Under Construction, part III: A.B. Ernst Park Before

Dear Diary,

Please inform any reader of this part who really loves A.B. Ernst Park, and who is reading before sunset on April 2nd, that they should stop reading right now and go make some last memories in the park they love.  Because on April 3rd, trees are going to start being taken out.

So at this point, your readers, dear Diary, are either people who don't love that park, or are reading after sunset, right?

This reminds me that I don't know, and haven't known for a long time, who reads you, dear Diary.  Strictly speaking, I don't even know that anyone reads you; for all I know, the numbers I see are all artificial intelligences being trained.  But even if that's not so, I mustn't assume any baseline level of familiarity with the work I've done with your excellent help.

So.  Dear Diary, you are a blog about public amenities, and especially about public restrooms whose doors open to the outside, and public water fountains that are outside.  Most of these things are in parks, and because variety is the spice of life, sometimes, as now, I just do some park appreciation without talking about plumbing at all.  The area we've focused on is the northern part, a sort of peninsula, of the City of Seattle, in a northern border state of the United States.

At one of the peninsula's southern tips, towards the middle east-west, is a neighbourhood called Fremont that likes to call itself the centre of the universe.  Parts of Fremont and its more staid eastern neighbour Wallingford are pretty hilly, and possibly as a result, three of their parks have as their raisons d'etre that they allow people to traverse those hills.

The Wallingford Steps are the flashy sibling, made of concrete but with spectacular artistic adornment, plus, yes, some plants.  They're the most successful as stairs, too, linking N 34th St with N Northlake Way, and, across that perilous street, with Gas Works Park and the Burke-Gilman Trail.

Troll's Knoll Park is the plain, friendly sibling; challenged to praise it, Seattle Parks calls it "sustainable".  It connects N 36th St with N 38th St adjacent to Aurora Ave N.  Just east of its bottom is the Fremont Troll; at its top is the Troll's Knoll P-Patch.

But A. B. Ernst Park almost ignores its stairs, which unimpressively go from N 35th St to the next alley south.  Instead it focuses on being a quite beautiful park, one worth spending time in. 

But tomorrow, motivated mainly by access and activation, Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation will start changing A. B. Ernst Park.  I would be pretty shocked if the result of the changes isn't loved, by some, within a year or three - Seattle Parks generally knows what it's doing.  But that doesn't mean I can't celebrate the old version.

I learnt on my second recent visit that what I see as this park's signature element is not what everyone sees.  I went across the street and discovered that what drivers see is mostly a couple of giant street trees.  But if, like me, you walk west from the Fremont branch library (soon to close itself for construction), there's no doubt at all that A. B. Ernst Park is mainly about these spectacular pillar-like trees.

These are arborvitae (Thuja occidentalis).  Another species that's prominent in the park is bald cypress (Taxodium distichum).  And how, you may ask, dear Diary, do I know these things, having never displayed any botanical knowledge before?  Alas, this is how:

There are many signs like that attached to specific trees; there are also quite a few on the ground.  Other trees bear different symbols:

Well, as I mentioned not too long ago, dear Diary, I'm having technical difficulties.  Let me describe the planned work, and then close with two more photos.

Most people, I think, understand this park as a winding path with a weird structure in the middle, sort of a crude theatre.  The occasion for the work is that Parks acquired a bit of land east of the park.  So they're moving the path eastward, and widening it, because even though the park's current page says it "provides wheelchair access", paths can never be too wide when considering Access.

And then they're giving the space thus created at the west end of the park to Activation.  A picnic table will be where the park entrance now is, and south of the table will be an "embankment slide" with "hillside loops".  That area will rejoin the main path at the head of the stairs.

If I'm reading the plans right, it's a goal to keep the theatre-like area, and the artwork that surrounds it (Water Mover by Jenny Heishman) more or less intact.  But they're planning to remove half of the arborvitae, so I expect it to be a long time before the park feels right to me.

Well, dear Diary, writing this part in you on my phone has been horribly time-consuming, so I'm going to have to find a better way soon.  Until then, happy days and nights.  The first photo below shows arborvitae, theatre and Water Mover, while the second shows the stairs at the bottom of the park.

