You’ll Never Guess Its Purpose
July 19, 2025
Source: Reddit
At many parks or skate spots, you’ll see a small black metal bracket below a wooden picnic table or bench. It’s a little gadget with a ridged arc like a gear and a hole in the middle. Many assume it’s a sundial or a cigarette holder, but essentially it’s an adjustable flagpole holder or some other type of bracket holder that adjusts to different angles.
A Practical and Versatile Bracket
This exit catalogue bracket allows the person to lock a pole or similar pole at various angles. Manufacturers design the ridge function similarly to adjustable flagpole holders made for umbrellas or promotional signage. Even today, you can still buy these brackets sold for front porch or vendor tents in its various forms.
It’s commonly used to mount:
- Flags, at community events or holidays
- Umbrellas that provide shade at picnic tables or vendor stands
- Signs or banners, for one-off displays
Different angles help with wind, sun or positioning.
Why Would a Picnic Table Have One?
Local parks often host:
- Community barbecues
- Public celebrations where citizens would hang flags using adjustable flagpole holders
- Temporary public signage or information for something similar.
The presence of a fixed bracket helps with setup and take down by just removing the pole, and providing a stable structure without the need for new holes or stands. Once the pole leaves, the bracket hangs around, typically forgotten.
Used Beyond the Park
Skateboarders and DIY builders have used these ingestible brackets for a variety of things. The adjustable flagpole holder may hold rails or pipes for create grind setups at skateparks. Builders bolt it down to fix it in place, controlling the angle and keeping an extremely low profile—ideal for skate features.
This reuse illustrates the capability and ruggedness of the design, but more than that, it’s interesting manipulation of design even when it’s no longer fulfilling its original design purpose.
A Glimpse of Forgotten Functionality
These brackets indeed serve a greater purpose than simply being random incidental metal left behind. They represent public spaces intentionally designed with flexibility in mind—whether to fly a flag in the breeze using an adjustable flagpole holder, shade a lunch with an umbrella, or support a grind rail for various uses.
So the next time you see one of these odd little mounts, recognize they hold something useful: a flag blowing in the breeze, an umbrella providing shade to lunch, or a rail inviting the next trick.