For most of us here at Clark, it’s merely a blur as the buses speed down New York Avenue toward Glendale. For many residents of La Crescenta, it’s a nice place to bring children or the family dog for an afternoon outing. Whether you’re familiar with New York Park or not, it most certainly looks like an ordinary, innocent community park. However, upon closer inspection, a path leading uphill can be seen, winding through rows of trees to a spot overlooking the rest of the park, a spot that sometimes plays host to people looking to have some not-so-innocent fun—smoking marijuana. This is obviously an illegal activity, and therefore anyone caught by law enforcement doing it will face the punishments of the law. With plenty of cover from trees, and a good amount of distance from the street, New York Park is the location of choice for some smokers. Glendale Park officials stated that they haven’t heard about this. “To my knowledge we haven’t heard of anything going on there,” George Balteria, Senior Project Manager for Glendale Parks, Recreation and Community Services said. “If there was something [going on at the park], we would communicate this to our rangers.” When asked about New York Park on Nov. 21, one of three GCC students who was under the influence of marijuana said, “Well, it’s kind of a nice place because you know it’s behind all these trees, and you can look up and you see the sky, and you look down and see the kids, so it makes you feel young again. It’s great! I’ve skipped a few classes to come here. It’s a great spot.” The spot he is referring to is at the very back of the park, and there’s no way to see what’s going on there from the street. This makes it difficult for the park staff that comes by during the day to see that anything is going on. “During the day, there’s park staff that’s present,” Balteria said. “They check playground equipment, restrooms and all that. They do look around and see if there’s anything that’s occurred.” Because the park isn’t in a location with a lot of problems regarding illegal activity, these visits are some of the only checkups on the park during the day. “[We come here] mostly Fridays. Like, uh, usually every week,” another individual said. “I’ve smoked weed [at this park] 40…no 14 times in the past couple months.” There is some law enforcement presence at the park during the day; in fact, when photographs were being taken for this story, a Glendale Police SUV drove by only minutes before they had started smoking. Now, that isn’t to say these officers weren’t doing a good enough job; the spot simply can’t be seen from the street. So unless someone at the park is walking through, and they decide to call the police, nothing’s going to happen to the smokers. This leads to another reason why these smokers don’t get caught: many people at the park just don’t care. Case in point: a man walking his dog during the photographing for this story. Unlike the police who couldn’t see what was going on, this man walked within only a few feet of the three people smoking and looked right at them. Did they quickly hide everything? No, they did not. In fact, they made no effort to cease what they were doing because of this man. His response: continue walking his dog without missing a beat. Some, like cinematography teacher Matt Stroup, do have some concern regarding these activities. “It’s kind of disappointing worrying about taking my 3-year-old to the park and bumping into Cheech and Chong and having to relocate,” Stroup said. New York Park isn’t a haven for criminals and wrongdoers; these incidents seem to be only somewhat regular. So next time your bus is going by that blur of grass and basketball courts, remember this poetic line crafted by one of our anonymous interviewees: “Well, considering I’m high right now…and I was high, you know, pretty much all…all day, I’m gonna say I’m pretty much high…all day.”