As Year of the Park continues, we will be documenting every park in Champaign, Urbana, and Savoy, Champaign County Forest Preserves, along with other odds and ends between July 2020 and more like August or September 2021. You can see what has been covered thus far by clicking here. If you have suggestions or ideas or feedback, feel free to contact us at info@smilepolitely.com.
NAME
Heritage Park
LOCATION
2101 W. Bradley Ave., Champaign
Photo by Maddie Rice.
HISTORY AND FEATURES
Heritage Park connects to Kaufman Lake, which is a sweet park with a weird pond and also sort of a great place to hide from the world. If you walk towards the highway, from either park, and look beneath it, you will see some of the best graffiti art the city has to offer. Just do that one day, and you won’t be sad you did.
So, I like this park, simply because it has two things I enjoy: a long walking path, and geese. I’ll get to the geese below, but that’s basically what Heritage Park has to offer: a lovely walk on a nice path next to a small detention pond, and with a restored prairie. That’s good stuff, honestly, for a city like Champaign. There are a lot of people that live right around here, so this is welcomed and more than acceptable as far as the sort of park to place around here.
Photo by Maddie Rice.
ASSESSMENT
Look, don’t talk to me about the geese in this city. Are you OK? Have you lost something along the way? Do geese bother you? They do? What part, the poop? Let me tell you about your own poop, careening its way through our pipes and being pumped into big chemical treatment plants to be spit out again so that you can drink it with your stupid cheeseburger and poop again. Geese poop is an issue for you? I have an issue with you. Accept it, you have issues, and it starts with poop, evidently. I don’t want to make too much of this, but I will proverbially poop on your argument about geese being a nuisance.
Photo by Maddie Rice.
What in the goddamned hell are they supposed to do? Not live? Imagine if some other species came along and wanted to wack you because of your living a normal human life, pooping your way through the day, twice a day, hopefully? How would you feel? Would you feel scared? Would you be scared shitless?
I sure would be.
Look, this park has a lot of geese. Big deal. Get over it. We don’t need more ritual killings of geese. They will just have sex and multiply and come back. This is earth. Start living on it.