SOUTH BRONX — They may emit a misty cloud, drizzle shiny drops, or blast soaking streams from beneath your feet.
Here are a few stellar sprinkler parks where kids can cool off in the South Bronx.
Yankee Stadium Area Parks
River Avenue between 161st and 157th streets
When the Yankees built a new stadium over two public parks a few years ago, the city created several top-flight parks to replace them.
The largest is Macombs Dam Park, directly across from the new stadium on 161st Street and River Avenue, and next to its three natural-grass ball fields is a popular, colorful playground.
Kids love its pedal-activated sprinkler. Grown-ups appreciate its padded safety tiles and surrounding fence.
“It’s gated from end to end, so you can’t lose anybody,” said Kia Henley, an assistant teacher at a local daycare who brings groups of children there every weekday.
Across the street is River Avenue Park, which also opened in 2010, on the former site of a parking lot.
Now the site features a lawn-green swing set, a building-side mural of famous Bronx Bombers and sprinkler jets that are activated by the passing elevated 4 train.
“A lot of kids come and make a line [by the sprinklers] and wait for the train,” said Marco Rosario, 55.
Rosario, who lives in a brick building overlooking the park, takes his 4-year-old granddaughter there most mornings.
“As soon as she wakes up,” he said, “she wants to go.”
People’s Park
141st Street by Brook Avenue
This park rests a few steps above the street, across from P.S. 30, surrounded by a steel fence decorated with butterfly, bee and grasshopper designs.
There are basketball and handball courts, slides and swings, some 20 benches and about as many maple trees.
But in the center of it all is an 11-foot flower-shaped spray shower with a curvy stem and pink petals — a dream come true for any little green thumb looking to cool off.
“They like to have fun here,” said Lakiesha Moore, who recently brought her three children to the park. “They get wet, they go on the swings and slides.”
Hunts Point Riverside Park
Lafayette Avenue and Edgewater Road
This pint-sized park on the edge of the Bronx River sports a floating dock where kayakers and other paddlers can launch into the river.
But for pint-sized people — meaning, kids — it offers something even cooler: mock canoes and rowboats to splash around in under a mock pier post that doubles as a sprinkler.
While the adults watch the make-believe boaters soak in the spray, they can enjoy the rosebushes surrounding the sprinklers and the shaded seating area canopied by flowering bushes.
If only actual canoeing were so easy.
Crotona Park
Charlotte Street and Crotona Park East
Want to saunter around a 3-acre lake with ducks and turtles or stroll under some 28 varieties of towering trees? Check.
Go swimming in the borough’s biggest pool? Check.
Play tennis, basketball, baseball, handball or soccer? Check.
Let your children loose on one of eleven playgrounds around the park? Check.
If you choose that last option, be sure to head to the park’s eastern edge by Charlotte Street and stop by the park named for Jimmy Carter, who famously visited the neighborhood in 1977 before its revival.
In addition to shaded swings and play equipment, there is a sprinkler that sends a cooling cloud of mist high into the air. Surrounding it is a low concrete wall decorated with a colorful mosaic.
Conchita Ayala brought her two children and their two young relatives there the other day — and not a moment too soon.
“You have to get them out of the house,” she explained. “Between the TV and the remote and the fighting, you have to get them out if you want to keep your sanity!”
If keeping your sanity on a hot summer day is what you’re after, you can do that at Crotona too.
