Playground Justice Redux
Children should (still) not eat toxic playground surface crumbles.
If anything you read below bothers you, please let me know by posting a comment here or contacting me directly. Every parent and grandparent in The Sunset should rise up on this issue. I could use your help, please reach out… John Crabtree
That is how I began a post last month — Playground Justice — where I reported on the deterioration of Rec & Park playground surfaces across The Sunset district in San Francisco. I promised then to write-through and update that report and the time has come to do that.
However, just as importantly, I want to report on the impact that a few of us here in The Sunset have had on this problem by raising the issue when and where we could with city officials, Rec & Park staff — including Rec & Park General Manager Phil Ginsburg — members of the media and just about anyone who would listen that we thought could make a difference.
Let me be up-front about this. Yes, I wrote about this previously and I have been talking about this issue for months. But I lay no claim to credit for the improvements, albeit small one, that we are starting to see regarding playground surfaces in The Sunset. I am but a small cog in a larger political and civic engine. I am mostly a scribe, likely of small talent.
Moreover, one thing that I do have is audacity, the audacity to see a crumbling playground surface and say, it aught not be this way. The audacity to ask for better from my city, county, state and nation, for playgrounds and many other things.
Thankfully, I am not the only one that has audacity, here in The Sunset, back in Iowa or wherever I go. Thankfully I am fortunate to have friends who were also offended by the condition of these playgrounds and who also had the audacity to ask for better. And honestly, they have more heft and a stronger civic punch than I do.
My friend Lisa began talking about this issue months ago, in fact we both started down this path at the same time. After she raised the issue with a number of city officials, we started to hear that playground resurfacing was being accelerated.
I attended a meeting at Galinette Bistro on June 26th and applied similar pressure to a couple of city officials in attendance. I was assured that my request to get action on resurfacing playgrounds in The Sunset had been heard and that a couple of timelines were being accelerated to next year (2026, moved up from 2027).
Of course, city officials like Supervisor Joel Engardio like to brag about that — next year over 2027 — as if he came up with it before he was asked. Or that the accelerated work schedule was the plan all along.
8 Years and a Recall — I will just leave that right there and not offer additional commentary related to Engardio’s claims above.
At that press conference about connecting Sunset Boulevard to recycled graywater, my friend Judi walked straight up to SF Rec & Park General Manager Phil Ginsburg and asked him when the Rec & Park playgrounds in The Sunset would be resurfaced because all of them needed it. “Well, not all of them,” Ginsburg said.
She pressed for answers and followed up after with an email restating her questions, pressing for answers again. And eventually, she got some. Audacity, like I said.
Rec and Park Playgrounds throughout District 4 include:
South Sunset Playground (recently resurfaced!) — this was clearly a victory for our audacious little bunch. I’ve been to this playground recently and it looks good. I saw no children eating toxic playground crumbles or falling into big holes and cracks. Kudos Judi and Lisa!
West Sunset Playground — Rec &Park plans to resurface West Sunset this calendar year. They released the project bid on Wednesday, July 23rd, and bids are due on August 26th with the aim to begin construction in September or October and be completed in Fall of this year before the rainy season starts — another clear victory for Audacity-SF! A clearly accelerated timeline for a Sunset Playground that needed it, arguably, the most.
Sunset Rec Center — Rec & Park is planning to resurface Parkside & Sunset Rec early next year. They need to be resurfaced after the rainy season, “to ensure the resurfacing is done correctly and to avoid delays and cost overruns due to rain,” according to the answer Rec & Park sent to Judi — this is a partial victory for audacity and definitely something to keep an eye on over the next year because Rec & Park is no stranger to delays.
Parkside Square — For both Parkside and Sunset Rec, Rec & Park plan to release project bids in October. Construction is scheduled to begin next Spring and the playgrounds will be resurfaced and complete 2026 — OK, maybe not even much of a partial victory, but definitely one to watch.
McCoppin Square — No answer from Rec & Park on this playground, other than to say that they put in a new swing-set this year. Right, but playground equipment is not the same as a new playground surface. Nope, we still have work to do here. Plus there are about 130 other Rec & Park playgrounds across the city so, yes, there is still work that needs doing.
Stern Grove Playground — delayed yet again, very recently. Of course, people of The Sunset have gotten used to waiting for this particular playground repair. Stern Grove was one of the original 13 playgrounds identified in the Failing Playground Citizen Task Force Report that was initiated by a bond issue that passed in 2012 and eventually became #Let’sPlaySF! So, a month delay in a project that has taken 13 years to find its way to The Sunset, well, that’s not a victory in this case either.
Larsen Playgrounds — there was no mention of this playground to any of us, which makes one wonder.
Rolph Nicol Playground — A new nature play area at Rolph Nicol was completed earlier this year (2025).
