The 10 Shadiest People You Meet in Parks

Image via Complex Original

We support a person's right to protest. You should, too. That said, the people that you meet while conscientiously bellyaching will be amongst the sketchiest you ever come across. Typically peaking on battery acid and leering through the eye holes of an Anonymous mask, these pop-political undergrads would happily sacrifice sovereignty for Twitter followers and social injustice for a girlfriend. We're not saying people shouldn't protest, we're just saying keep an eye on that naked guy with the gas mask and handful of motor oil soaked rags.

There are two types of people who go to music festivals: the twenty-something scenester in jean shorts and neon framed sunglasses, and the forty-something vagabond with nipple piercings and a tuck job. If you meet a guy who can't stop talking about how seeing Queen at Live Aid changed his life, find the nearest mosh pit and hope for an aggressive elbow to your temple. 

Second only to Taco Bell parking lots, our public green spaces are a common transaction location for plastic baggies of barnyard hay and LSD caps. Parks are public enough to elicit a sense of safety and so overrun with sketchy behavior that shifty tweakers are more or less impervious to the law.  

Your most regrettable moments in life will likely come about as the result of day drinking. There's something about combining UV rays and tequila that makes us all act like tumescent Gary Busey's on crank. If ever your life is void of disorderly family-wide brawls, vomit soaked flip-flops, and butt chugging—visit a Florida park during Labor Day weekend.

You know that guy who was semi-athletic in high school, drank his way through a state college, and came back home with man boobs and HPV? Well, that guy hasn't lost his eye of the tiger, and his pathetic sense of self-worth is on display at the local park.

They're pretty easy to spot. On the softball diamond, it's that fully grown man wearing eye black like he's Ken Griffey Jr. in '93. On the basketball court, he's fluent in And1 smack-talk and has a proclivity to throw elbows. If there's a guy in brand new cleats, wristbands, and playing press coverage on the flag football field, do everyone a favor and chop-block that clown.

Without getting into some transcendental dialogue about social injustice or poverty, lets limit the scope of "bums" to the rail-riding, menaced, peaking-on-bath-salts types. Defecating in subway cars and stealing cooling pies from windowsills is tough work, and nothing nurses a come-down quite like catching some zzz's on a park bench.

We get marking stop signs and garbage cans as a way for gangs to define controlled territory, but why are playgrounds the most commonly tagged municipal landmarks? It doesn't matter if you're from the South Side of Chicago or Fargo, North Dakota, your local swing sets and twisty slides will be overrun with the kinds of aggressive inscriptions that you only see on Rick Ross' man boobs.

For as much credit as "the bike racks" get for being the nerve center of after school beat downs, you'd think the Schwinn brand was a veil for a network of underground fight clubs. The fact of the matter is, nobody's ever whooped ass at "the bike racks." 

First off, the location is entirely too ambiguous. Which bike racks? Schools have them all over the place. Second, nearby parks provide the ample space necessary for an onrush of galvanized, teen-aged spectators. As a result, playgrounds often permeate with the machismo of zit-faced Drake fans with driver's permits.

Ladies, be wary of pretty much all guys, but pay special attention to the dudes calling in reinforcements. There's a correlated relationship between the creepiness of a guy and the cuteness of his puppy. That guy knows exactly what he's doing. If you see a man walking a fresh-from-the-shelter Australian Shepard, run away before he gets a chance to make a parka out of your flesh.

When you're living with your parents, scoring becomes a panicked, uncomfortable scramble based more on opportunity than that loving feeling. If you can snag the keys, parking your parents Hyundai Sonata outside a Wal-Mart and turning that spacious backseat into a mobile love shack is a common workaround. But if you don't have a car, you're stuck trying to get to second base in the outfield of a softball field after dark.

Parks are a cesspool of middle school aged kids smacking braces in the bleachers who, later, grow up to be shameless voyeurs, pounding uglies behind the rash-inducing cloak of a poisonous ficus.