Putt Putt

I happened to turn on New York 1 this morning to see if I could catch the weather, and instead saw a short clip about this one-day, artist-designed mini-golf course in an industrial loft in our neighborhood. There's a whole string of commercial buildings along the waterfront all owned by one developer; his daughter turned one of them into affordable artist studios, and this was, as they said, a way for the artists to "introduce themselves to the neighborhood."

We strolled over this afternoon, and I must say, it was really nice to be close to the action for once. There was a smattering of hipsters mixed with a bunch of neighborhood families, and everyone seemed to have a good time.

Especially Clio.


After giving the putter a go on the first hole, she abandoned it in favor of simply rolling balls backwards on the slopes that lead away from many of the hole; more like bowling without the pins. She thought this was one giant playground, and took it upon herself to climb on or over or under or around every single hole.


There was a lot of effort to get her off of holes before anything broke (though, to be honest, we witnessed some other accidental vandalism and it didn't seem to be that big of a deal.) As for Clio's favorite hole: There was this furry critter one,


where all those little guys were actually wriggling madly in circles (Clio tried awfully hard to catch them; I didn't even try to answer her questions about how and why they were moving the way they were)


Which I think tied with the trampoline one. Yup, a whole trampoline, with a little sock hole off to one side for the golf ball. The thing was low to the ground, more like a mini-tramp, and without pads on the springs; we waited for Clio to fall and crack open her skull on the concrete floor for about 2.5 seconds, then convinced her that it was time to move on. To a very special rice crispy treat.



There was one hole that appeared to be just for adults--there were alcoholic beverages somehow involved--and wasn't scheduled for use until 9pm, but Clio thought she should get to take home all of its leopard-painted balloons. Or at the very least, this one.


We finally got her out of there--with minimal damage (though she did knock over the coordinating leopard bowling ball)--by telling her we'd go down the block to the playground and make water balloons.

Which we did.