A Thank You

 Dear Diary,

A few weeks ago, as you may have heard, Seattle won the coveted award for Most Polluted Major City Air for several days running thanks to wildfire smoke.  Early in the smoke's ownership of the city, I walked north to the Northeast branch of the Seattle Public Library and stayed near there for several days.  The closest park restroom to there is, conveniently enough, the one at View Ridge Playfield that's open 24 hours.

The day I came north, September 11, our wonderful mayor wisely closed the parks so nobody would be tempted to go outside.  Since I normally lack a place where I can be inside these days, I was in a rule-breaking frame of mind and went to View Ridge Playfield anyway.  That day, the men's room was open, but out of toilet paper; the women's room was closed for repairs.

So on Friday, and Saturday morning, I used Safeway's restroom (this is the one at 35th Ave and 75th St).  But Saturday evening I felt guilty about trying again, and wasn't sure it wouldn't be locked, so instead I looked for one of those individually wrapped rolls of institutional toilet paper.  Not at that Safeway.  With trepidation I went to the playfield - where the paper had in fact been refilled, and I could do Number Two in peace.

On Monday - we're up to the 14th now - I noticed that the women's room had been re-opened.

On Thursday the 17th, the last day the parks were closed, I got kind of stir-crazy, and even though the air was still not fit to breathe, set out on a hike, which the next page I'll write in you, dear Diary, will explain.  I started at 5 P.M., and set out from the library for Dahl Playfield.

Now, I'd thought of basically three possibilities for how the closure would have affected the park restrooms we unsheltered homeless are supposed to rely on.  To be honest, I expected:

1. Closure.  The parks closure announcement seemed to have come late in the day, so I figured the restrooms had already been closed (except the 24-hour ones), and would just stay that way.

But Dahl Playfield's restroom was open.  (Much to my personal relief at the time, may I add.)  So that theory wasn't true.  My next idea:

2. All open.  Maybe someone had thought of us, and had left the restrooms unlocked the entire time.

I liked that theory for two reasons:  it would be safe for parks staff, and it would provide evidence that more restrooms could be opened 24 hours.  It was quite a while before the hike allowed me to test this theory - the next restrooms I saw were View Ridge's, and the ones after that were Magnuson Park's.  Since any hike to Magnuson Park is twice as far as any equal distance hike to any other destination, well, it was quite a while.  But after days of struggle - well, OK, an hour or three - I found Magnuson Park's restrooms all closed.  So that left only the least probable hypothesis standing:

3.  Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation had, with respect to restrooms, simply ignored the closure, continuing to unlock, clean, stock, and lock them daily.

While this wasn't my preferred result, it did mean two things:  we hadn't been forgotten in this closure; and whatever risks I undertook by staying outside those days, a whole bunch of parks workers undertook worse, by working outside much of each day.

Thanks are wholly inadequate, but still necessary.  So thank you, maintenance workers for Parks and Recreation.  I owe you.