Winter Is Coming

Dear Diary,

Do you expect King County to reach Phase 3 and public buildings to re-open before spring of 2021?  Sorry, but I don't.  Now, coming from Wisconsin I don't really think Seattle has a winter - by my standards, February through May is spring, June through September summer, and October through January autumn.  But each of the past two years we've had a week or two of snow, and this time's supposed to be a La Niña, meaning colder and wetter.  So even by my standards, some sort of winter is probably going to happen before we're all happily vaccinated.

So I think it's worth returning to this November 2019 document, listing park restrooms meant to stay open last winter.  It is, of course, possible that this winter, more restrooms will have been winterised, but I haven't so far seen any sign of that.

I know of three parks whose restrooms are currently open 24 hours in North Seattle - Gas Works Park, View Ridge Playfield, and one I haven't introduced yet.  I suspect but do not know that Green Lake Park may be another.  Ballard Commons is sometimes listed as one more, but only has "sanican"s.  Fortunately, all of these are due to remain open except the one I haven't named.

Otherwise.  For the southeastern part of "NE", we have Laurelhurst Community Center, lower Ravenna Park, and further north Dahl Playfield and the beach restrooms at Magnuson Park, besides View Ridge.  Elsewhere in "NE" we have Maple Leaf Reservoir Park, Matthews Beach, Jackson Park (different hours), and the playground-side restrooms at Northacres Park.

In "N", besides Green Lake and Gas Works, there's Wallingford Playfield, some of the restrooms in the eastern part of Woodland Park, and presumably at least some of those in the Woodland Park Zoo (they haven't gotten back to me).  Not much at the north end of "N".

In "NW", Carkeek Park, both sets of restrooms at Golden Gardens Park, and Loyal Heights Community Center seem to be it.  I have no idea why the restrooms at Ballard Community Center should close, but they aren't on last year's list.  (Unless they're what the listing of Ballard Commons actually means.)  This represents a real shortage at the south end of "NW", for which the limited hours at the Ballard branch of the Seattle Public Library will hardly compensate.

Keep in mind, also, that all bets are off if it snows seriously, since all except the 24-hour restrooms need to be opened daily.

That said, this is far better than the water fountain story.  Northacres Park's playground-side fountains are the only winterised ones I found in North Seattle.

My theory is that the reason nothing has been done about this this year has to do with the fact that Seattle also hasn't done much to house us homeless this year.  The idea is that we'll all keep warm hiking to Northacres Park for water (let alone lugging it back) so we won't need housing.  It's so good that our mayor always has our best interests at heart.

Cal Anderson Park Is Not a Park

 Dear Diary, 

This morning before it got too hot out to move, I went to my storage unit.  And on the way there, I walked the perimeter of Cal Anderson Park, as well as some of the paved paths within.

And I think everyone's confused.  Granted, there are reasons for this.  The Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation continues to present it as a park.  We all remember it being a park.  And we all hope it'll be a park again.  But we're all deluded.

Seattle's Parks Are Open

As recently as August 18, the parks department's front page declared that "All parks are open".  Cal Anderson isn't the only exception -  tomorrow Gas Works Park will close for fear that the First Amendment will spread COVID-19 or dissent or something.  But that's my point.  With Gas Works scheduled to close, there's no pretending that "All parks are open".  But with Cal Anderson closed for more than a month, it was OK to say that.  Elementary logic suffices:  This means Cal Anderson Park is not a park.

Seattle's Parks' Restrooms Are Open

According to Erica C. Barnett, our wonderful mayor ordered that park restrooms be opened on April 6.  However, most of the time since then, the restrooms at Cal Anderson Park have been locked; at present they're fenced in.

Admittedly, similar things are also true of University Playground, Freeway Park, and perhaps others.  So unlike the previous point, this isn't conclusive.

Temporarily Closed Parks Don't Work Like That

Temporary closures of Seattle parks work in one of two ways.

1) They're closed long term for renovation and such, in which case the closure is enforced by a fence.  Examples I've shown you pictures of, dear Diary, include Fritz Hedges Waterway Park, A. B. Ernst Park (incipient fence), and especially Christie Park.   Granted, Cal Anderson's restrooms and shelterhouse are fenced in, but that's not the same thing.