 

 

 

Under Construction, part II: Themes

Dear Diary,

Well, I've been hiking, and have now visited six of the thirteen parks on my list for this page.  But technical problems are slowing me down, and anyway I can probably make the remaining parts shorter by putting these general remarks into one place.

Because, you see, dear Diary, Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation has certain priorities when it comes to construction.  Let's start with a couple of magic words.

Activation

Parks cares a lot about how many people use its parks, and the particular feedback loop it embraces is known as "activation".

The idea behind activation is that there's always room for one more person in a park, and to the extent their budgets allow, park managers want to bring that one more person in, using techniques known to help in doing so.  I'm not sure believers in activation think there can ever be too much of it.

Now, I have a pretty jaundiced take on this whole activation ideology, because I'm not at all sure weird single middle-aged men are in activation's target audience, but I'm absolutely sure homeless people are not in activation's target audience.  In fact, activation is often presented as a way to discourage homeless people from being in parks, by outnumbering them with normal people.

Nevertheless, Seattle Parks embraces activation ideology, and it comes up time and again in their construction projects.  Specifically, they like to replace playground equipment, partly as trends in safety engineering change (and perhaps advance), but also because new equipment is a new chance to activate more kids.

Access

I'm not here, dear Diary, to object to the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, from which we all benefit in many ways, and from which I, personally, benefit in specific ways as well.

But already in my hiking, I've become convinced that the word "access", used in explaining park projects, has a weird meaning, at once narrower than it should be (a path can be made "more accessible" without removing stairs) and broader than it should be (any path can be made "more accessible" by widening it).  So, in Seattle Parks project management, "access" is a magic word, not a well thought out principle.

Synthetic turf

Not all park construction norms are magic words.  Seattle Parks has been fairly busy replacing natural playfield surfaces with synthetic ones.

Not being an athlete, I have no real opinion on synthetic turf as an experience.  It may well be less "ecological", but I've already visited one target for conversion, and no blade of grass will be harmed by the planned changes to Woodland Park's Field 4's infield:

As an accounting student, though, I have to admit that synthetic turf is a major bureaucratic win.  Instead of considerable expenses to mow, water, and so on - labor expenses, mostly, very high in Seattle - synthetic turf is an asset, and depreciates.  Replacing it is small change in capital budgets.  I don't know, though, whether it's also a win for taxpayers.

Single user stalls

Yes, dear Diary, Seattle Parks also has a norm concerning your core topic.  (Although both access and activation will come up in that regard as well.)

I think it's obvious that single user stalls aren't as efficient in using space as multi-stall restrooms.  Each single user stall has a sink, after all, and probably a dryer.  But I don't have proof, because I hardly ever know how big the women's rooms are, so I can't do before and after comparisons.

For example, the old Cal Anderson Park men's room had two stalls plus a urinal.  Did the women's room have two or three?  Impressively, Parks managed to squeeze four single user stalls into that building, which is either parity (ignoring for now the urinal) or minus one.  However, two of those four were damaged years ago, and aren't on the construction radar, so it's worse than that in practice.

Single user stalls are certainly safer, while people are in them, and that's not trivial - someone running away from someone else can take pretty good refuge in one.

Well, dear Diary, those are the things I wanted to sum up here.  The time I've spent hiking has been available because my instructor has given us some days to study before the midterm on Monday.  I hope to visit three more parks tomorrow, but that still leaves three in Lake City, plus Hubbard Homestead and a return trip to Woodland, to squeeze into several weeks of frenetic assignments thereafter.

As for when I'll tell you about these hikes, dear Diary, it's more of a hassle than it'd been the past few years, but less time-consuming than hiking, so I hope pretty soon.  Until then, happy days and nights. 

Under Construction, part I: Introduction

Dear Diary,

Yes, it's been a long time.  I've been in school now for nine straight quarters, with at least three more to go before a break.  I'd thought not to take any classes this quarter, but that didn't work out.  Maybe next summer...

However, the Seattle Times recently ran an excellent article, by Ann Duan, about construction going on this year in the parks owned by the City of Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation.  It's accompanied by a map, by Winnie Yao, showing eight of those projects in North Seattle.

That looked like an easy hike to do while still in class.  Just seven destinations.  (Magnuson Park, of course, has two projects.)

