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:
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.
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