> Swimmers in Fleishhacker Pool which closed in 1971.
That’s gotta be the biggest swimming pool I’ve seen. I was born in ‘74 (hello, fellow Gen X-er) and we went to various public pools through the summer. The biggest was an “olympic sized” pool 20min driving distance from our house - and this one looks double that from the camera’s perspective.
The original Broad Ripple Park (Indianapolis) Pool was the "largest in the world" at one point (250' x 500'). I knew people who swam in it, but it had been turned into basketball courts by the time I saw the former pool. Shortly after that, it was removed.
The US swimming Olympic tryouts were held there in 1924 and 1952.
What’s really interesting/sad is there used to be tons of really large pools created as part of depression era recovery act public works programs. Then later, when equal rights law allowed non-whites to use the pools equally, cities and communities closed the pools and filled them up instead of allowing integration.
That’s a trope that doesn’t bear on the Fleishhacker pool closure. There’s been a shift I think in govt spending from things like recreation to social services. If you took the SF homeless and other social services budgets including state Medi-cal funding that dwarfs recreational spending - and this is a shift in allocation over time. And I thought pools were racially integrated historically and it’s when they integrated genders the race panic stupidity came in big time. Especially in south some bad behavior.
Sure, Fleischacker pool was underfunded for years and fell into disrepair and then closed in 1971. But why was it underfunded, and why was there not enough money to repair it?
The term you're looking for is "racism", and it's been ruining America for a lot longer than a century, and it still is, in fact it's on a resurgence, as we all well know (but some try to deny).
And "for a century" is historically incorrect and revisionist, if you were actually talking about racism, which I don't believe you were.
What was the real point you were trying to make? It sounds to me you're offering "NIMBY", which has nothing to do with race, as an alternative theory to counter the parent's point that it's actually racism, which is extremely well documented and not legitimately contested, and has been going on for a lot longer than a century.
Are you literally saying people don't want swimming pools in their back yards? Really??! That's news to me. Or is it actually that they don't want black people in their public swimming pools? That's not what "NIMBY" means, but mutually exclusively exactly what "racism" means.
At 6,7m gallons (25k cubic meters) volume it was a bit larger and freshwater. The big deal about it was that it was used year round in Moscow. It was quite the experience to swim in it in the winter at -15C. -20C was the official operating limit.
We had a 120m x 50m public pool around as a kid. It was fantastic, more like swimming in a lake. It got replaced by two stainless steel contraptions (one regular 50m pool and one "play pool"). The play pool has many features that are supposed to be "fun" for kids.
But I remember the thrill of swimming to the centre of the pool and being away from everything. It felt like a real achievement and a little unsafe but in a good way.
I suppose it wasn't easy to maintain and not as "safe".
That was my first thought ok. I thought I was looking at the reflecting pool at the Washington monument or something. I’m completely in awe of the size of that pool.
It actually is closer to the reflecting pool than an Olympic pool
That’s gotta be the biggest swimming pool I’ve seen. I was born in ‘74 (hello, fellow Gen X-er) and we went to various public pools through the summer. The biggest was an “olympic sized” pool 20min driving distance from our house - and this one looks double that from the camera’s perspective.