That's so. . . American.

An it wears him out, it wears him out
It wears him out, it wears him out.

I, for one, would like to welcome our new FieldTurf overlords

It's not really all that "American". What's really, really American is spending vast sums of money, water, and petrochemicals keeping your freakishly monocultural lawn growing. Americans spend more than $40 billion a year on their lawns, which is more than the GDP of Vietnam, a country of 85 million people.

It's funny that we think this plastic grass is funny, but not that expenditure, or the pesticides and fertilizers and scarce water we dump on them. Even pious Prius drivers think nothing of using a gas mower and a bunch of chemicals that come from oil on their lawn.

I think the idea of fake grass is brilliant; I'm against the water-wasting monoculture of vanity lawns. If you must have a non-native landscape, it can at least be pesticide and upkeep free (and have a sense of humor).

All true, but nothing is better to play sports on than a well-maintained grass field. Field turf is nice because it's flat, doesn't get holes worn into it, and isn't muddy when it rains. Plus, it gives you a chance to recycle some tires. But plastic (petroleum) grass is like plastic wood, or cheap ice cream, or agro-cattle: a cut-rate representation of the real thing that ain't natural.

I'll let the grass and 'weeds' at home do what they will (like dying in the Summer), but, although I think field turf is more durable and easier to maintain, sports on real grass is the way things should be.

I don't see anyone with field turf lawns; it's all those park fields where the city and county are looking to cut maintenence costs (employees & their salaries are the most expensive part of the equasion) in a climate where rainy winters mean muddy, torn-up playfields, and sunny, dry summers mean trampled up, dead grass. Good libraries and schools, good infrastructure, good parks and fields are all one to me: Civic obligations of the government. Where's the money going?

In the final analysis, field turf is just another kind of pavement. I may want my grass to run around on, but environmentally, robins, crows, and geese, not to mention worms, ants and tons of bugs, have their environment ruined. It looks green, but it ain't; it's another fracture in the ecosystem.

Sorry, Lloyd, but you present a false choice. In the winter in this climate, grass IS NOT AN OPTION unless you think the Parks Department should hire a team of a dozen guys PER FIELD, like Safeco -- and even then park fields in Seattle are much, much more intensively used than professional sports fields.

The choice in the parks is not grass vs. Field Turf; it's mud and sand vs. Field Turf. No rational person could fail to see the advantages of the Turf after playing in it for ten seconds.

Grass playing fields are not homes for "worms and bugs" even in the best of circumstances; they are dead-zone monocultures, fertilized and pesticided until all life forms besides the single grass species are eradicated. Grass IS pavement.

And Field Turf doesn't feel plasticky at all.

Pesticides or not, Robins eat the worms that ARE there, Geese eat the grass, Crows eat the bugs, squirrels bury nuts. I've face-planted in all of it, so I've seen it up close.

Grass fields are not a monoculture, fauna-wise, and even though they're close to it flora-wise, you'll still see dandelions, clover, and some other stuff interloping. If left alone, the grass wouldn't, on its own, maintain its dominance. Field turf, however, is pavement of a sporting kind. Packed dirt, covered by perforated plastic sheeting, covered by gravel, covered by sand, covered by field turf, with ground-up tires worked into it. Fido will not be burying his bone at midfield of the Queen Anne Bowl.

In this climate -- where it generally doesn't freeze -- grass grows in the winter, even on play fields. The 'waste of water' comment above would refer to Summer watering, without which grasses here go to seed as they die off due to the usual lack of rain. The grass playfields do get beat up, that's why they need to be maintained. Sand fields are an option for the most gutted of budgets.

I don't mind field turf; it's efficient, durable, flat, it drains well, and allows for wholescale layoffs of parks maintenance people. Although you won't sprain your ankle like you might on the old astro turf on top of concrete at Memorial Stadium or the Kingdome, you will (in the Summer) get PLASTIC burns and bits of rubber under your skin from sliding on it. Field turf fields are cheaper, but grass is better. I prefer grass.

The demand for sports fields outstrips the availability, hence the heavy use of existing places. New field turf fields have attempted to address this cost-effectively. But it's a plastic parking lot you're getting, which does put another fracture in the remaining green areas in the city. If the rest of the urban animal kingdom were polled, the result would be that field turf really isn't real grass.