That moment I realized my local park was a total ghost town compared to 5 years ago

I finally dragged myself to Riverside Park last Saturday after putting it off for months, and I swear it felt like a completely different place. Five years ago you couldn't find a bench to sit on, kids everywhere, dogs running around, even a little music from someone's bluetooth speaker. Now it's just... empty. Like maybe 4 people total, and two of them were just walking through. I asked the guy at the concession stand what happened and he said the city cut the maintenance budget by like 60% in 2022. No more trash pickup on weekends, the playground got tagged with graffiti and nobody fixed it for 3 months, and the bathrooms have been locked since last summer. It's wild how fast a place can go from community hub to sad echo when the little things stop getting done. Anyone else noticed a park or public space near them just fall apart like this?

2 comments

2 Comments

brian30316d ago

Gotta disagree a bit. I live near Riverside and I'm there every weekend, usually pretty busy by noon. Maybe you caught it on a weird day or something.

faith_schmidt16d ago

Honestly "it's just empty" hits hard because I read this article last week about how public spaces need constant small maintenance or they decay way faster than people expect. It's like that broken windows theory stuff, once one thing goes it all starts slipping. Sounds like Riverside got hit with the budget cuts and just never recovered.