Why Do I Keep Finding Padlocked Playgrounds in New York City?
We're hemorrhaging our child population for a reason.

"Play is the work of the child," wrote Maria Montessori, pushing back against the perennial tendency of adults to trivialize the child's constant quest for movement and exploration. "It is work he must do in order to grow up."
Tell that to New York City.
About two weeks ago, we received a rare spring day in the midst of a harsh and brutal February. After Mass, my son—a squirmy, active, skateboarding two-and-a-half-year-old—my husband, and a few of our friends walked a mile or two to the Pier 26 playground along the Hudson River to let Zev run around after he exhibited extraordinary skill at sitting still in church.
Signs declared the playground closed due to icy conditions. There was a small amount of snow on the ground still, but it was quickly melting. It was 45 degrees outside. And I have the unfortunate quality of being a Texan lady who doesn't like to be told what to do, so I hiked up my skirt, took off my shoes, and scaled the fence. Boom, freedom. My friend boosted my son across the fence before following suit.
Then the most beautiful thing started to happen: Other parents and kids saw how much fun we were having and we offered to help get their kids over the fence too. We liberated maybe two dozen kids.
Naturally, such a good thing cannot last in modern-day New York: I came whooshing down the slide in my fancy church dress to be greeted by the authorities demanding my ID and threatening to fine me. I argued for a while, pointing to the fact that it's 45 degrees outside and there's no ice on the playground and suggesting that maybe, just maybe, children deserve just a morsel of red hot freedom. Then they started threatening arrest.
NYC hates its child population. Encountered ANOTHER padlocked playground (it was 45 degrees out). Hopped the fence w my friend, liberated my son, and 25 other kids took little boosts from us to hop the fence. Joy.
Then the city said they'd fine me & they needed to see my ID. https://t.co/xeWclYMzeM pic.twitter.com/YemzCfpBFY
— Liz Wolfe (@LizWolfeReason) February 24, 2025
Just a few weeks prior, my son and I had encountered the same thing in Madison Square Park.
Safetyism in New York City has gone WAY too far. My child was wearing wool layers & a Finnish snowsuit, ready for an evening of play at Madison Square Park. The city padlocked the playground due to "snow & ice"—as if parents can't judge the safety for themselves! @FreeRangeKids https://t.co/gjkwUBBwWn
— Liz Wolfe (@LizWolfeReason) February 13, 2025
One complicating factor for libertarians is that both of these playgrounds are managed by trusts set up as public benefit corporations, governed by boards of directors appointed by the governor, mayor, and borough president. The trust is in charge of designing, building, operating, and maintaining the area, and the funding is a mix of private and public. Though these types of parks are supposed to have their own security, the person patrolling the Hudson River Park/Pier 26 playground was NYC Parks law enforcement. (The Hudson River Park Trust did not respond to repeated requests for comment.)
Though they're legally within their rights to decide what type of liability they wish to assume, these two incidents—as well as the COVID-era padlocking of public playgrounds by city officials for a virus that was neither especially deadly to children nor easily spreads outdoors—are good reminders of why this city is hemorrhaging its child population (and why Hasidic dads took bolt cutters to playgrounds during the virus days).
Since 2020, the five-and-under population in the city has fallen by 18 percent, and it shouldn't be shocking why: High cost of living, a culture intolerant toward children, and extreme risk aversion have led to an untenable situation for parents.
If the first half of the 20th century was termed "the golden age of child play," the first quarter of the 21st feels like a death rattle. The mid-'80s brought milk carton kids. Amber Alerts, which send out messages about missing or abducted children in suspected danger via cable news, radio, and text message, were invented a decade later. In the early 2000s, certain prosecutors started cracking down on child truancy. Now, in the 2020s, that icon of American ingenuity—the McDonald's PlayPlace—has started to become replaced by screens, with glorious plastic kingdoms torn down all across America. The culture shifted from one of widespread permissiveness to one of extreme scrutiny and worry. And nothing was exempt from this parenting culture shift, not even the playgrounds.