But I was curious about Duan's sources, and it turns out that Parks's home page now links to two things, one of which seems to be new:

1.  For years, the home page has linked to a list of current and future projects, and still does.  When that link first appeared, it was next to squibs about recently completed projects at two parks.  As that part of Parks's home page fell into neglect, those two projects got steadily less recent.
2. So a few weeks ago, Parks started linking in that space to a map of projects completed from 2023 on.

So currently, the goal is that completed projects move off the list and onto the map.  I hope that continues to be maintained, but anyway it's current now.

Well, dear Diary, as I confessed long ago now, it's been years since I last saw most of the parks you're primarily about.  I plan to spend September, between quarters, at long last getting what I think of as a "baseline", knowledge of working and non-working water fountains and open and closed restrooms, for use in winter hikes in December.

But I hope to visit Duan's list of North Seattle projects, plus a few more up north, and also Matthews Beach and Green Lake Park, where there are supposed to be summer-only restrooms that I've never actually visited in summer, this month and next.

And then while getting the baseline, I'll spice those hikes up by looking at the completed, and the less shovel-ready future, projects.

We'll see what actually happens.  Besides my current class, I have several other demands on my time this summer, and anyway I'm normally pretty lazy in summers.  But I hope to see you soon, dear Diary, with reports of Green Lake, Woodland and A. B. Ernst parks, and Meridian Playground.

Let me not forget:  Downtown parks actually pull under their weight in projects.  Duan and Yao mapped only one, at the ID-Chinatown Community Center.  The sources listed above have some more.  I'm going to hold off on making plans for downtown, though, until I see how North Seattle is going, and also until I know whether I'll be working downtown.

Anyway, happy days and nights until we meet again, dear Diary. 

Peace Park Today

Dear Diary,

It's been a long time, hasn't it?  Some things have changed in Blogspot, and I'm not sure how I'll deal with those going forward, but anyway, that's why the photo in this page is so huge.

I went on a long hike today, and my path took me through Peace Park.  It seemed weirdly deserted and non-descript, just a rather dry lawn with some unobtrusive interruptions.  For what seemed like minutes I couldn't find the park sign, and wondered if it had been taken down.  Not so, but the only thing it brags about is the sculpture "Sadako and the Thousand Cranes", and that sculpture is still achingly absent.

But people remember it:

I'm sure I haven't read everything that's been said about the violent theft of that sculpture, but in what I have read, I've seen nothing about any possibility of replacing it.  Seems to me that the alternative is to tar ourselves with the guilt of the thief, to say we aren't good enough for a statue like that any more.  Anyway, I think this possibility of a new sculpture should at least be raised, and, if possible, handed for a decision to the people who left all those flowers, or people who remember how to make origami cranes, or like that.

Good night, dear Diary.  I'm still not sure when we'll meet again.

More silence, and then more

Dear Diary,

In September 2024, I began a series of hikes, and at the same time compiled "Past hikes of North Seattle parks in these pages", meant as a complement to a document I circulate (in particular at that time) as a publication history.  It was also an admission that nothing I write in you any more, dear Diary, gets much read; that our best days appear to be behind us now.

One reason for those hikes in September 2024 was to find out whether more people would read if I actually wrote about parks.  But, possibly because I'd chosen mystifying titles, few people read the resulting pages either.  So it was easy to transfer the time I'd intended to devote to them to the page I'd planned about the buses.

In December 2024, I added a section to the "Past Hikes" page covering the September 2024 hikes.  Since then, it's dawned on me, nobody will have seen that section either. So here it is, mildly edited:

And I've had basically no interest, this month [i.e. December], in finding out what's happening to park restrooms this winter.  I'm sorry, dear Diary, but not actually sorry enough to go hiking in the rain.  As other pages in you from earlier this year mention, I'm now in school, trying to put ever more distance between myself and homelessness, and this right now [i.e. December 2024] is my last long break before August. [This right now, February 2025, isn't a long break. It's a short break before an exam.]

Perhaps then [i.e., in August 2025], I'll do what I tried to do this past September:  find what I called then and still would call a "baseline".  Find out how the parks are operating in summer, so that if that winter I hike them again, I'll be able to tell what's different.  For that matter, locating water fountains (which are rather more mobile than restrooms) while the weather is nice.  If I can get that done next August and September [2025], I can in turn realistically do winter hikes, after I graduate, next December.

