Old School OC: Boysen Park In Anaheim
Posted by: Jubal | 08/14/2008 11:21 AM
It's time for another in my extremely irregular "Old School OC" series of posts, highlighting extant reminders of Orange County from back in the day.The younger two Jubalettes and I are frequent park users, and one of their favorites is Boysen Park in Anaheim.
The park is named after Rudolph Boysen, who was Anaheim's superintendent of parks from 1921 to 1950, but is more famous as the creator of the Boysenberry.
What makes Boysen Park is unique is the playground equipment: a full-size, concrete-encased replica of a Navy F-9F Cougar fighter, and a rocket slide that looks to be almost three stories tall. Anaheim Deputy Police Chief Craig Hunter told me that when he was a kid, the fighter hadn't yet been encased in concrete but we all metal. He recalled scooting inside the the F-9 through the fuselage.
I love Boysen Park's anachronistic character. It's an time machine back to how public parks were when I was growing up: monkey bars, self-propelled merry-go-rounds, big see-saws. Yeah, you could get hurt, but bruises or scraped knees or elbows are part of growing up.Unfortunately, the age of reflexive litigation and a total-safety-as-entitlement mentality arrived, and playground equipment presenting even the slightest chance of minor injury were systematically ripped pout and replaced by sanitized, homogenized, boring substitutes.
It's no mystery which type kids prefer. At Boysen Park, they vote with their feet, swarming over the jet fighter and the rocket, leaving the sanitized, more contemporary equipment relatively unpopulated. There are few, if any, OC public parks still offering old-school playgrounds like Boysen's. Eisenhower Park in Orange had a rocket slide until just a few years.
For any readers who'd like to give their kids a taste of an old school playground, Boysen Park awaits you.
CATEGORY:
Old School
Mr. Ayer registered as a Republican to be electable in an interim election with no incumbents. He did...
I'm so touched you brought up this old park! My grandmother lived down the street from it and I spent many a weekend afternoon in what we called "airplane" park. There's a mailbox on the corner that she used to set us on top of because the park affords a perfect view of the Disneyland fireworks. Those were the days!
You forgot to mention the amazing baseball field Boysen possesses, one of the best in the county.
I used feel bad that Boysen lost out on the millions of dollars Walter Knott earned from the boysenberry until I found out Boysen was a segregationist.
Good Times:
That's what my daughters call it, too: "Can we go to the airplane park?"
I loved that park as a kid, even after I got stuck in the plane's fusilage, creating life long claustrophobia. (and no I did not sue the City for my trauma) Thanks for covering it. In that same park, the City of Anaheim is now working on restoring the Anaheim Tennis Center, once the home of the Wagner family.
Boysen donated the berries to Knott, he had essentially abandoned them, and did not have the time, energy or resources to bring the vines back, or market the berries once they were developed. Do not feel bad for him, he was OK with it. Gustavo, you know I love you, but Boysen was not a segregationist himself so much as he was implementing a very flawed City policy of segregated use of City parks. It was a sad time, but it was not a policy Rudy Boysen created in a vacuum for his own amusement.
Too bad Mexicans had to take Anaheim to court to overturn the policy Boysen "had" to implement...
And yes! Airplane Park! Or, as they say in the language of Cervantes, "El Parque de los Aviones."