Ringer Park

I’ve been going to this park for the last decade after school and it’s pretty darn good. Today I went with my siblings, we initially went to play tennis but the tennis court was filled with school kids so instead we played in the basketball court. Although, it was super hot — we’ve managed to have lots of fun playing both tennis and basketball in the basketball court. We then proceeded to the play hide and seek in the kids playground!!! Was super fun! (Although u can’t really hide in there — made it super challenging.) Just before we left I told my baby sister; we’re coming here tmr and the day after and possibly every other day! This place has everything you could possibly need (assuming you have kids and/​or into sports.) it’s very quiet and family friendly. Check it out…

I am one of those «annoying dog owners who thinks its OK to let him off the leash». My dog is very well trained and for the most part will avoid another dog if I tell him too. (Except for his friends, there is no stopping him for running up to them.) I live in the near by neighborhood. Over the past year, there has been an awesome effort to clean up the park. I listened in on the ringer park crime watch group held by 2 BPD officers. (Their names escape me) They are the ones responsible for all the improvements over the past year. They are urging all locals to CALL THE POLICE if you see something going on. They are making an effort to clean up all the Riff Raff that trash up ringer park. One was handing out citations as the group walked the park.

I live next to this park and take my dog here at least 2 times a day. We like the trails and the grassy field on the hill.
My two big complaints are the dog owners who think its okay to let their dogs off leash. It is stressful for my pup who doesn’t like surprises or large dogs. The other is all the broken glass and trash. Some spots are worse than others.
There is a fenced in playground for kids, basketball court, tennis court (newly paved and painted), lots of grassy spots to hang out at, and multiple exits/​entrances.

Beth M. 10÷8÷2013
What Linda said. I don’t live in Allston any more but that is the LAST park Id hang out or walk through at night. The girl that went missing back in the 90s was a poor girl from Ireland that was cutting through the park to go home from a bar she and her friends went to. I personally was held up at gun point and had my car stolen in front of the park back in mid 90s. The kids that held me up later when on to murder a pizza delivery guy. Maybe the area has changed in the past 15yrs but yeah no thanks, there are better choices for parks out there.

I like that this park is so close to where I live. Also, my dog comes here frequently so he gets to meet a lot of the same dogs (and a lot of new ones as well). It has tennis courts, basketball courts, a large playground, and a baseball field. The broken glass scattered around the area does bother me a bit, but not enough to stop coming. Overall a nice park.

An Allston park is surely better than no park. I frequent here when I really need to get away from all of the stores and restaurants and see some grass. The park and playground definitely have some good factors. There is a nice path, baseball field, basketball and tennis courts. You can also walk around back to where there is a little more of a dirt trail and trees. There are also a lot of nice big boulders to sit on with friends, but I’d recommend bringing a blanket or mats. There is glass everywhere. We have even seen a syringe in the wooded part of the park. Other than that I feel safe at this park.
My friends and I have brought our hammock and slept in the park and nothing bad has happened. The only time we have been at night was for sledding in the blizzard Everyone there were clearly drunk college students, but friendly and not dangerous. Although nothing seems to be done about the glass and graffiti around the park, people do come to the playground to insure it’s safe and presentable. I have seen much better parks, but am thankful that there is any park near my apartment.

Great park for kids in the middle of Allston. Lots of playground equipment, and room to play frisbee or catch.

Besides for being great for hipsters, skateboarders, underage drinkers, and public defecators, Ringer Park is wonderful for walking, basketball, pickup soccer, baseball, kickball (etc), and dog walking (my primary purpose).
There is usually a pretty group of pups and peeps that show up between 4 and 630 most days for a little off leash romping on the top of the hill.
It also has a pretty decent jungle gym area, swing sets, and water features for kids to play on.

I guess being that I’m from New Orleans and people get shot up all the time everywhere, a murder from 13 years ago doesn’t really stress me or my dog out.
I think it’s a nice little park and I love being able to socialize with other people and dog owners. I’ll be back every day or so to trot around.

When I moved into the apartment building across the street 15 years ago, fresh from the suburbs, I was told by a local on my first day «someone was beheaded here a few days ago.»
Awesome.
Hopefully, it’s gotten a little better over the years!

