Today’s park adventure led The Kid and I to Roxbury Memorial Park in Beverly Hills. This park is just south of Olympic on Roxbury. It’s a wonderful park with acres of rolling green hills for Oliver to run through and the impeccably kept trees provide a canopy of shade throughout.

In addition to the large space, there are tennis courts, bocce ball / croquet lawns, tennis courts, a baseball diamond and volleyball courts. We were there for the toddler playground.

The toddler playground is getting a bit long in the tooth, and the park has seen its share of fun. This is evident by the permanent black stains on some of the equipment. There are only two bucket swings working – a serious problem when you have a bunch of toddlers forming a queue to swing. We never actually waited for a swing to open up. We skipped it altogether. The play areas are surrounded by sand so you need to expect that your kid will get dirty here. Albeit a bit old, and very popular with the residents, Roxbury Park is a great place to spend an afternoon.

There are loads of picnic tables and places to toss a ball around and there is a section in the kids area where three dinosaur figurines are grouped in a circle under some misting machines to cool the children on hot summer days. Those were either not working, or not turned on today.

The crowd is mostly middle-upper class Jewish kids (Not that there is anything wrong with that, some of Oliver’s closest friends are Jewish.) Two of said kids happened to be quite bossy and Oliver and I got our first experience with 5-year-old bullies in beanies. Yes two of em. These two twin boys, who were apparently without parental supervision, told us “No babies are allowed on the dinosaurs” several times. Oliver climbed a purple Triceratops regardless. I thought to myself: “If only the sprinklers were working right now”.

After yelling at Oliver, the twins continued kvetching over who was going to sit on their dinosaur’s neck. After some whining the real action began. One twin hauled off and punched the other. It was a side swing to the back, and it landed with quite the thud. Had they have been in their 20’s, and shirtless, it might have been hot. Given their bossy/bully nature, and the yarmulkes it was just sad. If Oliver had the words he would have yelled to say: “Hey! No babies allowed on the dinosaurs!” Instead, he and I just looked at them, then at each other and thought: Karma.

The Dad finally took notice of his obnoxious kids once the violence erupted. He came over to break it up pretty quick. Oliver and I just walked away and chased half a dozen other kids who were circled around a mom and her automatic bubble machine. Note to self: We really need to purchase that automatic bubble machine.

We give it three out of Four stars--We'll definitely return to Roxbury Park.