Anyway.  Here are the two pages:

• Thyme Patch Park on Monday
• Bitter Lake Reservoir Park Yesterday and Froula Park Today

The first covers most of the parks in NW, the second a couple of parks in far north Seattle.

And while you've probably figured out the point, dear Diary, in case those titles confuse any more readers, you might as well tell them that after my happening on Thyme Patch Park on the first hike, I decided to call the rest of the pages after parks without plumbing that I hadn't visited for way too long.  The second page's title hammers on something I've mentioned to you before, that Seattle actually has parks (those exact two), not that far away, built on reservoir land, but without their own plumbing.

Well, good night, and good days and nights until we meet again, dear Diary.

End of what I wrote in December 2024. Near as I can tell, it's still all more or less true. So again, dear Diary, happy days and nights and probably months, until we meet again.

A Requiem for Seventy-Seven Bus Stops, part VIII: The Route 322 south of NE 98th Street

Dear Diary,

This is probably the least-informed part of this page.  There's a lot I don't know about bus service on southern Lake City Way NE, except that there's never been all that much of it.

Buses started running on that part of that street in the late 1970s; there's no bus there in the 1977 map, but there is one, the route 307, in the 1979 map.  In September 2002, the 307 was replaced by Sound Transit route 522; this was regarded as a great improvement.  But in December 2009 (143-page PDF, page 129), the 522 had no stops between NE 125th Street and downtown Seattle; it now has one (14-page PDF), which happens to be in the area of interest, at NE 85th Street.  (During most of the 2010s, Sound Transit had the bright idea of keeping all its route maps in a GIS application that causes the Internet Archive to shrink in horror, so I have no idea when that stop appeared.)  At any rate, the northbound stop is #38235, and I'd be very surprised if the southbound one weren't #23595.

As for the stops here, Route 322 was created in October 2021.  The buses that had operated in that corridor in the 19 years between the 307 and the 322, besides the 522, were the route 306 and the route 312.  According to Sound Transit's map books, these were both suburban express buses operating only during rush hours, and probably commuter, one-directional, buses too.  I wouldn't ordinarily expect them to make stops along Lake City Way, but then, I grew up in places that treated the word "express" more seriously than Metro does.  (In Metro-speak, any bus that skips even a single stop it passes, more or less, is an "express", with exceptions for skip-stop patterns downtown.)  At any rate, these six stops exist now, and aren't supposed to exist come Saturday, but are supposed to exist again someday, unlike any of the stops I've discussed so far.  Because supposedly Metro is going to get serious about bus service on Lake City Way in the form of a new route with a two-digit number, the route 77, just as soon as Sound Transit takes the 522 away.

But for now, these stops are closing, and if I know anything about the future, it's that none of it is set in stone.

As before, the links in the lists of stops take you to one or more photos of the relevant stop stored at my Google Drive account.

Lake City Way NE

As I started hiking on Sunday, before I'd even reached any bus stops, I encountered a sticker that cheered me up, which may not quite have been its intent.

 

Northbound, two stops:

• Stop #38560, north of NE 95th Street.
• Stop #23594, just southeast of 16th Avenue NE.  It's between NE 80th and 82nd Streets.  This is the one I missed on my first hike Sunday, because it doesn't have a normal sign.
  
  It's also the one whose rider alert claims it'll be served by route 79 after the 322 goes north.  The 79 runs on NE 75th Street, more than five blocks away, and its new schedule shows no change in that.  So while there's a chance that the sign is telling the truth, and that chance is probably greater than the chance that my yet-to-be-conceived first child will be elected United States President this November, it isn't much greater, and I think I'm on safe ground expecting this stop to be closed soon.
  
  

Southbound, three stops:

• Stop #38230, just north of NE 95th Street.  I doubt the mural behind this stop was commissioned by Metro, but anyway, here's a photo of part of it:
  
  
  
• Stop #38236, northeast of NE 80th Street.  This stop is shared with the route 73.
  
• Stop #38237, just northeast of NE 75th Street.  This stop is shared with the route 73.
  

12th Avenue NE

Northbound, one stop:

• Stop #23593, north of NE 75th Street.  This stop is shared with the route 73.
  

