Says the LA Times:
The two bright-red dumpsters, 16 feet long by nearly 6 feet wide and filled with greenery, have been placed in a busy downtown neighborhood where they throw a little shade, elicit regular double-takes and fill curbside spots that otherwise would go to cars.
The grandly named “parkmobiles” were rolled out earlier this summer, the first in a fleet of itinerant oases in one of America’s densest cities.
My favorite detail is the lifelike sculpture of a modern San Franciscan included with every parkmobile. So realistic! Here’s hoping the taggers don’t muck ‘em up. Read on.
[via Matt MacDonald]
i’ve been amazed at how long the one on minna has stayed tag free. amazed.
I’m all for parklets, but a dumpster filled with plants? Put some effort into it, people.
The problem I have with this dumpster parklet is that it doesn’t expand the sidewalk at all, and instead takes away from it when considering the legs of bench-sitters.
How do you figure? The bench portion is functionally an extension of the sidewalk.
I refuse to engage in a semantic dispute about whether a bench is a sidewalk.
How typical of the LA Times. Run a story on San Francisco parklets and choose photos of the ugliest and arguably least function ones we have.
The line about “..filling up a curbside spot that would otherwise go to cars..” in a dense city sums it up. This LA Times hit piece killed two birds with one stone. Bad mouths parklets as they become more popular in LA, and gets in a defacto bash against San Francisco.
Too bad the paper as a whole is still better than anything we have here.
+1 on all counts.
I for one will never use a parklet because I don’t need to hang out closer to auto fumes.