Under Construction, part IX: Pickleball v. Tennis

Dear Diary,

I identify myself, politically, as a "radical conservative leftist".  I ask dumb questions, which is the hallmark of a radical; I'm suspicious of change, which is the mark of a conservative; and the things I want not to change make me a leftist.

All this to say that the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation has recently admitted to a mistake, but it's a mistake of which I approved.  I'm discussing the topic in "Under Construction" partly because it's in the project list and happening in 2026 (that is, the plans linked to, which this whole part is based on, are being revised this year), and partly because some of it involves actual construction.

See, dear Diary, tennis is a game codified in the 1870s, played on "courts" with "racquets"; as those names suggest, its origins are in mediaeval France.  Pickleball is a vaguely similar game invented in 1965 on Bainbridge Island here in Washington state.

So when pickleball surged in popularity, Parks pointed out that parks don't change very fast, and shouldn't recognise fads.  I completely approve.

When the surge didn't abate, in 2017 they started adding pickleball striping to some of their existing tennis courts, then calling these courts "dual use".  Now, they say, dual use was a reasonable plan:

New courts require significant space and funding - for acquisition of land and/or development of facilities at existing parks.  Furthermore, many of the existing parks currently without courts were purchased with grant funding that restricts active recreation and/or impervious coverage.  Therefore, dual striping was an effective tool to add pickleball courts quickly and economically.

They ended up with twenty dual use courts, five of which are in North Seattle.

However, as dual use increased, so did complaints; they imply, but don't state, a correlation.  So pickleball and tennis are breaking up.  Of the dual use courts in North Seattle, Bitter Lake Playfield and Ravenna Park are designated for pickleball, while Gilman Playground, Soundview Playfield and Wallingford Playfield are (re-)designated for tennis.

As part of this process, they also started designating "hubs", including one for tennis in Woodland Park, and one for pickleball at Green Lake Park.  They're considering designating more hubs, including Laurelhurst and Meadowbrook playfields for tennis and Magnuson Park and Bitter Lake Playfield for pickleball.  One element of "hub"ness for pickleball is allowing "open play"; in contrast, Ravenna, Laurelhurst, Greenwood Park and Maple Leaf Reservoir Park will be reserved for "closed play". 

They warn that expansion is a tough row to hoe, but in 2027 they'll explore adding tennis courts to Froula and Magnuson parks, and look for room for pickleball courts at Gilman and Magnuson.  They also say that Bitter Lake and Maple Leaf may have room for expansion whenever their courts are resurfaced.

Wow, dear Diary.  I had no idea sports at the parks were so complicated.  Anyway, I've now cleared the decks for Bitter Lake's "Building a Baseline" part, so I'll see you tonight or tomorrow with that.  Until then, happy times, dear Diary. 

 

All Night Long, Questions Edition, part I: Unofficial

Dear Diary,

This is a story I think is worth telling, but it's more than a little disgusting about Number One.  I've tried to make it a bit less so by letting English Wikipedia links do most of the talking about, for example, this.

Last Saturday, I had to do laundry, but also wanted to go to Bitter Lake Playfield to get the construction-related photos I'd forgotten to get on previous visits.  Suddenly it occurred to me that Bitter Lake Playfield was one of the parks I'd heard had 24-hour restrooms, and is sort of near Carkeek Park, whose restrooms' 24-hourness I'd seen for myself, so I should do an "All Night Long" hike.

Well, I got to Bitter Lake around (checks to confirm, OK, I'm not senile yet) 5:30 pm.  Now, September 5th was before Labor Day this year, so I figured maybe park restrooms were still closing at 9 pm, so I had to find things to do until 10:30 or so.

The construction photos filled quite a lot of that time, since one of them was to be of the playground, which was never deserted that night before sunset.  So along about 8 pm I headed for Carkeek Park.

