels of difficulty, which kids self-select on.

As a parent of two kids and a teacher, they don't make me nervous.

Re: How Urban Legend Destroyed the Ball Pit

#92

Post by dhosek »

SamBam wrote: post #90
dhosek wrote: post #66

My kids’ school has actually retained some elements of the junk playground. In the courtyard play area, there is a wealth of scrap wood that the kids use for building projects. When we did the tour before enrolling our kids, the older kids had just built a shed which I thought was appropriate because the school is based on John Dewey’s progressive education ideals, with his central example he returned to many times i…

Where was this? As a STEM teacher, I'm wanting to push for more things like this.

Oak Park, Illinois. https://www.thechildrensschool.info

Re: How Urban Legend Destroyed the Ball Pit

#93

Post by xwdv »

9991 wrote: post #44
xwdv wrote: post #30

I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be in ball pits. Are they even swimmable or do you just sink straight down? What if there was a very deep ball pit, think 12 feet or so. Could it be escaped by swimming back up?

I don't know for sure, but I don't think so. The balls are very light, so there's almost no buoyancy. The only way to support yourself is if the balls are locked in place from the force of your foot stepping on it, which might work for a stack 2~3 balls in height at the most before it becomes unstable and slips out from underneath you.

So presumably there could be a very deep ball pit with smooth walls somewhere in the world that is filled with the rotting skeletons of dead children at the very bottom?

Re: How Urban Legend Destroyed the Ball Pit

#94

Post by 9991 »

xwdv wrote: post #93
9991 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know for sure, but I don't think so. The balls are very light, so there's almost no buoyancy. The only way to support yourself is if the balls are locked in place from the force of your foot stepping on it, which might work for a stack 2~3 balls in height at the most before it becomes unstable and slips out from underneath you.

So presumably there could be a very deep ball pit with smooth walls somewhere in the world that is filled with the rotting skeletons of dead children at the very bottom?

With enough kids they’d stack corpses to climb out.

Re: How Urban Legend Destroyed the Ball Pit

#95

Post by jaclaz »

Baeocystin wrote: post #64
jaclaz wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Video of the "Ball Washing Machine" (this is actually from the US): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrHvFiePokI This is UK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8VjIJuMyiE

Huh. That goes a lot slower than I would have expected. I wonder at their procedure for getting all the dirty ones out before the freshly-cleaned ones start piling back in. Not complaining, glad to see them taking hygiene seriously.

The UK video I posted has some details, 15,000 balls per hour doesn't seem that slow to me[1], and still, according to the video, they are putting the clean ones into "netsacks".

Most probably when they have the sacks full there are not that many "dirty" balls remaining in the pit and they can put a separator of some kind across it to start putting back the cleaned ones.

Found the site of the manufacturer of that machine:

https://ball-pool.eu/services/

What I doubt is more that the cleaning is actually done on a weekly basis or so as recommended.

[1] I have no idea on how many balls are in the "average" pit, but the US video is touting 80,000 as if it was an extremely large one

Re: How Urban Legend Destroyed the Ball Pit

#96

Post by kettleballroll »

> the boy found peace in his formative years crawling among the debris and refuse on the outskirts of post-blitzkrieg Manchester.

As far as I know, Hitler never tried to take England in a blitzkrieg. It seems like the author just wanted to use a hip word, but they completely lost my interest with that mistake

Re: How Urban Legend Destroyed the Ball Pit

#97

Post by hammyhavoc »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #76

I really hope the adventure playgrounds mentioned are still a thing. The ones in Germany were a bit more organized than just a pile of junk, but you basically went there, maybe parents paid some (nominal) fee or deposit, and you got a toolbox with basic hand tools like a saw, hammer and nails and there was plenty of wood to build with. Larger structures were clearly built with some guidance and probably a civil engin…

Wow, as a Brit with an engineer/machinist father, this would have been amazing to go to as a kid. We have absolutely nothing like that here short of taking a woodworking class.

Re: How Urban Legend Destroyed the Ball Pit

#98

Post by cgriswald »

nemo44x wrote: post #81
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #76

I really hope the adventure playgrounds mentioned are still a thing. The ones in Germany were a bit more organized than just a pile of junk, but you basically went there, maybe parents paid some (nominal) fee or deposit, and you got a toolbox with basic hand tools like a saw, hammer and nails and there was plenty of wood to build with. Larger structures were clearly built with some guidance and probably a civil engin…

Yeah, I don't think we're giving kids saws and nails to play with. Saying that where I grew up there were a lot of homes being built so there were piles of scrap wood, etc all over and we'd raid them and build forts using saws and nails from our dads' workshops. So maybe we are overprotective today.

We crafted wooden swords and then fought with them. Worst we ever got was some stinging fingers or a bruise.

Re: How Urban Legend Destroyed the Ball Pit

#99

Post by xwdv »

9991 wrote: post #94
xwdv wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So presumably there could be a very deep ball pit with smooth walls somewhere in the world that is filled with the rotting skeletons of dead children at the very bottom?

With enough kids they’d stack corpses to climb out.

Indeed, this would make a good high concept movie, taking place entirely within a ball pit, kind of like that movie Ryan Reynolds did buried in a box underground. Good jump scare when a kid finds a dead face while rummaging through the balls.

Re: How Urban Legend Destroyed the Ball Pit

#100

Post by Handytinge »

peggmeg wrote: post #47

Hi! This is the author of this piece, and since a lot of you seem to be interested in rise and fall of the ball pit, I wanted to add that there are two exceptions where the ball pit seems to live on (at least in the US): - Here and there, you'll find ball pits that seem to exist for the sole purpose of providing Instagram photo ops and seem to be more for adults than children (The Color Factory chain of museums is a…

They're also still super common in Australia, both for kids in playcenters and restaurants, and in nightclubs for the 18-23 year old demographic.
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