Since 1981, the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission has been publishing the Public Playground Safety Handbook, which contains such dictates as "bare metal slides, platforms, and steps should be shaded or located out of direct sun." If you cannot do so, you must "provide warnings that equipment and surfacing exposed to intense sun can burn." Free-swinging ropes "present a potential strangulation hazard" as they could "fray" or "form a loop." Handrails meant for toddlers "should have a diameter or maximum cross-section between 0.60 and 1.20 inches" and "a diameter or maximum cross-section of 0.90 inches is preferred to achieve maximal grip strength and benefit the weakest children." For toddlers, balance beams are not recommended. For school-age kids, they should be no higher than 16 inches off the ground. And, "because of the complex way children are required to cooperate and combine their actions, fulcrum seesaws are not recommended for toddlers or preschool-age children." What the regulators won't admit is that children have an uncanny ability to turn all kinds of every day (and unsafe!) objects into playthings; that board out in the backyard, with rusty nails poking out, balanced on a tree stump sure looks like a magnificent canoe to the eyes of the enterprising 7-year-old.
Of course, the federal playground guidelines are used as evidence in court. Take the kindergartener in New Jersey who, in 2014, got injured on a slide that was five degrees steeper than the federal guideline recommendation of 30 degrees; her family won a $170,000 settlement. In New York City, an East Harlem dad scored $75,000 from his kid's fractured forearm after she fell off a spinning wheel. In Brooklyn, five kids fell off a swing in 2013 at Slope Park Playground, leading to complaints; the city removed the swing.
Even structures not meant for child play have been destroyed in the suing craze. In my husband's hometown on nearby Long Island, an older kid—late middle school, early high school, he recalls—got injured on a half-pipe in the yard of the local skate shop; the parents sued. The shop closed a year or so later, possibly from this court-mandated cash hemorrhage; the town's lone half-pipe disappeared with it.
Perhaps most ridiculous was a 2010 scandal over "The Mountain," a metal climbing structure in Union Square Park playground in Manhattan, which the city's Department of Parks and Recreation cordoned off, claiming it got too hot in the summer. This prompted a bill in the state legislature that would have required temperature measurements of different play structures during the summer. "The issue of heat exists in any playground," reminded the snarky landscape architect who had acquired the structure from Germany.
Of course, some spaces meant for play had legitimately been too risky. Amusement parks in the '80s and '90s faced tons of lawsuits, with many shutting down. "People were bleeding all over the place," recalled one now-grown patron of Action Park, in New Jersey, which reported 14 broken bones and 26 head injuries in 1984 and 1985 alone. The growing emphasis on child safety throughout the 20th century led to a two-thirds decline in childhood deaths from accidents between 1900 and 2000. But somewhere near the start of the 21st century, the culture embraced a new goal: Totally eradicating any accidents—and thus any risk—from childhood.
This is a goal I can't get behind. As Maria Montessori recognized a hundred years ago, we lose something quite important when we crack down on kids' ability to play—and parents' ability to decide for themselves what type of conditions their individual child can handle. Even if the playground had been icy and it had been 30 degrees that day, I would have still allowed my son to play; I would have simply dressed him in more wool layers and maybe watched him more closely (or recognized that that skateboarding child of mine can handle a fall or two). If the trusts that manage these playgrounds (or their insurers) are so afraid of liability, I'd note that the above incidents—the Slope Park swing, the too-hot Mountain—stand out in part because they're relatively rare. Be bold, take heart, and choose to foster a culture of childrearing in which parents accept risk and responsibility.
"Since it is through movement that the will realizes itself, we should assist a child in his attempts to put his will into act," wrote Montessori. I'm happy to assist; the only question is whether modern-day New York City will let me.
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Leave the city.
For the children!
Wrong spot
Note to Liz: You're not supposed to use the playgrounds.
You're just supposed to pay for them.
You’re fighting a cultural battle with this one. If the population at large is extremely risk averse, and if any jury is likely to give awards the instant they hear of an injured child, then few people are going to be willing to maintain places for children to play.
Even if we took New York City government completely out of this, and every play area was maintained by private interests, pure non-profits, they would take actions to diminish their legal costs. As long as the risk of being sued is present, they’re going to have to take measures to show they care about diminishing the risks of injury. What we need is a cultural shift to being less risk-averse and more focused on parental responsibility. Let parents asses whether a kid is allowed to play on a playground or a fixture in the playground, and then take all blame on themselves if they judged poorly and their kid was hurt.
But that’s a culture shift and we’re just not getting there by blaming the people who are shuttering playgrounds. It has to come from everywhere, not just a few liberty-minded folks.
Culture War! Liz is launching a Culture War! She’s a Republican Nazi!
A KKKulture war! Gotta watch out for those Aryan babes.
“But democrats did it first, so it’s Trump’s Fault!”
-Sarc
Yes, it's our risk-averse culture. While there are likely many causes, I think it's supercharged by liability issues.