2) They're closed short term for some reason, in which case the closure is enforced only by people (who might be armed) and signs.  Examples we've seen since I started you, dear Diary, include the Mother's Day closures of the major parks and the upcoming Labor Day closure of Gas Works Park.  Something similar to this applies to the revamped closing times of the major parks, which was 8 P.M. in the spring, 9:30 P.M. in the summer, and will now be 8 P.M. again.

Cal Anderson Park has been closed long term, but the closure has been enforced only by people and signs.  That said, some of the enforcing people have been pretty violent about it.

Also, both short and long term closures have either intrinsic or clearly stated endpoints.  Major parks have closed early and for certain holiday weekends for fear of COVID-19, and OK, now also for fear of disputes, but one imagines that when the pandemic formally ends these closures will end too.  Presumably when the pandemic formally ends our wonderful mayor will appear at opening ceremonies for Fritz Hedges and Christie and those fences will come down.  But

This Closure Is Not for the Stated Reason, and Has No Obvious Endpoint

We were initially told Cal Anderson Park would close for a short time for repairs and cleaning.  Two months later, this is becoming hard to believe, especially given that the fences appropriate to this kind of closure never went up.

Also, if that were true, the park would be visibly improving, and it is not.  I hadn't looked at the basketball courts earlier this year, but this morning they lacked hoops.  The fancy new winterised water fountain installed this spring:

has been running each time I've seen it this year, but today it was dry.

Above all, the place is drowning in trash.  I made it my goal, while walking the perimeter, to find these signs:

which had been, in July, extremely conspicuous along the northern border.  I found ten.  Two are behind the fences in the park's middle (you can see one in the restroom photo).  Two could be said to be at park entrances:  at Nagle Place (no directionals for this page's north-south streets) and E Pine St (actual entrance blocked by pre-existing fence) and the one above, which might conceivably be seen by someone approaching 11th Ave and E Olive St.  The other six are placed two each at actual park entrances:

11th Ave and E Howell St:

11th Ave and E Denny Way:

10th Ave and E Denny Way:

OK, so the trash isn't all that conspicuous in most of my photos.  This is partly because it didn't occur to me that it was the real story while I was photographing, and partly because I try to avoid photographing my peers, including their tents, and just days after the last violent sweep much of the park's middle is covered with tents.  As I'll have occasion to remark in another post if the weather ever cools off, most of the homeless encampments I've encountered in Seattle parks this year have been conspicuously tidy.  Whether that's because my peers have been behaving unusually well, because parks staff have been going above and beyond, or (as I suspect) both, my travels this summer have just about broken the equivalence in my mind between urban tents and litter.  But at Cal Anderson Park today, there's tons of trash in patterns that show my peers misbehaving, tons more in patterns that show parks staff not collecting the trash at all, and that's not even starting on the many non-trash items the police recently added to the backlog, quite a few of which are still visible.

Is There an Endpoint?

Look, let's get real.  Cal Anderson Park is currently a battleground, and that's why it's closed.  More precisely, the East Precinct Seattle Police find any group there, with the possible exception of evangelical Christians, threatening, so they want to have legal cover for ejecting all such groups from the park.

What would it take to change this?

Obviously, what should happen is that everyone in Seattle should sign, in each person's own blood, a loyalty oath promising, under pain of felony prosecution and imprisonment, never again to disagree with our wonderful mayor in thought, word or deed.  If this took place before next year's election, I'm sure it would assuage every fear, and Cal Anderson Park could return to being a normal park.

Otherwise, I think we're left with the difficulty of proving a negative.  The East Precinct is making it very clear that it isn't going to be the one to back down again.  So we have to consider non-park futures for Cal Anderson.

Well, one is sort of a park future.  Maybe the reason its name hasn't been formally changed is that it's meant to become a car park, that is, a parking lot.  No doubt a police parking lot, so it could remain a battlefield.

On the other hand, one useful future for a battlefield is as a military base.  In Seattle, of course, even a military base can become a park, as witness Discovery Park and the Ballard Locks.  But perhaps the Seattle Police could show the US Army how to do it right.

I still hope to finish writing you, dear Diary, before this situation gets resolved.