Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Around Town / Phillips Bordeaux Garden Park: A Review
Posted by Betsy Phillips on Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 9:00 AM
In Short:
Location: Snell Road, near the river
Crowds: None
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Approximate Age of Patrons: None
Topics of Conversation: "Um, is it safe here?"
Stray Dogs Seen: None
Types of Vehicles in Parking Lots: There are no parking lots
Perceived Safety: Very low
Number of Gunshots Heard: None
Dog Friendliness: n/a
Number of pitbulls sighted: None
Accessibility: Poor
Incorporation of Local History: None
Recommended Patrons: Badasses
I'm going to be honest; I didn't even get out of the car. The city has attempted to make this park as foreboding as possible. There's no parking lot. There's a fence around the 
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whole park. There are signs warning you away from littering and dealing drugs. And a sign that tells you to get out of the park by dusk. The gate seems designed to only let one person through at a time.
And it's not clear where a person is supposed to park. Do I park in front of the neighbor's house? What if they have company?
So I took the city's message and didn't bother.
But what a shitty thing for the people who live in the neighborhood.
It's hard for me to believe that giving people a neighborhood park that resembles a 
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minimum-security prison yard makes the park safer. In fact, it seems like it would have the opposite effect, of being a constant reminder that the park and the neighborhood aren't safe and are full of drugs and full of people who need to be kept out or in with fences.
Just psychologically, it seems like the wrong message to send to a neighborhood.
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