My kids' grade school was extremely risk-averse. One family lived across the street from the school (a 35 mph, 2-lane road). The house driveway lined up directly with the school driveway.
That house was on the bus route because the school felt it was too dangerous for the kids to cross the street. The bus would stop in front of their driveway, get the kids, and immediately make a left turn into the school.
There were other instances of this hyper-safety mindset. If you went to a meeting and asked about it, the answer was always based on the financial liability risk.
True as far as it goes, but this is not just culture at large and not just about kids; it's an informal branch of government: the legal culture. It organizes itself, and hurts us (while enriching itself) by taking away reasonable assignment of liability. We can legislate exemptions applicable to particular fields, such as weapons or smoking or vaccines, but only at the sacrifice of the general due process of law.
the legal culture. It organizes itself, and hurts us (while enriching itself) by taking away reasonable assignment of liability.
If juries at large said, "Fuck that, kids break bones sometimes, it's not just the existence of the slide that caused it," and found against plaintiffs routinely, then the legal field wouldn't be able to do anything about it. More people would go bankrupt from filing frivolous lawsuits that waste time and enrich lawyers, until they stopped and the lawyers stopped getting work on stupid cases.
But juries are absolutely willing to rule in favor of giving money to an injured kid from whatever entity they perceives has money, so entities with money have to do everything they can to shield themselves from liability. That's why it's a cultural issue.
Our lack of universal health insurance is the original cancer from which all the abuses of our tort system have metastasized. juries from Canada and northwestern Europe don't buy lawsuits for normal childhood (or adult) accidents because they know the child's medical expenses will be covered in any case.
(2) In contrast, America's tort system has become our (extremely wasteful and capricious) sustitute for health insurance.
... substitute for universal health insurance.
Or we could legislate some balance back into the legal process by putting real financial risk back on plaintiffs. Yes, I arguing for a real, workable loser-pays system. If that playground (or street crossing) really is unsafe, then put your own money where your mouth is when you make the case.
Unquestionably the easiest fix to our litigious culture. The number of lawyers would plummet (hopefully off an actual cliff) and the best and brightest would shift to defending the innocent and stick the ambulance chasers with their exorbitant fees.
The roadblock to the change is obvious. Only the teachers' union gives more money to the Democrats than the tort lawyers. If the Republicans had a collective brain in their head, they'd put all of their political capitol into weakening or eliminating both of these groups. But they don't, and they won't.
Republicans are more interested in protecting their own grifting base. In the New York metro area that means protecting property owners from competition that would come from new development.
So Republican voters who don’t want high density housing hamfistedly shoved into their communities, which will destroy their property values and make their lives miserable are “grifters”?
Ok. Now do democrat run NGO’s.
Law is the one (maybe there are more, i just can't think of any) profession that legally creates its own demand.
That and armed forces. Lawyers + soldiers = goons in the bullshit jobs lexicon.
We can make a distinction between soldiers and generals, I think.
One kid gets hurt, they will sue the city for millions.
I think it's more about protection due to liability laws.
Makes sense. The city is full of grifting democrats, and their scumbag democrat lawyers.
I was talking to a woman from I think Bulgaria. She was saying how the US isn't a free as people claim because of liability law.
Republicans are far worse here. Every Republican on the City Council supported the NIMBY grifters and voted against the recent relaxation of zoning laws. And interestingly it is the local progressives who made the biggest push for zoning reforms. They have gotten religion and finally figured out the law of supply and demand.
The republicans on NYC council? You mean all FIVE of them? Which is 5 out of 51 seats. Are you shitting me? They’re 10% of the city council. By what logic do you hold them accountable for anything?
On the flip side, parents have to know that bumps, bruises and the occasional fracture are a part of life. They don't need to be rushing to a lawyer because little Johnny or Jannie jumped off the swing and sprained their ankle. A few years ago I was at the store. A four year old was riding the rack on the bottom of the shopping cart. The parents thought it was cute until he stuck his hand in to the wheel breaking his fingers. Then it was the Store's fault for having unsafe conditions.
Because it's a self-important shithole filled with bougie tourists and childless hipsters who write think pieces for a living. Did you think they were going to put a trampoline park in Grand Central Station?
Unless the City will agree to refuse payment for injury to any child not accompanied by a responsible adult (parental responsibility), you had better get the hell out of there before your child is damaged and his & your life ruined.
