02/20/09

Photo Gallery: Dennis the Menace Playground, Monterey, CA

See below for an archived news article about the playground park. Monterey has a flyer and a map located at this link.

Tracie White
Mercury News
Published: Thursday, September 27, 2001

Monterey's Dennis the Menace Park is the kind of playground that grown-ups like, too. You hear them screaming as they whip down the extra-wide aluminum slide side by side with their screaming kids. They grin wildly as they trot across the swinging rope bridge gripping their toddlers' hands.

This just isn't your normal park where the adults seek refuge at a picnic table, pull out a Diet Coke and keep an eye on the kids from a distance. This park draws you in.

Not only will grown-ups want to play, they kind of have to. Even the park gives out warnings: ``Little kids need adult supervision.'' At times, however, it looks like the adults could use some supervision themselves.

Take Beth Hurley, sitting in the sand watching son Jake, 8, as he throws handfuls of sand onto the already-slippery slide and then takes off at the speed of sound.

``Yeah, sand makes you go faster,'' says Beth, nodding proudly. ``But I should have brought wax paper. That makes you go really fast.''

These are words that would have made cartoonist Hank Ketcham, designer of the park, smile.

True to Ketcham's vision (the ``Dennis the Menace'' creator died in June), this park has faster slides, taller climbing structures and bumpier rides. It's creative, bright and bold. You pass it on the way home from the Monterey Bay Aquarium or Fisherman's Wharf in Monterey, and it always attracts attention. Big and little kids alike want to stop. And it's a good idea.

Big kids, often bored by the safe, plastic play structures typical at many parks, have a blast here. You see 13- and 15-year-olds hanging upside down from metal jungle gyms, rushing by little kids to get to the aluminum slides. There's a maze made out of hedges and a metal climbing structure called ``The Thing'' that looks somewhat like a plane. There's also a real train engine begging to be clambered over.

``I think Hank really wanted kids to have a great place to play,'' says Doug Stafford, parks superintendent for the city of Monterey who regularly talked to Ketcham about how to maintain the park. ``He kind of had a passion about that.''

It's been Stafford's job to keep the designer's vision for this park in line with what's safe for kids (and grown-ups). It's not always an easy task.

``Hank really was trying to avoid off-the-rack, or real common kinds of things. I was willing to be as creative as we could be. But nowadays, unless you want to have an attorney at the gate, you've got to combine the two.''

And mostly, he has been successful.

``There's only been one lawsuit, believe it or not,'' says Stafford, who also remembers only one injury -- an adult who fell off a climbing structure and broke his leg.

``I get all kinds of great comments about the park, especially from the adults,'' Stafford says. `` `Oh, I came here as a kid! Oh, it was so great! Oh, don't take that out!' ''

Even though Ketcham, who lived in nearby Pebble Beach, is gone, Stafford plans to keep the artist's vision alive.

``We're going to be doing a wood sculpture of Dennis and Margaret and Ruff the dog riding on a whale's tail,'' Stafford said. ``Hank gave us the detailed drawings of the faces for it.''

Stafford also examines the comic strip regularly, trying to match the park with the themes of the comic, keeping the same colors.

``I'm not going to go off into mauve or peach or anything like that,'' Stafford says. ``It's pretty much primary colors. Red, yellow, orange, blue. And we're doing a big renovation. As part of that, instead of having a wood fence, we'll have a white picket fence like in the cartoon.''

Meanwhile, most parents bring their kids knowing they'll need to stay a little more vigilant. You hear their voices ringing through the park:

``If you don't listen to me, we're going home!''

``You're going to fall and crack your head!''

``Do you see any other kids jumping from that?''

``I don't think that was such a good idea!''

``Sit down, sit down!,'' yells Dave Rothschild of Los Gatos to his son, who is experimenting with going down a bumpy slide made out of a noisy row of metal rollers while standing up. ``No more standing up!'' Rothschild screams. Then he smiles.

``It's a little more dangerous here than a lot of parks,'' he says. ``You've got to watch them.'' It makes him nervous. But he keeps coming back.

But 11-year-old William Walsh of San Francisco doesn't hear any of these voices. He's too busy running as fast as he can from play structure to play structure.

``This park has everything,'' William says, panting. He's just finished running up the hill to the rope bridge and is eager to sprint across. ``And I should know because I've been to every park in San Francisco. This is the best.''