A thick layer of dust covers the Chinook salmon. Sheets of cobwebs stretch from the hummingbird to the horses and on to the shark. Ankle-high piles of leaves cover the ground. Even the camel is covered in dirt.
The carousel at Arena Green first opened in 1998 and then closed in 2011. Except for a few brief moments, it’s been a wreck ever since. It looked this way a year ago also. Nothing has changed.
On the other side of the waterway, the similarly abandoned ranger station is boarded up. Many people still don’t even know what it is or why it was originally used. The city recently made a decision to start demolishing it.
Meanwhile, much of Arena Green is in major shambles. What used to be a concession stand near the carousel looks like a bomb site. It’s torched, fenced off, boarded up and covered with layers of graffiti. The roof is almost gone.
The playground is cleaner, but still a disaster. Even in the daytime, people just don’t want to come walking through here.
On a recent visit during which only one person tried to sell me drugs, I scoped out the inside of the carousel. I saw beer cans, garbage, old clothes, flattened cardboard, needles and one discarded orange parking cone. There was a circular plaque, with solidified cobweb chunks hanging all over it like something one yanked from the filter of a vacuum cleaner. The plaque said: “This carousel is dedicated to the children of San Jose.” Ouch.
The whole scene resembled something from a Victorian-era horror story. I was waiting for the carny music to start. Edgar Allan Poe would be proud.
A few years ago, after the ranger station went ablaze, an army of volunteers, including Boy Scouts, banded together and spent a day cleaning up the park, including the carousel. They brought paint. And power washers. And brooms. They trimmed the trees and hauled away the debris.
All of their work now seems squandered.
I never wanted to become the person who sat around pointing out failures over and over again, but in this case, it must be done.
Whenever you watch a Sharks game on national television, or a 49ers game, and you get mad at the network boneheads for showing imagery of the Golden Gate Bridge or the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco, well, this is part of the reason.
Just a few weeks ago, the Sharks retired Joe Thornton’s number with a gargantuan ceremony, both in the street and the SAP Center. It was one of the greatest events in recent memory, not just in San Jose sports history, but in all of San Jose history. As always, thousands of people then exited the scene and barely even noticed the park, let alone the carousel, which, as always, just sat there in its usual sodden state.
Less than a week later, thousands more showed up after the Turkey Trot. Same deal. Imagine if that carousel was working, or if it was moved somewhere inviting?
Yes, there was once a plan to relocate the carousel. Whatever decade that was. I don’t remember anymore.
If you look at the carousel, if you can even brave the environs and step over the drug paraphernalia, you will see a series of childhood photos encircling the exterior perimeter, at the bottom. Many of the photos are now defaced, covered in cobwebs, debris, dust, urine, soot or graffiti. I’m told these are childhood shots of politicians and stakeholders who were involved with the installation of the carousel in 1998. Whether that’s true or not, this is the ultimate closing irony of it all.
With parks underfunded right now, it may take another army of volunteers to right the ship on this one, and maintain it for the long term, just like the Municipal Rose Garden, which, by the way, would probably look just as bad as Arena Green if volunteers hadn’t rescued the place 16 years ago. The city wouldn’t have done anything.
City Hall’s attitude has always been clear on these things: If the citizenry wants anything interesting to happen around here, then they have to fight for it. Looks like the carousel is no different.
San Jose politicians don’t care and just are not doing enough.