Historians may well remember ours as the golden age of playground design: From Langdon Park to Park View, D.C.’s kids now get to play on ergonomically correct, pedagogically up-to-date, Scandinavian-looking collections of swings and ladders and monkey bars. But while our new collection of bright-hued, Gehry-angled slides may seem magical, there’s even more fun to be had, courtesy of a slide that looks about as artsy as an old garden hose. The green tube slides about 25 feet down the side of a hill into the playground next to Wesley Heights’ Horace Mann Elementary School. Kids clamber up a staircase made of old tires. They hop in. They push off. And for a second there, it’s pretty dark, and they’re going pretty fast. Whoosh! Who needs modern design when you’ve got high speed and low light?