A suggested stop

Six stops, plus whatever handful more further north, is not a lot.  This is not a very impressive route 77 we're looking forward to.  Remember, dear Diary, Lake City Way is diagonal, which means these five-block-apart stops are rather further apart than five blocks apart on more regular streets.

But let's for the moment run with five blocks apart anyway.  For those not keeping score at home, we now have the following:

Stops 23593 and 38237 near 75th.

Stops 23594 and 38236 near 80th.

Stops probably 23595 and certainly 38235 near 85th.

Stops 38560 and 38230 near 95th.

What's missing from this picture?

There are a lot of destination businesses along this part of Lake City Way, but they're of a particular kind ill-suited to bus service.  They are car repair shops, tire shops, car lots both new and used, gas stations ...  The whole vast paraphernalia of automobile service is welcome on southern Lake City Way.  There's a storage location, and although I use a different one myself, I think it's reasonable to count that as part of the automotive orientation of LCW.  There are also, of course, bars, restaurants, and the like, most of which I don't take seriously as destinations.

At the obvious hole in the stop map, there's a bar, The Shanty Tavern, in the northeast corner, a restaurant, Phayathai Cuisine, in the southwest corner, and it's easy to see why there isn't a bus stop there.

Except that it's also easy to see why there should be a bus stop there.  Phayathai Cuisine is one floor of a great big apartment building.  Across NE 90th Street, on the northwest corner, there's another, special, kind of apartment building, Emerald City Senior Living.  Which maintains a van for its residents, but presumably also gets visitors.  And, um, there's one other destination, which I strongly suspect is the real reason there's no bus stop there, at the southeast corner:  Pandora Night Club, also known as Pandora Adult Cabaret and a wide variety of similar names.  (I said, in the previous part, anent beaches, dear Diary, that we'd get back to the topic of nudity.  I wonder - just how widely do Metro buses re-route around Fremont on the day of the solstice parade?)

So yes, one glance at Pandora, and one knows that this intersection is a no-go zone for all right-thinking Seattleites; it is indeed easy to see why there isn't a bus stop there.  But hundreds of Seattleites, right-thinking or not, live at that intersection, and wouldn't it be courteous to offer them bus service?  Even if that made it excessively convenient for some sinners to go about their perfectly legal business?

Well, anyway, dear Diary, I'm now done with what I wanted to say about Metro's reductions of bus service this month, that are somehow being sold as increases in service in media better known than you and I are.  As I read the books listed in part IV, or any comments that appear once I tell some people that this page exists, I may find that I need to add a "Foolish Mortal" page correcting my mistakes about buses, but we can hope not.

In any event, we'll be back to parks and libraries pretty soon, but I have some movies to watch first.  So until then, dear Diary, happy days and happy nights.

A Requiem for Seventy-Seven Bus Stops, part VII: The Route 28 north of NW 97th Street; also, beaches and buses

Dear Diary,

No, I didn't sleep enough.  How about you?

Anyway, though, this is the last big heave of this page.  I want to talk not only about the sad collection of stops closing in the far northwest, but also about beaches, and bus service thereto.

I visited most of these stops on Saturday morning, then went back Monday afternoon, having found that Open Street Map maps three stops I'd ignored.  One of those, however, turned out not to be closing, because it's also a stop on the route D.  I also had doubts that two other stops (which I hadn't ignored) were really closing, but that was because I was applying the wrong standard of evidence to the new schedule; I should've been using preponderance of the evidence, not beyond a reasonable doubt.

See, the map shows a transfer point, no less, at NW 100th Place and 7th Avenue NW.

However, the schedule clarifies:  northbound trips end at that stop, stop #28680, where people can indeed transfer (to the route D).  But southbound trips, having turned at 3rd Ave NW and then at Holman Road NW, can't reach the stops across the street from the transfer point, and so they start instead at NW 97th Street:

This is apparently the way the route has worked ever since the extension north became a commuter-only route, which may be all the way back to when it started, for all I know.  (This extension is on the 1973 transit map but not the 1970 one.  The 28 reached NW 105th Street by the time of the 1965 map, but not further north.)  For some reason, none of my copies of the schedule map the Holman-route turn-around used by the non-commuter runs.  Now that every single run uses that turn-around, though, there's no excuse for not showing it.

