Reversing Cause and Effect

Northside playgrounds are nicer?

• The playground across from Kendra Snow's Englewood home is littered with broken liquor bottles, potato chip bags and other trash.

  The blue paint on the jungle gym is peeling, and its drawbridge is rusted. On a recent afternoon, a group of men congregated near the fenced-in swing set and drank beer as music blared from their car. On the basketball court, where a torn net dangles from a hoop, teenagers scuffled.

• Experts note that playgrounds are arenas where children learn social skills and coordination, build muscle and stamina and are a place for kids to blow off steam from the pressures of school or home life.

  When playgrounds fall into neglect, they become magnets for loiterers, drug users or gangs, repelling families with kids who might have otherwise played there.

Um, we think the experts are full of shit here. The playgrounds aren't "falling into neglect" and attracting scumbags - the scumbags destroy the park so that decent people can't hang out there. Dope dealers and gang bangers don't want families around, don't want old people out enjoying the warm evenings, don't want well lit, clean, attractive open space.

So they destroy it. And it's all the northsiders' faults.