Seconded. Liz, you live in a shitty city, surfing or no surfing. I grew up in Brewster & Carmel, at the north end of the Harlem RR line. I used to enjoy going to NYC and wanted an apartment there if I hit the lottery. No more. Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown. Er, NYC.
I've noticed that chin-up bars have disappeared completely from playgrounds and exercise parks. Does this have to do with legal liability? The demand exists, but there is no supply.
Found a few in DC, but in New York I haven't found any. Ended up drilling holes in the doorway of my rental apartment and setting up an indoor bar. Don't tell my landlord. He would be pretty pissed off.
There ain't no city child that can do a pull up.
When I was a kid, public swimming pools were almost ubiquitous in well-populated areas, now they're all but nonexistent for the same reason. The legal-industrial complex will ruin anything given enough time.
I came to Reason from the Overlawyered website. They had an article about some teenagers breaking into a waterpark. They were injured on the slides. Their families sued the waterpark and won. That was in New York.
Too many democrats.
NY liability for untended swimming pools goes at least as far back as I can remember (1960s). The legal term is "attractive nuisance." It makes me smile, thinking of a playful lover distracting one from an important task.
A major change came in 2012-2013 with enforcement of ADA accessibility standards against public and public-accommodation swimming pools. Many motels found it easier to close and/or fill in what had previously been a low-cost amenity.
I bet Action Park was a lot of fun but even Mrs. Wolfe wavers on that in the Holy Name of boaf sidez
Need to always carry around a compact cordless bolt cutter.
The solution to lawsuit-happy victims is to stop allowing them. An "Enter at your own risk" sign coupled with an "enter at your own risk" law should be sufficient.
But the trial lawyer lobby won't allow that.
Child safetyism is unhinged from fact.
There must be a private playground that Liz can sign up for somewhere. Or just move a stone's throw away, to Westchester, Putnam, or Dutchess Counties. There are so many free public unlockable parks there than Liz could never use or complain about them all.
Or maybe she should GTFO of New York, and the Beltway in general.
Reason staff should try living in the real world for a change.
Is the Reason staff taking the day off for some weird obscure holiday or something? None of their lefty sockpuppet accounts seem to be here today.
When Sarc doesn’t show up, I always hope that a pack of feral dogs cornered him in his piss soaked alley and tore him to shreds. Actually, I hope for a similar outcome for Shirke, Jeffy, Misek, etc..
"Why Do I Keep Finding Padlocked Playgrounds in New York City?"
Because you haven't moved to Florida?
Note to Liz: You're not supposed to use the playgrounds.
You're just supposed to pay for them.
All those maintenance employees with ‘good paying union jobs’.
It is actually illegal for an adult to be in a public playground in NYC without a child. Yes, adults are supposed to pay for playgrounds. Libertarians don't think that is a good idea.
Why Do I Keep Finding Padlocked Playgrounds in New York City?
Because you voted for it.
$5 says Liz didn't vote for any such thing or any politician who voted for such things.
Just keep your son inside, let him get fat playing video games and eating junk, then medicate him to deal with the mental consequences.
I’ve watched this play out in real time with my friend’s stepson. He Ives with his welfare queen mother who is grifting Washington State with a phony disability claim. Says she can’t concentrate on anything so she can’t work. Yet she manages to handle six bingo cards simultaneously. She’s turning her son into a piece of shit, just like her.
She discourages him from working, tried to get him to drop out of high school, and pretty much let him sit around, smoke pot, and play video games since his kid teens. She also hates Trump.
The kid is 20 now, and the realization that he’s turning into a total loser is setting in. But he’s pretty much under his scumbag mother’s thumb.
There are two types of mamas boys, both caused by narcissistic mothers. The first type sees her son as a perpetual baby who always needs her care, the second never wants her son to be better than her, so indulges him and discourages growth and risk taking. Sounds like your friends stepson is the second type.
A rambling article trying to defend trespassing on property that was closed and locked. But then again, the author had just come from "mass" (filled with mumbo-jumbo spewed by people who believe an imaginary fairy created the entire universe in seven days and smites his enemies, which include gays, illegals, and women who want abortions), so the author's entire mindset is suspect to begin with.
Yep. You’re a retarded neo Marxist bigot.
And not worth listening to.
As opposed to the magical Big Bang™ where something lit a fuse of the tightly packed matter, from who knows where that came from, which exploded and created all of the universe to fool human beings that there might be a sentient being with infinite power. But......science.