Now, one thing I failed to do before I left changed the whole night for me.  My mother had taught me, when quite young, that I should always go potty before going out.  But I didn't want to take my satchels into Bitter Lake Playfield's restrooms, nor leave them unattended in the crowd.  So I didn't, on this occasion, heed my mother's advice.

Well, everything went fine until about mile fifty of the hundred-mile trek, that is, about mile 2 out of 3 or so, somewhere on NW 117th St, I started to experience this.  At extraordinary length.  When I started you, dear Diary, I can remember isolated brief episodes of that really shocking me, one actually in one of Laurelhurst Community Center's restrooms, another at Northeast branch Library waiting for a call from Anna Patrick.

The problem is an extremely common one in older men.  Sometime around 2016, my first doctor on Medicaid, whom I was already starting to dislike, correctly diagnosed me with this, and prescribed this.  That was in response to an isolated example of this, which also got me kicked out of Scarecrow Video's doorway.  Now, the thing is, that drug is supposed to make it easier to do Number One, which I figured then was the last thing I needed.  But by 2021, things had gotten enough worse that I really wanted my second Medicaid doctor to revive the prescription.

Unfortunately, the new prescription had an expiration date, which even more unfortunately came a few months after I was kicked off Medicaid for making too much money.  Soon after that, the money went away too.  All this in 2025.

So while what happened on the way to Carkeek Park was a shock, it shouldn't have been.  I'd really messed up.

Anyway, when I finally got to Carkeek Park's restrooms, I discovered that I'd effectively filled my clothes as if they were this, and, worse, that I actually retained sensory memories of that kind of clothing.  This is not as shocking as it would be for most people, thanks to a long-lasting (until age 7) primary case of this, but it still made a bad situation worse.

So, Carkeek's Shelter 2, the immense WPA one, being available, I went and vegetated until I was sick of the company of my own thoughts.  The deal with Carkeek Park's restrooms being 24 hours, as our frenemy Rachel Schulkin eventually figured out, is that the parks maintenance guys at the ends of their shifts were supposed to close the gate across the only road into Carkeek.  Theoretically they should first have closed the restrooms, but they didn't see any point.

Well, so I figured if the gate was already closed, I'd know the restrooms were still 24 hours.  But the gate didn't close, and didn't close, and finally around 11 pm, on my third hike out there, I saw a car from PanAmerican Security enter the park.  So I squelched back, much slower than the car, and it turns out this is what the doors to Carkeek Park's restrooms look like at night now:

So there I was, half done, and of course the doors to Bitter Lake Playfield's three single-user stalls were locked when I arrived.  I'd only heard about those being 24 hours, mostly from homeless peers, but it was still a disappointment.

And, as it turned out, a mildly pressing disappointment; my this, itself fairly shocked by recent events, was nevertheless starting to make noises again.  Obviously I'd have to walk home - I was far too smelly to take a bus.  So I'd stop at one of the official 24-hour restrooms.

But why not take these lemons and make lemonade?  By no means is View Ridge Playfield anywhere near my way home, but if I could get there the same night, it would be a clean sweep.  All three of the 24-hour restrooms in North Seattle of which I'd learnt unofficially.

Now, at that point I wasn't thinking very rationally.  But I expected View Ridge's restrooms to be closed too.  I figured at some level the parks maintenance guys had been insubordinate in both cases.  (My best guess, based on how they talked about View Ridge, was that they took great pride in being able to keep it open without any vandalism.)  Maybe the parks department had sort of militarised, and there was no room left for anyone not a team player.

But no!  I still can't show you, dear Diary, photos of View Ridge Playfield's restrooms closed.  Maybe my e-mail to Christina Hirsch the next day was the first they'd heard that those restrooms were still 24 hours, maybe another security service contract was executed, and maybe they're closed right now.

But also, maybe not.  The easy answer, and the most seductive to me at first, was classism.  Carkeek Park is in a richer neighbourhood.

