The Rocks Area: Where are the bars?
So over in Gabriel Park there’s this fitness area. You know the type. They were all the rage about 20 years ago, a small enclosure of timber and steel bars, along with a diagram of the proper exercises and how they are best performed. So the one in Gabriel Park is down by the tennis courts, right next to the sand volleyball courts. Jr. V refers to it as “the rocks area” since the ground under the pull-up bars, rings, parallel bars and balance beams is thickly covered with rather large pebbles.
Perfect for falling.
Anyway - 20 years in the Oregon weather has no exactly treated this area well. A couple of weeks ago, we noticed that many of the bars and one set of rings (the highest ones)had disappeared. A week later, the angled “sit-up” boards were gone.
Anyone got a line into the parks department? Are these items coming back? Or is the rocks area on the way out?
February 17th, 2007 at 7:07 pm
[...] The park is going into the former location of the fitness course, next to the sand volleyball courts at Gabriel. I have posted about this previously, here: The Rocks Area: Where are the Bars?” and here: Gabriel Park Play Area Status. For those of you not familiar with the layout of the park, here’s a picture of the location we’re talking about. There were a few concerns voiced at the meeting that definitely have some merit: There likely WILL be bike traffic to the skatepark, some of which may choose to cut across the park and not stay on the trail. If casual BMX riders decide to run down the hill to the skatepark bowl, that could have a very negative effect. Although most skateboarders are just regular kids, there definitely IS an element of the skate culture that also experiments with smoking, drinking, etc. so it IS possible that there could be a certain element sneaking off into the woods to have a smoke, and that truly would create a serious fire hazard. However - the main inpact that we’re liable to notice is additional parking. Yes, the City would create an additional 15 parking spaces by cuttin parking spaces into the berm that you see in the left-hand side of the above photo. While this certainly isn’t the end of the world, and the park could use more parking - it’s another piece of green gone. [...]