History and Parks, part II

Dear Diary,

I planned this trip with a fairly simple method:  having mapped all the relevant parks, I then grouped them by picking big arterial streets, and went either east to west (as in this first group, south of 55th or Market Streets) or west to east.  So the next two parks (first group) represent the beginning of downtown Ballard, but I then go pretty far west (second group) before returning to downtown.  This second group covers 55th/Market to 65th Streets.

Parks north of 65th place much less emphasis on history, or at least on Ballard's 18 years of independence or its settlers' Scandinavian roots.  To put it another way, they're less boring than some of these.

Two small parks in south downtown Ballard

These are actually on the same block of 22nd Ave; about where the first stops, the other starts across the street.  I reached them by taking Leary Way from Fred Meyer, then Ballard Ave, which meets 22nd at the first.

Marvin's Garden

This is not one of the boring ones, as long as you're careful.  It's a small space stuffed to the gills with plaques, but the only ones you need to read are those identifying "Marvin":

Anyway, my guess is that the people who made this park were so obsessed with plaques that they left all the landscaping to someone or ones who knew what they were doing.  So in spite of the fact that it's essentially a concrete plaza surrounded by less than fascinating plants, it has a rightness to it that money couldn't buy; not that I really know what I'm talking about, but I feel that this is a Classical garden.  A big part in creating this aura is played by a bell tower:

Unfortunately, all this is a considerable contrast with

Bergen Place

I don't trust my memory when it says this has less of a plant border than Marvin's Garden, but I do believe that my initial impression was of a typical downtown windswept concrete plaza.  It's meant to honour Seattle's sister city relationship with Bergen, Norway; I think I found it more crowded than such plazas usually are, but I still didn't think it did much honour.  That said, the park flies the five Scandinavian flags, and I always like the surprise of seeing a non-American flag in the air:

EDIT 6/29:  I saw a sixth flag from the bus today, so figured I should investigate if time allowed, which it did.
     The reason this park is more popular than a typical bare windswept plaza isn't hard to find:  It isn't bare.  As I suspected when writing the above, I'd forgotten a plant border, sandwiched between benches and pillars, the latter topped with things I did find icky.  Observe:

   As for the sixth flag, I dunno.  It's longer and narrower than a normal flag, and in Norwegian colours.  It isn't a flag of Bergen, but could be a military or maritime variant of the Norwegian flag.  I decided to make a video to make the flags clearer:

As I understand it, they are, left to right and order of focus in the video, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, uncertain.

From there I took Market St past the National Nordic Museum (and to be fair, ate lunch on a bench they provide) to the Ballard Locks (or rather their gates), but I'm saving them for two pages from now, maybe within a day or two.  Our next stop also isn't a Seattle city park, but it took me a whole day to figure that out.  See, I went up 32nd Ave to

A viewpoint on 60th St that is not the NW 60th St Viewpoint

There's a railing at the end of 60th - the westernmost 60th in town - and that railing affords an evidently popular but surprisingly complex view.  The complexity is because you can, from that railing, see not only the water, and the Olympic Mountains across it, but also the much nearer Burlington Northern Railroad.  Oh, and northernmost Magnolia.  So I took four pictures.  The train:

The Olympics behind the train:

Magnolia behind the train:

And the Olympics without the train:

Next I hiked back to 32nd and south to 58th and 

Thyme Patch Park

This is a small, pleasant place, shady in a summer afternoon, where I caught up on my notes and rested.  It has no plumbing except that required by the P-Patch.  It has two styles of art, and for once the one I liked is the one credited.  Roses added to the entry rails by Chuck Nafziger:

(The other art is goofy-looking frogs.)

