My Site

I have a feeling this is going to be a multi-post story; so let\’s start at the beginning. Regular readers know I have two dogs, Buddy & Hershey, and they get walked twice a day, every day. To keep things interesting for the dogs we were in the habit of frequently changing the route we would walk; we might walk around the South Bay Galleria, or several neighborhood blocks and we would include the various walking paths in Columbia Park. Well, we used to walk around Columbia Park up until May 20, 2013 when we discovered the west side of the park was closed for some kind of renovation. It was difficult to see what was going on that our walking on a path was going to disrupt, but I understand there might be insurance regulations involved, so we just eliminated Columbia Park from our daily walk routine. One night, a couple of weeks ago we noticed that the park was open again so we detoured through it so the dogs could get some variety back into their lives.

As we walked through the park it was a little difficult to see what renovations might have been done, but it was nighttime, so maybe we just could not see the improvements. There was one glaring difference; all throughout the park were barriers with signs attached advising everyone that if they wanted to use the field from now on, they had to get a permit! I will admit I was more than a little miffed at the suggestion that someone would need to get a permit if they wanted to play a game of softball or a pickup game of soccer. When I got home I made a status update on my personal Facebook page asking the powers that be for the City of Torrance what was going on with our park being closed for four months, only to re-open with new fees if you wanted to use the park\’s fields. A couple days later I received the following message from John Jones, Community Services Director for Torrance: Continue reading →