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Tag Archives: Crescent Park
What About the Creek Down the Street?
Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, we live in a land of wonderful public parks. There are countless web sites and books telling us how to take advantage of them. What’s more, we all know dozens of people who go there every weekend.
Unfortunately, almost all of these are not accessible to us and our kids by foot. In other words, getting there depends on planning and driving.
The picture to the right shows my sons at a beautiful creek scene. You might have a photo like this, too. What’s interesting about this one for me is that it was taken on the bank of San Francisquito Creek, which is within a five-minute walk from my house and thousands of other homes in the Palo Alto / Menlo Park area. And we took it on a beautiful Sunday afternoon (March 8). Continue reading
Nice New Home, Best Palo Alto Playborhood
Ohhh, if only I were still looking for a house… This one is in one of my favorite Palo Alto Playborhood – Fulton Avenue by the creek at the very northern end of Palo Alto. I used to live two blocks away, and I always wished I could buy a house here.
Kids are almost always out playing, and there are virtually no cars passing through there, but it’s a five-minute walk to downtown Palo Alto and three minutes Johnson Park! And, for you heavy commuters out there, it’s three minutes from 101!
If you place a bid on this house after reading this, please let me know. I’ll want to let the broker know I should get a cut of his/her commission! Continue reading
Playing Until the Sun Goes Down
Remember playing in your neighborhood after dinner, until you couldn’t see the ball anymore? Well, last night, I played a game with my son Marco (3-1/2) and three other boys outside in our neighborhood until the sun went down. This is something I did countless times as a kid, and I’ve been longing for play like this in our neighborhood in Palo Alto. I want to tell you about what we did, and about how we got to the point where we could do something like this with our neighbors.
After dinner last night, Marco and I were riding our bikes around the block, and three brothers we know implored us to cross the street and come over to their house. After riding around their block with them a few times, they asked us to play “Red Rover.” Continue reading
Hot Wheels on the Sidewalk!
My son Marco and I have been having the time of our lives ever since our first eBay shipment of Hot Wheels track arrived a few days ago.
I decided to get him the same kind of track that I got back around 1970 rather than the track Mattel sells today. Perhaps this is just for sentimental reasons, but I have another rationale: the old sets are just track and other parts that can be configured in myriad ways. The new sets have departed from the concept of modular parts, and are more like kits. This is similar to the change in Lego over the past few decades. Continue reading
Summers: Skill-Building or Neighborhood Fun?
When I was a kid, summers were about bonding with other kids in our neighborhood. Other than our family vacations, which usually lasted two weeks, I played with the same kids every day in the same place, summer after summer. We developed deep attachments to each other, to each other’s parents, and to the place in which we lived.
Sure, we played together after school and on weekends during the school year, but it was summer, for the most part, when we built those tight bonds.
Contrast this with kids’ summers around here. Neighborhoods are ghost towns. It’s just like the school year – practically zero kids are outside playing. And what are they doing? For the most part, other than going on family vacations, kids of kindergarten age and up are going to summer day camps. Continue reading
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