While it’s just a below average park for people my chihuahua sure loves it! There is a hill/​wooded section where in the afternoon (after working hours) people from the neighborhood bring their dogs to play. It’s a great space for your pooch to socialize and exercise. I have counted as many as 20 dogs and their owners on one summer day.
If you own a dog and live in the area it’s a great daily retreat.

Not Boston’s most attractive park, but it does the job, great for dog walking, or just to get away (if only slightly) from the bustle of the Allston neighborhood. I’m not sure what the earlier view was describing, but I’ve never felt unsafe here as city parks go, sounds more like suburban fear of anything not pristine and shiny and unalarmed…

I don’t know why Lynda feels the need to bring up a violent incident that happened in this park over a decade ago. There are crazy people everywhere if you look hard enough, but not any more concentrated in Ringer Park.
There isn’t a lot of green space, let alone courts and fields in Allston. So this field is great to play pickup homerun derby, whiffle ball, football, frisbee, etc., or basketball or tennis. I’m not gonna say it’s the most well kept park, but it’s constantly being put to good use by all of us that live around it! Get out and play!

Considering how many parks in Boston are designed by Frederic Law Olmsted, there’s something kinda wasteful and poorly planned about Ringer Park. Granted, Olmstead had a lot more space to work with on Franklin Park, Boston Commons, etc so you have to take that into consideration.
With that said, this is one of the few parts of Allston where people are kind of civil and nice and can hang out near trees. The tennis courts are a little on the dirty side, but nobody ever uses them which is an oddity in Boston/​Cambridge.
I’ve never ventured to hang there after dark, but I would imagine that the people there are mostly kids on weed/​acid with fireworks rather than heroin addict rapists or whatever paranoid things most people think goes on in there.

Well I’ve never seen any of the things Lynda describes… oh well!
Ringer is a nice place to play tennis or basketball or to bring your well-​behaved dog!

Having lived in the Allston Brighton hood on and off for 25 years, Ringer Park would be the last place I would be hanging out.
«Ringer Park, a garbage-​strewn series of hills and crappy sandlot playgrounds behind the Jackson-​Mann School in Allston, spreads its graffiti-​stained tendrils between Gordon and Allston Streets. At night it serves as (dope-)shooting gallery, rape rendezvous, and high-​school beer-​ball haven; during the day it’s pretty much just a flophouse and open-​air toilet for the local drunks. «It’s a shitty little park,» Fair offers. «You can barely even call it a park. It’s basically a hill with some broken glass on it. You know those dirt skateboards, with the big-​ass RV wheels? My friend Scott and I used to get loaded and then bomb down the hills on those things. It was the dumbest thing ever. You’d eat shit a lot, and it was just all broken glass and debris everywhere. We’d only do it late at night and really fucked-​up, but it was a lot of fun. And as drunk as we were, no one actually ever got hurt.»
Not that you’d have to resort to Jackass routines to get a laugh in Ringer Park. «There are these two poles where, if you stand between them, you finish a current and get electrocuted,» Fair laughs. «I don’t know if it happens all the time – or only when they’re wet – but it’s pretty weird. Little kids would stand there and charge themselves all day for fun. But the funniest thing I’ve ever seen was this group of kids who hung around the park calling themselves the Allston Street Crips. They were in, like, seventh grade. There would be like ten of them trying to jump somebody.»
Make no mistake, however – the danger in Ringer Park can be gruesomely real. «Sometime around ’97, a college girl had gone missing for a little while, and they ended up finding her decapitated in the back of Ringer Park,» Fair explains. «That’s how it got the nickname ‘Blood Park.’ It’s crazy, because it’s behind a youth center, but all of a sudden a horrific thing like that happens, and you realize that crazy people can be anywhere.»
Luckily, most of the crazy people in the park today are passed out under trees, talking to themselves on benches, or – like one waspish, Abercrombie-​sheathed family of five seemingly oblivious to the smashed TVs and used rubbers surrounding them – playing bocce ball. «What the fuck are they doing?» Fair asks incredulously. «Don’t they know they’re in Allston?»