As before, the links in the lists of stops go to my Google Drive, to folders there containing at least one photo of each stop listed.

Anyway.  The stops:

3rd Avenue NW

Northbound, three stops:

• Stop #28890, north of NW 143rd Street.
• Stop #28880, north of NW 140th Street.
• Stop #28870, north of NW 137th Street.

Southbound, three stops:

• Stop #27790, south of NW 145th Street.
• Stop #27810, just south of NW 140th Street.  A photo of a bus stop with none of the amenities I'm following:
  
  
  
  
• Stop #27820, just south of NW 137th Street.
   

NW 132nd Street

Northbound, one stop:

• Stop #28850, halfway between 4th Avenue NW and 3rd Avenue NW.
  

Southbound, one stop:

• Stop #27840, just west of 3rd Avenue NW.  This is one of the two closing stops on this route that I missed on Saturday.
  

8th Avenue NW

Northbound, two stops:

• Stop #28830, south of NW 132nd Street.
• Stop #28810, just north of NW 127th Street.
  

Southbound, two stops:

• Stop #27860, further south of NW 132nd Street.
• Stop #27880, south of NW 127th Street.
  

NW 125th Street

Northbound, two stops:

• Stop #28800, just east of 8th Avenue NW.
• Stop #28780, just east of Eldorado Lane NW.  This is the other stop that's actually closing that I missed on Saturday, probably because my attention was on a chat with a resident across the street.  While I was photographing it on Monday evening, the 28 bus actually pulled up and stopped.  I saw plenty of 20 buses while walking that route; few 73 buses Saturday evening, but several yesterday; but that was the only commuter bus I saw.  I wasn't on the 322's route at the right times, either Sunday or yesterday.
  

Southbound, one stop:

• Stop #27890, east of 8th Avenue NW.  At this stop, someone had recently installed a new cement pavement.  (Most, but not all, of the stops north of this one are unpaved, like stop #27810 above.)  Who paid for that apron, the home-owner, Metro, or someone else?  What will become of it now?  Does the home-owner get to use it for a grill, or for outdoor parties?
  

3rd Avenue NW

Northbound, five stops:

• Stop #28760, north of NW 120th Street.  This is the first, in this part, of four stops, both northbound and southbound, that have a rather bizarre appurtenance - I can't bring myself to call it an amenity.  Each of these stops has some fencing, of the same kind at each, clearly related to the stop, not the nearby residences.  I have no idea what it's for; it's hard to imagine crowd control ever being called for at the stops in question.
  
• Stop #28750, north of NW 117th Street.  117th is the northernmost route into Carkeek Park along public streets (as opposed to private back yards).
  
• Stop #28740, north of NW 115th Street.
• Stop #28720, north of NW 110th Street.  110th is the middle route into Carkeek Park along public streets.
  
• Stop #28700, north of NW 105th Street, and across the street from Viewlands Elementary School.  Also has fencing, not arranged in any plausible manner for student crowd control; just two panels, one leaning on the other.  This is the southernmost northbound stop closing.
  

Southbound, six stops:

• Stop #27910, some way south of NW 125th Street.  This is the northernmost of three southbound stops along this route that have benches.  While I was photographing this stop, a gentleman came out of the adjacent house and started discussing the closures with me.  He pointed out that it's fine for people on 3rd Avenue to walk over to Greenwood Avenue N, as the rider alert signs suggest, but that 8th Avenue NW is downhill from 3rd.  Were bus riders there supposed to walk five additional blocks uphill?  He said he'd written a letter.  I tend to think of commuter buses, buses that go only one direction in the morning, and only the opposite direction at night, as second-class bus service for a neighbourhood, but evidently there's a wide gulf between second-class and nothing at all, and people who live along commuter bus only streets are well aware of that gulf.
• Stop #27930, just north of NW 120th Street.
• Stop #27940, south of NW 117th Street.  Again, access (though difficult) to Carkeek Park.
• Stop #27950, just south of the line of NW 115th Street.  Has fencing.
  
• Stop #27970, just north of NW 110th Street.  Has a bench.  Again, difficult access to Carkeek Park.
• Stop #27990, just north of NW 105th Street.  Adjacent to Viewlands school.

