SelfieSwing Comes to Bridgeport; New Recreation Amenity Now at Compton Park
By Julie Perine on June 08, 2019
Among top trends in parks and recreation for 2019 is the SelfieSwing and that trend has come to Bridgeport. Parents can now swing face-to-face with their toddlers and capture effortless video footage of the child’s swinging adventure.
The SelfieSwing was recently installed at Compton Park and more will likely be coming to the city in the future. Parks and Recreation Director Joe Shuttleworth ran upon the trend and thought it would be a good addition to Bridgeport’s parks facilities.
“I’m allowed by the city - usually a couple times a year - to go to trade shows and educational conferences; things of that nature and at a recent one, we talked about doing inclusive playgrounds and things like that,” he said. “This is a concept one of the playground companies came up with and I really liked it.”
One side of the swing looks like a traditional toddler swing and the other side accommodates an adult or older child. On the toddler side, there is a slot to insert a cell phone, which when placed on selfie mode and the record feature is activated, will capture some fun video (as is seen below.)
Because it accommodates an adult, the weight-bearing element was to be considered.
“Compton Park was the only place I could put it at this time. It’s the only swing set that met the requirements,” Shuttleworth said. “But moving forward when we install any playground equipment, we will allow for that weight requirement.”
The swing was just installed last week and Shuttleworth wants families to be aware of it and have fun with it.
“It records the fun little video of the child swinging; a neat video for Facebook or just for keeping and sharing,” Shuttleworth said. “It’s just a happy little addition to our parks.”
And as readers can see, it got a big thumb's up - a double thumb's up - from this rider.