Let me guess, Anastasia, you wouldn’t call it trespassing if Liz broke through the lock or climbed a fence to put up a BLM or Palestinian flag? And I’m sure you don’t consider throwing paint at the Mona Lisa to protest climate change to be vandalism.
If five kids break their legs on the same swing in a year, it's probably good if the swing is removed.
Two points.
First, that looks like a really fun park. I'm surprised they have the climbing nets, the lil' tykes could fall through and hang themselves.
Second, regarding the canoe, one of my earliest memories was playing with my friend Brad. We were swinging long boards around. It was all fun and games until my mom had to run around in a panic to find someone with a car large enough to fit a screaming 6yo with a 6 foot board (rustily) nailed to his hand.
Whenever we got nails through our limbs our parents would just yank them out and hope we hadn't hit an artery. "You'll be fine. You had a tetanus shot once. I think?"
I walked past two padlocked privately owned playgrounds in NYC today. One had a nasty "No Trespassing" sign on the fence. Libertarians support this. Property rights matter; the welfare of children does not.
I was unsupervised as a child. I just had to be home in time for dinner. My parents never knew where I was; not infrequently I would ride my bicycle into the next state. My parents would be charged with criminal neglect today. But I learned how to be independent. That is no longer allowed in the United States.
It must be weird here in the Midwest, because I have never seen a fenced in public playground.
Hi Liz, I’m a fan, though we differ a lot (AnCap since long before you were born). Get your friends together, create your own playground. It will be expensive, as freedom always is.
Cheers!!
Joseph Bacanskas
NYC hates its child population.
Wrong.
DEMOCRATS hate your children. They hate every single thing about them, and about you for bringing them into the world.
This is why they embrace DINK.
This is why they sterilize themselves.
This is why they empower and celebrate divorce (esp. "no fault" divorce).
This is why they ridicule the traditional nuclear family.
This is why they encourage prostitution.
This is why they despise "tradwives."
This is why they worship abortion (or any other form of birth control).
This is why they serve children up to the LGBT Pedo.
This is why they treat kids as an affront to Mother Gaia.
This is why they prey on young people to brainwash any who survived any of the above.
This is why they create a generation that will roll over for literal terrorists.
This is why they hate America.
This is especially why they hate God.
Children represent a future. A positive one, at that. Democrats (and most Losertarians, it seems) hate any future that offers any kind of hope or promise. They literally want to strangle it in the crib. This is because Marxism - which is the whole of Democrat politics - demands stagnancy and death. Usually in the name of "equity." Same reason they hate Christianity.
They. Hate. Family.
Because family is the lodestone of civilization and society, which are the two things they want nothing more than to destroy.
Their ideal world is a 40+ karen who hit the wall and spends her days with her cats listening to Taytay and on a half-soma vacation of chardonnay at 9am.
They lock the playgrounds as a middle finger to you and your family Liz. As a sneering snub because you obnoxiously dared to seek more from your life than their single-minded suicidal existence.
1) It's control freak--ism. These are the same people who banned puppies, foie gras, real lightbulbs, real showerheads, and straws. They are the same people who locked the city down in 2020-2021 and required vax passports - with ID (even though ID is racist) - to go anywhere during 2022. It used to be mostly a California thing, but we now have it here. There is only one answer - DEFY. DISOBEY. I removed the water restriction valve from my showerheads. I burn my cardboard in the fireplace. I do not put plastic in the recycling bin - because it just gets shipped to Southeast Asia to sit on a riverbank, and the plastic they can't use is actually the plastic that ends up in the ocean. I bring my own straws to restaurants - Trump straws. I hoarded 10 years' worth of tungsten filament lightbulbs. And the bistros are all planning to serve Pate de Perigord, realizing that the control freaks all drink sh-t Pacific Coast "wine" and don't have any idea what Perigord means. And let us all say a prayer of thanks for the fact that FUR is back. Thanks, Drake! Also, the reason fur is back is that WINTER is back, because Swedish truants are NOT smarter than the rest of us - they're just more obnoxious!
2) Also, the arrest comes with a fine. They need the money.
I do not put plastic in the recycling bin - because it just gets shipped to Southeast Asia to sit on a riverbank, and the plastic they can't use is actually the plastic that ends up in the ocean.
It used to. Now it just goes to an American landfill.
Seriously, there is no point whatsoever in anyone having two trash bins, one ostensibly for trash the other for recyclables. Both go to the exact same place now that China's not buying our garbage.
I'm beginning to think it's the people of New York City and not the city itself that's the problem.