Equipment by Kompan.
Surfaces: rubber, sand.
A teeny tiny playground on a teeny tiny street, and perhaps one of my favourite streets in Toronto. With its tightly-packed houses that lean and jostle like rush hour riders on the King streetcar, and a sordid history to boot, Bright Street is high on quirk.
The playground doesn’t have much, but what it has is pretty good. The main climbing structure is a ship called “The Calypso,” and it features a flag with the Kompan logo, and a compass that proudly points to north in the wrong direction.
It’s hard to think what the designers of this playground could have done with the space to give it more…maybe a row of mini-Victorian houses to mimic the streetscape? A climber shaped like something a bit more relevant to the locale, like a streetcar? I'm not sure, but it feels like this one may have had 'hidden gem' potential, but fell just a bit short.
One positive of being so small - you don't have to walk far to throw things out. I've noticed that many playgrounds put the garbage and recycling bins far away from the play space...perhaps to spare people from the stink or the wasps that bins sometimes attract. It makes sense, but it also means that you have to hike a fair way to chuck out the diaper you just changed. Not a problem at Bright Street; tossing out a diaper here is either a slam-dunk or a make-able 3-pointer, depending on where you're standing.
If you live nearby or have a particular fondness for playgrounds that are cute, this is definitely a good one to hit up…but its size means that your kid will likely be done pretty quickly.