NW 103rd Street

Southbound, one stop:

• Stop #28000, some ways west of 3rd Avenue NW.  Has both a bench and fencing:
  
  
  

NW 100th Place

Southbound, two stops:

• Stop #28010, just northeast of 7th Avenue NW.  On Saturday I was stunned and more than a little displeased to find that what I'd thought would be the first working stop is instead slated for closure.  Only when I reached 97th Street did I learn that the 28 is only hourly on weekends anyway.  I ended up walking all the way to NW 85th Street, going to a rummage sale along the way, and still made it just as the 28 did.  This stop is the nearest to the street access (6th Avenue NW) to the Eddie McAbee Entrance to Carkeek Park, which involves a whole lot more dirt trail than the NW 110th and 117th streets entrances mentioned above.  The stop across the street from this, which is not closing, is the remaining shred of an excuse Metro has for claiming that the 28 reaches Carkeek Park.  See not far below.
  
• Stop #28020, west and a little north of the intersection of 8th Avenue NW and NW 100th Street.
  

Beaches and buses

Two days before I started you, dear Diary, and a month after the March 13, 2020 lockdowns, Cliff Mass wrote a blog post arguing that outdoor air was safer than indoor air, and, essentially, that it was classist and ableist to close the parks, as was happening in many parts of the US, including (for large parks) Seattle.  It's probable that that post contributed to my decision to start you.

On July 1, 2020, I wrote in you, dear Diary, about Golden Gardens and Carkeek Parks for the first time.  I cited Cliff Mass's post, and then wrote:

"It's piffle anyway.  Seattle is a progressive city, no more capable of classism or ableism than of racism.  Next thing you know, someone will claim the President behaved badly."

Nota bene, at the time the United States President was the esteemed Donald Trump, not the current incumbent.  Anyway, I went on to suggest that if the powers that be really wanted to put a spike in Prof. Mass's argument, they should put a bus up Seaview Avenue NW.

I then wrote to Prof. Mass, saying I'd disagreed with him, and giving him the URL.  Some time later, I discovered he'd killfiled me:  I could no longer either e-mail him or comment on his blog posts.

Whatever that says about his sense of humour (well, there's a reason I stopped writing you all that satirically, dear Diary), I think this is a good occasion to say it straight:

Yes, there actually should be a bus up Seaview Ave NW, and into Golden Gardens Park, as there was from 1977 through September 2012, although toward the end of that time Metro had so completely lost the plot that the route 46 was, guess what? a commuter bus, Mondays through Fridays only.

And there should be, not just a bus that gets a rider within a mile or two of hiking to Carkeek Park's beach, but one that actually goes up NW Carkeek Park Road.  The beach itself is only reachable by stairs, but they're planning to build a new beach access soon, and dollars to doughnuts that'll have an accessible path too.  But instead Metro is getting rid of the risibly poor substitute they provided, that never got within a mile of Carkeek Park Road.

And there should be a bus that goes not just all the way down NE 65th Street, but then up Lake Shore Drive NE in Magnuson Park, all the way to the beach.  Just as if Magnuson Park existed in the same physical reality as the rest of North Seattle.

The lack of beach access by bus, all across North Seattle, isn't precisely ableist:  as far as I know, disabled people can use Metro's Access vans to reach beaches.  (Except, so far and probably for a few more years, Carkeek Park's beach.)  But it is ageist and it is classist.  And it contributes to parking problems well documented in signage all along Seaview, and about which I wrote in "Escaping Carkeek Park".

I don't get it.  This is the agency that invented Trailhead Direct.  So they can work with parks.  What do they have against beaches?  Is it illegal fires?  Who's more likely to start illegal fires at Golden Gardens - arrogant young people who drove there in cars that can carry wood or coal and kindling, or impoverished old people grateful to get to go there at all by bus?  Is it the near-nudity?  We'll get back to that in the last part of this page, but I'd hope not.

It would be stupid of me to expect my words, your pages, dear Diary, to have any direct impact, but all we can do is keep trying.  In any event, we're almost done.  28 stops on the route 20; 14 stops on the route 73 on 15th Avenue NE; 29 stops on the route 28 - that's 71.  There are six stops left, three of which are only route 322 stops, three of which are also route 73 stops as route 73 is (for a few more days) currently configured.  Soon.  Happy minutes or hours until then.