A hop and a skip away, at 60th and 28th Ave,

Ballard Playground and Community Center

This is one of only two Community Centers in "NW" - the other is in the next page, which I probably can't write in you, dear Diary, today.  In contrast, "NE" has six.  ("N" has two.)  Two of "NE"'s (Laurelhurst and Magnuson) and both of "NW"'s have external restrooms, as does Green Lake in "N".  (I plan to reach Bitter Lake, the other "N", later in this trip.)  Of "NE"'s two, Magnuson's are seasonal and weren't open when last I checked; I've found all the other external restrooms open.  (A revisit to Magnuson is for later in this trip.)  Is anything wrong with this picture?

Anyway, yes, Ballard Community Center has two restrooms open, I think ungendered, one of which has a working dryer.  The double water fountain nearby was not running, even though it's this set's westernmost; that remains true the rest of the way north.  So no, I haven't really found a western border to the dryness, just an isolated western working fountain, like Burke-Gilman Playground Park's in the east.  (As I write this, not having bought and carried a gallon jug, I'm parched.)

Ballard Playground is, as usual, proudest of its playground.  I liked both a formal sculpture by Chuck Greening, "Ballard Boat", and an uncredited piece of playground equipment behind it in this shot:

(The piece I like is the tall one I see as black with white polka dots in the photo.)

Improvements planned seem not to have universal approval:

Ballard Commons

Despite the famous sweep at a time of no sweeps, the first thing I saw of Ballard Commons both times I went there (along 57th St) was a tent.  And if Gilman Playground got the best of those swept, those who stayed put or have returned can't be too far from the worst.  On each visit a loud dispute broke out shortly after I arrived.  Why do they stay in such an inauspicious place?  One reason might be that it has a triple, running water fountain.

The park's biggest claim to fame is, believe it or not, the "Portland Loo", in other words, a "sanican" variant identified with another city.  There are also three more conventional "sanicans", and two hand-washing stations besides that built into the "Loo", which was out of water while I was there.  I don't get it.  First you design a park - a classic downtown windswept concrete plaza, at that, a design notorious for repelling the housed - to attract the homeless, and then when we show up you kick us out?

So iIt does have a skatebowl, and the seashell sculptures through which, in other years, water flows for play, are cute:

Also, when SPL stopped offering Wi-Fi at Ballard, I started being notified of a "Ballard Commons Free Wi-Fi".  But I never got it to work, and it's the opposite of communal anyhow.

Interested people are aware of what one might call the site's terrible feng shui.  They want to add a playground, and that would probably help.

But it might not, with an existing playground so close.  And I'm not sure you can sidestep a place's essence.  Ballard Commons is downtown.  Shouldn't it have something less common?  My thought was a bandstand, not just a literal stand but with outlets for electronic equipment, and maybe a well-built shed for a piano.  Well, whatever; it's not really my business.

But if you want the homeless out of Ballard Commons, give us water supplies elsewhere, for Heaven's sake.

Ballard Corners Park

This small park is at 17th Ave and 62nd St.  It basically features two sculptural re-creations of mid-20th Century life, with a very short trail between.  The park is where an old convenience store used to be, of the kind I can remember from my own early childhood elsewhere, and the park is very proud of Nathan Arnold's soda counter.  But if you approach from the south, you'll see Arnold's other sculpture first, and I won't spoil the surprise.

Gemenskap Park

One aspect of Seattle's current mayor's administration that's been surprisingly little discussed is her revival of former mayor Mike McGinn's road diets, which in his hands were hugely controversial.  Admittedly, the most obvious example is quite recent, so there hasn't been time for full-blown hysteria; I mean, of course, the "Stay Healthy" streets.

But here's another.  This one is actually a literal McGinn legacy:  the planning began in his term, burbled along under the intervening mayors, and the park opened in 2018 under the current mayor.  Basically, Gemenskap Park is two lanes subtracted from 14th Ave between 59th and 61st Streets and turned into a park.  It's essentially grass in one lane and a wide promenade in the other, and the night I visited was very popular.

All for now, dear Diary.  My feet are killing me from standing typing, and I need to find things to drink.  I should next have Wi-Fi when I reach the Broadview branch of the library, luck and SPL willing, and then be writing at a steady clip when I return to campus.