“The popularity of pickleball has indeed skyrocketed, and we’ve been working really hard to keep up,” Aparton said.
She said the city will add another six to eight dedicated pickleball courts “in the near future.” “We’re moving at record speed here,” said Tamara Aparton, spokesperson for the Recreation and Park Department, which is probably true considering San Francisco’s usual speed of making change is akin to watching a tennis match in very, very slow motion. It’s almost always easier to find tennis courts in the city to reserve online than pickleball courts because there are so many more of them.
LARGE WALL PHOTO PLAYER PORTABLE
The city has provided some portable pickleball nets, but it’s often up to individual players to purchase and store their own. (Six of those are at Stern Grove and are temporarily closed due to construction.) Meanwhile, the city provides 139 tennis courts. It does have 48 tennis courts on which pickleball lines are also drawn, but the courts don’t have dedicated pickleball nets - kind of like providing a basketball court with no hoops. Jimbo Oakes, 82, plays pickleball at a Presidio Wall pickleball in San Francisco. Six were former tennis courts, and five were built from scratch.
In that time, the city moved from zero dedicated pickleball courts to 11, meaning it added fewer than three per year. San Francisco, on the other hand, has taken its typical approach: It has a pickleball working group - yes, really - that’s been talking about the need for more courts for four years. Some cities have rushed to convert under-used tennis courts to pickleball courts - like Cincinnati, which spent $500,000 to remake tennis courts into 24 pickleball courts that attract scores of players each day and will host a big tournament next year. Legions of pickleball devotees want more space to play, but several players who serve as unofficial spokespeople for the sport said they’re battling for courts with tennis players and feel brushed off by the city’s Recreation and Park Department. Add pickleball - and its explosion in popularity during the pandemic - to the list of silver linings the city hasn’t fully seized upon to make life in our struggling city a little more fun.
0 kommentar(er)
