Community is what you make it. I've been fortunate enough to have great neighbors
this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2026
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Sadly, no. At least, not on the street.
I grew up in a cul-de-sac of a poor neighborhood, and it was essentially a giant playground. Highly recommended as a child. It is, however, toxic for property values. That's why planned neighborhoods have parks, playgrounds, courts, etc., so that kids are relegated to designated play areas.
Funny thing about that, is the people who live next to the parks complain anyway. In my town, there is a really nice park with all of the amenities. Basketball courts, playground, tennis courts, soccer field. It's awesome. Because of the rising popularity of Pickly Ball, and the fact that the tennis courts were often empty, it was brought up that one of the tennis courts should be turned into two Pickle courts. It went through all of the necessary steps with City Hall and was ultimately shut down because the people who lived alongside the park thought it would be too loud.
What I meant by "parks" were neighborhood parks that are part of the master planned community. They are not public. They are meant for the neighborhood.
As far as pickleball goes, they aren't wrong. My house is over a quarter mile from the pickleball courts and you can clearly hear them. The paddles and the balls are hard plastic so they are very loud. That said, the courts are extremely popular and have been a tremendous addition to the area. It's too bad those NIMBYs ruined it.
Why is pickleball so popular? I've been wondering. I have chronic pain that prevents me from swinging my arm, so i can't try it. Is it just what's hot right now, or is actually better than similar sports like tennis or badminton? Is the equipment cheaper or something?
Two reasons (and a bunch more, but a big two): (1) The thing that lemmy claims to love but mocks in cases where it actually happens: community, and (2) It's a very accessible game with a very high skill ceiling.
For (1), the only other game that really compares is golf. Maybe street basketball in some places. The games are relatively short, and the way the communities set up is that after you play a game, you walk off the court and let the next group of four play a game. While waiting for a court to open up, you mingle around with all the other people waiting. There are usually several 'stacks' of paddles (literal stacks here, of four for how many players in a single court) that determine who gets to play next, and most people don't play with the same four over and over again, so you'll get to play with a bunch of people, talk with a bunch of people, and generally have a pretty good community feel. The more 'elite' areas are sad in that you generally see the same four people putting their paddles together and never mingling, but the VAST majority of places will have you mixing every time. Most places get a natural 1:1 play:sitting time, as people leave if there is too long of a wait.
For (2), I would describe the advanced level as a tactical-chess-tennis game. Where in tennis greater skill equates with hitting the ball harder and not having it fly off, pickleball (doubles, that is, singles is just a stupid weird tennis) quickly transitions to a game of soft shots that can occasionally speed up. This lets 80 year olds play very successfully against younger groups, from beginner up to semi-advanced skill levels. I definitely got my ass handed to me by some octogenarians when I was a few years into the game. It also makes it simple for a very advanced player to play with a beginner/intermediate skill level without being bored or an apparent jerk. I tell people (now) that you don't even have to hit the ball hard to win. It's much more fun to slowly separate your opponents and then simply hit it between them where you can't hit it. It's much easier to learn than tennis or badminton. I think I remember a person asking here on lemmy about a company tennis competition, and someone said that it would take months to even stay on the court with someone who routinely plays tennis. Pickleball, meanwhile, would probably see the average person being able to play a game with most others inside of a week. The equipment isn't cheaper, but I guarantee you that you would be offered a dozen paddles to play with if you went to your local park and found people playing and told them you wanted to try/learn how to play. This translates back to the community bit. If you can play with everybody out there and have a good time doing it, you're guaranteed to come back again and again. Contrast that with tennis or badminton where you are likely to be asked to find people at your skill level, because playing with you isn't fun (and most people bring exactly the amount of folks they need to play in both of those).
Other minor reasons include it's inherently a silly and fun game. You'll hear all the tennis players mocking pickleball because it's a (modified) whiffle ball, and the paddles are like giant ping-pong paddles, and so on, and you know what? They're right. It's an incredibly silly game, just like every other game we play but without the decades or centuries long traditions of ignoring how silly the games are.
Oh, people are worried that they'll hit somebody's kid backing out of the driveway.
More reasons to build interconnected walking neighbourhoods with car parking, if even needed, out of the way. For some reason we’re so obessessed with cars that we’d rather our frint yard be half pavement and looking onto a road than walking even a small distance to a more predictable parking area where kids are less likely to randomly appear.
Not so fun fact: Parents run over their own children in their own driveways at an alarming rate and still we do nothing about it in the US and Canada because we literally hold the car so far above the safety of our living children that it must not suffer any inconvience, no matter the cost.