But there are other plausible answers.  I'd witnessed Carkeek Park's restrooms being open, true, but I'd also witnessed loud, late-night parties at Carkeek Park.  Maybe the neighbours were complaining.  I've never witnessed a more plausible basis for complaint about results of 24-hour restrooms at View Ridge - well, more plausible than me.

Maybe, far from militarising, the park maintenance guys didn't mind handing over the late-night Carkeek work, but weren't going to tolerate anyone messing with their pride and joy, View Ridge. 

The one thing I know is that it didn't result from high-level thought about where 24-hour restrooms would do the most good.  Because such high-level thought couldn't possibly miss the suitability of Bitter Lake Playfield for the job, one block from Aurora as it is.

Part II a week from now, I hope, dear Diary.  In which one of the questions is about the backward and (View Ridge) incomplete way Parks advertises its 24-hour restrooms. 

Good night, dear Diary. 

Under Construction, part VIII: Lake City Mini-Park

Dear Diary,

Lake City Mini-Park is one of at least seven City of Seattle properties named after Lake City, in the area I think of as downtown Lake City.  It's the least promising of these properties, in fact, being a concrete slab adjacent to office buildings on one side and traffic on the other.  Now, Westlake Park, in Seattle as a whole's downtown, could be described much the same way.  But Westlake Park is much bigger, so more flexible.  And in recent years, the Downtown Seattle Association has taken the job of Activating Westlake Park off the hands of the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation.  (For an example of both facts, I offer a concert I attended in July in Westlake Park.)  Parks has no such handy partner in downtown Lake City.

So every few years, Parks tries to change the physical setup of the park in hopes that this will encourage Activation.

The official page of the park currently says very little, and, to my astonishment, advertises the DSA's Activation of that other downtown.

However, the "engagement hub" for the most recent Activation attempt, last updated in February of this year, still survives, and has all the details.

"lighting"

I don't remember whether the Christmas-like lights strung across the space were there before.  I didn't see any other obvious lights.

"ornamental fencing"

I think this, functional as well as ornamental, actually may be new:

"new operating hours"

Shorter operating hours are seen as discouraging riffraff, so as indirectly Activating, but Lake City Mini-Park's hours are currently at the longest setting, so what I think this means is a new physical sign:

"public art"

I didn't see it.  I took a photo of a mural I didn't recognise, but it turned out to be shown in a photo from a report dated August 30, 2025 by Jonathan Choe, and the only other thing I identified as art is a rather weathered arch that I'm pretty sure I've shown you before, dear Diary.

"landscaping"

Say what?  How do you landscape concrete slabs?

"new bistro furniture"

This, I did see.  Three tables, three chairs, that were much appreciated by the people I found there, although those people may not have been normal Activation targets.

So my tentative judgement is that this project did not completely alter Lake City Mini-Park's clientele, but may have made the park more useful to its existing clientele.

Building a Baseline, part VI: Retrenchment

Dear Diary,

In less than two weeks, fall quarter 2026 begins.  I still don't know whether I'll be taking any classes, and so am holding off on writing several things.  But one thing I do know now with some certainty is that I can't visit 500 places and write about them in you to my satisfaction, by the end of October, whether or not I have any classes.  So something has to give.

Two things are going to give.

First, I'm going to concentrate on City of Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation parks for the next two weeks, and to whatever extent I can thereafter, until I've visited all those in North Seattle.  Again, with a deadline of late October.

Second, I'm not going to write much about those visits.  None of those parks are going to be in the area setting this page is based on.  So, starting in November, to the extent allowed by any classes I take or any job I get, I'll resume writing parts of this page, as I'm able to visit the other places on my original list.

I currently have two areas for which I think I'm already done, but which I haven't yet written in this page, around Bitter Lake and around downtown Lake City.  As time allows in the coming weeks, I'll write those up.  Also, I intend to finish the park visits with Meadowbrook {Playfield | Community Center | Pool}, after which I'll get to spend some time at Meadowbrook Pond, and then be ready to write about places around Meadowbrook, the first part subsequent to this water fountain hunt.