Lincoln & 45th Ave Playground (Blue Boat Playground) in Golden Gate Park.
That is my update for now. You can read on below for the post that started much of this for me. Or you can go here — Playground Justice — and if you have a question or an idea of how we might press for more answers and better results then please leave a comment here or send me a message. Show us your audacity!
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Playground Justice
Children should not eat toxic playground surface crumbles.
Let’s talk about playgrounds
Yesterday I wrote about the Shared Schoolyards Program — But I also mentioned the Rec & Park playground surfaces in The Sunset… all of them. And that stirred people up a bit, maybe a lot — Once a Shill, always a Shill
Therefore, today I am going to focus my writing on those playground surfaces. I was not quite ready to write this Substack as I do not have all the pictures that I want to have but I will get them and write-through this piece with an update in the near future.
It all started while I was gathering signatures in Phase I of the campaign to recall San Francisco Supervisor Joel Engardio. The campaign would often organize mobilizations near neighborhood parks in The Sunset. One mobilization that I attended was in McCoppin Square on Taraval. It was mid-April. I wandered up and looked at the playground there, and this is what I saw:
[McCoppin Square Playground — photo credit, Lisa Arjes, The Sunset]
The cracked and crumbling playground surface pictured above bothered both Lisa and me, but surely the Rec & Park Department must be planning to fix this soon, we thought, or maybe we hoped that was the case.
A couple of weeks later we were at another recall campaign mobilization, getting ready to hit the streets and gather more signatures on the petition to Recall Supervisor Joel Engardio. This time we were at Sunset Recreation Center at the corner of 28th Ave. and Lawton. And we walked over to look at Sunset Playground. As I walked over to it, I felt a heaviness in the pit of my stomach. I knew what I was going to see, and this is how it looked:
[Sunset Playground — photo credit, Lisa Arjes, The Sunset]
And now, it was a problem. Now we had to do something about it. And in order to do that I needed to figure out what “it” is. I started researching playgrounds. I found out a lot about synthetic rubber surfaces as well as initiatives in San Francisco to tackle renovations of “failed” playgrounds. I read deeply about the 2012 bond issue that launched the Failed Playground Citizen Task Force that in turn launched #Let’sPlaySF! — I wrote about some of that research in June — Let Justice Be Done...
Moreover, I learned that most of those things had nothing to do with Rec & Park playgrounds in The Sunset. We have seven Rec & Park playgrounds in The Sunset. One of them was one of the original Failed Playgrounds identified in "#Let’sPlaySF! —Stern Grove Playground. I also still clung to the hope that I just had the misfortune of finding the two Sunset playground locations with cracked and crumbling synthetic rubber surfaces. I held onto a small and diminishing hope that the other four were still OK.
That was foolish. On May 2nd my folly was revealed when Gabe Greschler, reporting for The Standard, wrote a story with the title — This playground is a hazard. Why have parents waited so long for a fix?
The first three paragraphs of Gabe’s story dashed what little hope I had left that this issue was an isolated one.
On a semi-cloudy April morning at West Sunset Playground, the scene is an idyllic one. Kids are spinning on a carousel. Asian elders are doing tai chi. Stand on your tippy-toes and you can see the ocean waves crashing.
There’s just one problem. The playground’s rubbery safety surface resembles the face of the moon. Children regularly trip on the material, which has grown crumbly from 15 years of rain and sun, and sustain minor injuries, and some have been observed putting it in their mouths.
Concerned parents have repeatedly flagged the precarious state of affairs to the city — only to be told a fix will cost nearly $600,000 and could take up to two years. While there might be a less costly way to do it, it would mean making the playground less accessible to the disabled, according to the Recreation and Parks Department.
Gabe Greschler, The Standard; This playground is a hazard… (May 2, 2025)
Reading that really made me feel sick. And when I got to the pictures, I felt that much worse. Like I said in the title of this Substack — Children should not eat toxic playground surface crumbles. — but they are.
[photo credits (above and below) — Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/The Standard]
I am serious about that sub-headline above. I am not making a joke. Nothing about this sentence is funny — “Children should not eat toxic playground surface crumbles.” No, they should not. But they are. And they are tripping over cracked, pitted and crumbling surfaces and being injured. Nothing is funny about that, not one thing.
And so, now I have another thing to go to the mattresses with SF Rec & Park over. I do not know if this one raises other people’s ire as much as other issues. But it makes my blood boil. If we cannot make playgrounds safe or kids, or for disabled kids with wheelchairs or otherwise limited mobility, or really for anyone, well then, we have lost our souls. If kids eat toxic synthetic rubber playground surfaces crumbles and get sick or if they trip on the cracks and huge pits in these playground surfaces and break a bone, well, put simply, those outcomes cannot be allowed.
John Crabtree