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I've started looking over north Texas marking the band practice fields I can find with leisure=pitch, sport=marching_band. I am always open for suggestions! Here, you generally find them at high schools on a dedicated field, or part of a parking lot as seen below.

#OpenStreetMap #Texas #MarchingBand

A topdown photo of a parking lot that also includes a marching band practice field.
#texas #OpenStreetMap #MarchingBand

watmildon reshared this.

in reply to end0fline

watmildon
watmildon
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I love this so much! This one also looks like lit=yes. 🤩
in reply to end0fline

Paguro
Paguro
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So marching band practice fields exist? 😶‍🌫️ That place looks a lot like your average parking lot tho
in reply to Paguro

end0fline
end0fline
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@Paguro Yes! Some are grass, but at least around me, they appear as an American football field painted on top of a parking lot. Sometimes they have one or two giant circles in them, though I’m not sure what those are for. Practicing group turns maybe?
@Paguro
in reply to end0fline

end0fline
end0fline
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@Paguro Also they often have some sort of tower next to them where the drum major/band director will be located.
@Paguro
in reply to end0fline

Paguro
Paguro
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I have been a medieval flag waver in a team for quite a few years, and we'd always perform with our own marching band of musicians and dancers.
More often than not you need a lot of space and reference points, like in theatre and movies. Points to turn around yes, but also to align the figure with the dancers. May that be the case here?

That's a big difference between Italy and the US, having the director on a tower. That'd be impossible here and the drummers would go out of sync haha

in reply to Paguro

end0fline
end0fline
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I might have been overselling it when I said tower, but thats what they're labeled in OSM. Haha.

They're usually a 10x10 foot platform, one to two stories high, nothing too extravagant. My school was smaller though and had a rollable platform that they would bring out on to the field for shows.

in reply to end0fline

Paguro
Paguro
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My best guess is that they're painted as such to resemble the actual football stadiums where they perform? Using the yard lines (is that their name?) to align and move
in reply to Paguro

end0fline
end0fline
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I think you're correct, but I was in choir in school, not band!

Only the schools that have larger parking lots have a full "field" painted. I've seen many that only go from something like the 10 to the 50 yard line, or some that are even shorter without numbering at all.

in reply to end0fline

Paguro
Paguro
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Yeah, after all why would you have a parking lot that huge? Might as well cut a section off for use in these occasions or as a general-purpose playground or field, right?

Makes sense!

We have something similar in some neighborhoods of Naples, Milan and Genoa, where sections of a few residential streets became soccer fields overnight

(without all the bells and whistles of painting lines and installing nets of course)

This entry was edited (4 days ago)
in reply to Paguro

end0fline
end0fline
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Unfortunately, giant parking lots are normal in my state (country?). REALLY big parking lots without trees. It is super awful.

Soccer fields after dark sounds pretty cool!

in reply to end0fline

Paguro
Paguro
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Oh. I thought that was only an issue of bigger cities.
Without trees? Must be quite the oven when the sky is clear...! :(

Yeah it's pretty cool that people are still repurposing spaces without going through the infinite hoops of burocracy. People need livable, shared spaces, not a spaghetti bowl of roads leading to roads leading to roads. Parks. Plazas. Fields.

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