One other thing might give.

Carkeek, Golden Gardens and Magnuson parks all have well-documented restrooms (modulo some uncertainty about the history of Magnuson's) and water fountains, and also all have lots of trails.  I promised, earlier in this page, to follow all the trails, and I'm actually finding that a very useful practice.  But I'll leave those three parks for late in whatever time I can spend on you, dear Diary, in case I just can't allocate that much time to them.  Kingfisher Natural Area also has lots of trails, but it isn't at all documented concerning plumbing, so I do think it's time I learnt those trails.

It won't be all Parks parks.  What I'm looking for is restrooms whose doors open to the outside, and outdoor water fountains.  I'm now pretty sure I'm wasting time looking for those things at Seattle Public Schools schools (and I wasn't actually visiting them looking anyway).  But we've already seen both things at Northgate Mall and at Dunn Gardens.  So about a fifth of the places I listed from OpenStreetMap are still on my list, including such large areas as the University of Washington's Seattle campus, North Seattle College, and University Village.  Anywhere I still hope to find the things I'm looking for.

Finally, while this page will languish for some time, "Under Construction", which is about construction this year at Parks parks, should perk right back up with the change of focus.

So we'll still meet again reasonably soon, dear Diary.  Just not so much in this page.  Happy days and nights until we do meet. 

Building a Baseline, part V: Around Bitter Lake Reservoir

Dear Diary,

This part here is a throwback.  All four of  the properties are city-owned (well, half of one seems to be an easement, but much more of an easement than the usual street one).  And there are no outdoor water fountains, let alone public restrooms.  But that last may change in a few years, because Seattle Public Utilities is burying the titular reservoir.

Two more of the new-to-you parks are in this part, too.  So let's start.  Oh, but first a map.

Linden Avenue Parcels (A on map)

What if you threw a park, and nobody came?

This small vaguely park-ish place at 14301 Linden Ave N consists of two legal bits of land

that the Parcel Viewer describes thus:  the northern one belongs to "Northline Apts (Vac Easement)" but Seattle City Light is the taxpayer, while the southern one just plain belongs to Seattle City Light.  (Overhead power lines are pretty thick here, but not exceptional; still, I can't think why else SCL would care.)

It basically consists of a ditch with a path mostly west and above the ditch.  I'm guessing this culvert represents the parcel boundary:

And made me think the ditch was meant to daylight a creek, but, well, no water came; but actually lots of places in that area have ditches, and they can't all represent real creeks.  Any real creek that might be involved would certainly flow towards Bitter Lake a few blocks south.

It's not much of a park, and I don't know why it hasn't been incorporated into the plans for C below.  But the stones, examples shown below, west of the trail for most of its length, are at least a minimal design gesture, so it may be worth seeing for someone who's in the neighbourhood.

Bitter Lake P-Patch (B)

This is in the park discussed next, and I didn't see anything I wanted to photograph.  It seems to be a priority, however, that this will expand in the coming events.  That said, the Department of Neighborhoods page doesn't yet hint at an expansion at all.

Bitter Lake Reservoir Park (C)

In view of this park's upcoming promotion to major park status - after 2029 it'll more than triple in size (2.88 acres now, plus over 6) - its old name, which ended in "Open Space", has nearly disappeared.

Oh, size.  I remember making much of being unclear about the boundaries between park and reservoir, partly because areas in both were evidently open to the public.  I can't get away with that claim any more, because if you look closely, dear Diary, at the OpenStreetMap map above, it does show park boundaries, and they're even clearer in this from the King County Parcel Viewer:

I've never found this park, at 14201 Linden Ave N, all that photogenic, and my standby, shooting the amphitheatre benches from above, is now blocked by construction fences.  Construction?  Yes, but not yet Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation construction, so it doesn't belong in "Under Construction", which is about 2026 Parks construction.  That said, Parks is well along in planning for the bounty, and at the engagement hub the "Preferred Schematic Design", a one-page PDF, can be downloaded.  The fourth of the five "new" parks I visited last Tuesday doesn't exist yet, but the version in that PDF should be rather more worth visiting than the existing park.

