Monday, June 27, 2011
Phillips Fisk Park: A Review
Posted by Betsy Phillips on Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 9:31 AM
Location: Don't even get me started.
Size of Park: Large
Crowds: None
Approximate Age of Patrons: Just my age
Topics of Conversation: "Wow, the interstate is loud."
Stray Dogs Seen: None
Types of Vehicles in Parking Lots: n/a
Perceived Safety: Medium low.
Number of Gunshots Heard: None
Dog Friendliness: Fine
Number of pitbulls sighted: None
Accessibility: Very good
Incorporation of Local History: None
Recommended Patrons: Anyone who can find it
I came home ready to write you all a post about a park that doesn't exist. And then I looked on a larger map and I found Burch Street (I was looking for "Birch" on my phone, embarrassingly enough, and the park isn't on Google maps.) In my defense, Burch and 25th Avenue don't intersect. I could have driven up and down 25th Avenue all day and never run into Burch. I also probably would have missed the park, because, while 25th dead-ends at the park, it does so in such a way that it's not really clear if it's a park or someone's fenced-in yard. And you really can't park on 25th, because everyone who lives there is parked on the street.
But, if you go down (or up) 24th Avenue and turn west on Burch, the park is on your right, with some on-street parking that doesn't mess things up for the people who live in the neighborhood.
So I went back out, obviously, and found the park. There are a couple of things I wondered about, like the park supposedly being at the intersection of two streets that don't intersect, and there not being a parking lot, considering the size of the park. I mean, it's larger than Morgan Park, probably about the size of East Park, but arranged more square than rectangle. So, it's a large park, but not a park easily used by people not from the neighborhood.
I could immediately tell that great thought had gone into who'd be using the park and how. Parents who wanted to keep an eye on the teenagers who'd be playing basketball would have a clear shot from any place in the park (or any window of any house that looked out onto the park). And any teenagers playing basketball who were also supposed to be keeping an eye on younger siblings on the swings or the jungle gym would also have an easy time.
The park was empty when I was there, since by the time I found the park, it was raining pretty steadily. But I imagine in good weather, the park gets well used. There were some branches down, but they were off the path and looked like they'd been cut into smaller chunks, so clearly someone is on that.
When I got to the park, I was in a snit after wasting so much time trying to find it. And it was raining. If there were any park you would expect me to tell to fuck off, this would be it. And yet I found this park so lovely, so well-thought-out, so full of the amenities you hope for in a neighborhood park, and so charming that I almost can't stand myself telling you about it. I really think highly of this park.
Fisk Park is what neighborhood parks should be like.
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