That design lists the restroom (hopefully not actually singular as at Little Brook and Greenwood parks) last, and Parks is very clear about not having the money lined up yet to do this all at once.  Nor is a water fountain mentioned at all.  But look, folks.  All Parks properties in North Seattle larger than nine acres, except for Kingfisher Natural Area and Llandover Woods, which are a different kind of park, have water fountains, and all except the same two and the Burke-Gilman Trail have restrooms.  If this park turns out to be the exception, the neighbours will have the right to ask why.

Bitter Lake Reservoir and Pump Station (D)

Meanwhile, the star of the whole show is hidden behind construction equipment and dust:

Seattle Public Utilities's project page dots all the i's and crosses all the t's, which means I don't have to.

Why did I think, in the past, that areas of the reservoir land were public?  Well, there's always been some sort of trail along Linden Ave N, in the park part.  But I'd seen people just as winded arrive at the Fremont Ave N side of the park.  So I inferred a similar trail on that side.

Baseline around Bitter Lake Reservoir:

Nothing now.

Anyway, dear Diary, this is it for today.  I was up all night hiking for you, and will spend tomorrow doing the same by day.  I'm going to have to make changes to this page, that is, "Building a Baseline", and will talk about that and many other things over the week to come.  Happy days and nights until we meet again.

Dunn Gardens: Initial Impressions

Dear Diary,

Dunn Gardens, a seven-acre private park in northwest Seattle, poses several ethical questions for you and me.  You see, now that I know about it, I know of two parks in North Seattle where restrooms are hidden behind a paywall.

There are important differences between the two in this respect.  Woodland Park Zoo isn't a member of Museums for All; Dunn Gardens is.  Woodland Park Zoo has physically structured its entrance to ensure payment; that's spectacularly untrue of Dunn Gardens.  Woodland Park Zoo, on the other hand, is very near count 'em ten free park restrooms, some of which are open 24 hours; Dunn Gardens is pretty much it for public restrooms within a square mile or three.

So ethics can only dictate so far.  Thanks to a very helpful employee, I was able to take slightly more photos than this page contains; I can't imagine that happening at Woodland Park Zoo.  And if that's unfair to the zoo, too bad.

Just the facts, please

Dunn Gardens is at 13533 Northshire Road NW.

It started as the summer home of Arthur Dunn, who died in 1945.  In 1952, before annexation by Seattle, the family sold some acres to avoid the land being condemned by the local school district.  As a result, some neighbouring houses, built on the sold land, claim to belong to the Shire.

There are indications many places, ranging from the paperwork related to the 1994 addition to the National Register of Historic Places (38-page PDF) to English Wikipedia, that there have been many restrictions on how open to the public the gardens really are.  However, today they're open year round, people needn't be guided by docents, and the remaining main restrictions are two.  They don't have much parking, and their hours are short, seven per day, closed Sundays.

In the unlikely event that a homeless wanderer was in whatever part of northwest Seattle is closer to Dunn Gardens than to Carkeek Park or Bitter Lake Playfield (nothing in Shoreline would be closer, but I have reason to hope both those parks' restrooms are 24 hours), the parking probably wouldn't matter, but the hours probably would.

Doing things right

What I think I like best about Dunn Gardens is several apparently recent innovations that have been done conspicuously well.

This includes the plumbing.

They didn't have to get a wheelchair-compatible restroom, or a year-round water fountain, but they did.  Their membership in Museums for All is recent.

I don't know how valid their apparent belief that their main market is the elderly is, but they're doing that right too.  An all terrain wheelchair, an automated external defibrillator, handrails in both restrooms.

A Place to Be

Dunn Gardens costs $10 per visit or $50+ per year.

They have maps more convenient than this one.  I recommend those maps' use.

I'm not, personally, that much into gardening.  Both my parents were, and the scene outside the office feels homelike to me.

But I'm not completely insensible to beautiful plants, as you perfectly well know, dear Diary.  In futures in which I don't return to homelessness, I'll probably want to come back occasionally, and not just to check on the plumbing.

Good night, dear Diary.

 

Building a Baseline, part IV: Around Seattle's northwest corner

Dear Diary,

This part concerns three places, one of which I've never seen, and a different one of which is quite far from the other two.  So it's a dubious gathering.

But that's what these hikes' version of "inconvenients" are like.  In part II of this page, I wrote "Most of North Seattle is, on the maps I drew, full of interesting places to go."  The first day I tried to visit 20 destinations, September 1st, only four were left for Northgate.  (I then ruled one out of that part.)  So I looked for isolated destinations that wouldn't take bites out of the main web, and this part and the next, about Bitter Lake Reservoir, are examples.  (Northgate and Bitter Lake itself are bites out of the main web, but ones I felt relatively confident about.)

Here's the usual OpenStreetMap map:

So let's go!

Unidentified exclusive park (A on map)

There's a vacant lot, about fifteen acres in size, just north of the City of Seattle park, seven acres, Llandover Woods.  This vacant lot goes up to the city's border with Shoreline.

From the website of the owners, The Highlands, I'm fairly confident that this lot is, or is part of, a park.  That website doesn't name most of their extensive parks, and specifically not this one.

The Highlands is a gated community in Shoreline; this may be their only Seattle property.  One gate, in the form of a guard station, is visible from near Llandover Woods's entrance:

I'm afraid, dear Diary, that this is the first of the five parks getting their first descriptions in your pages that I mentioned.  But the best of the five is also in this part.  If this park has an address, I don't know it; the King County Parcel Viewer doesn't assign addresses to vacant lots.

Llandover Woods (B)

This is a woodsy park at 14499 3rd Ave NW, with trails and distinctive benches as its main amenities.  I've only discussed it with you, dear Diary, once, I think, in November 2020's "Top of the City, part III".  Unaccountably, considering that I would soon start writing about topography, I left out any reference to its spectacular relief.  (Basically, Llandover Woods, and for that matter Llandover on the Sound, the home owners' association, are on the slopes of coastal cliffs rather like those I described, not very well, in "Land and Water in North Seattle, part II: The Lake City Coast".)

There are two main trails, one of which marches efficiently from entrance to exit.  The other wanders more, has less official trails branching off from it, and is simply more fun.  Unfortunately, to make that latter trail work, they had to include stairs.

I did have fun there, and will try not to let six more years pass before I visit again.

Dunn Gardens (C)

This is a garden property that boasts of being the only publicly accessible example in Washington of a garden designed by the Olmsted brothers, the same people who designed Ravenna Boulevard.  It contains two (not very) private residences, and I ended up leaving by the driveway of one.

Its management has a very clear idea of who its main audience is (unlike me!), and the gardens' home page brags about their "all terrain wheelchair".

This is a privately owned park, part owned by the E. B. Dunn Historic Garden Trust, and part by the owners of the private residences.  And I took way too many photos to fit into this part, and liked the place enough that I want to give it its own page anyway.  So that's the last page I hope to write in you tonight, dear Diary.

This much more teaser, though:

Baseline for the northwestern corner of Seattle:

Dunn Gardens - One water fountain, running, and with the sort of water delay that fountains at Northacres and Cal Anderson parks have.  They bought it expecting it to run all year, and it looks like they got their money's worth.  Two non-gendered single user stalls, one wider than the other and presented as accessible.  All at least notionally paywalled.

I hope to get back to you soon, dear Diary.