South of North Once More, Part II: Woodland Park

Dear Diary,

Woodland Park consists of two blocks, which Seattle's real estate people call "Woodland Park Zoo" and "Lower Woodland Park".

The Zoo block is more than half zoo and zoo parking, but in the block's southeast is a rose garden, and in the northwest a playground and greensward; there are a few smaller pieces.  The official zoo map covers the whole block.

The Lower block has seven athletic fields on its east side.  The rest of the block, probably the larger half, is the titular woodlands, with a variety of things (tennis and lawn bowling, for example) scattered among them.  There are official maps of this block's southwest and northwest, but not of the athletic fields.  The reason this matters to me - aside from my having once been a geography major - is that two pairs of restrooms and three water fountains are among them.

They also demonstrate very well something I'd suspected based on my travels among parks in general:  the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation is a site of structural sportism.  The contrast between the parks' cavalier treatment of basketball and their privileging of baseball suggests a racial element too, but in Woodland Park baseball is vaunted over soccer instead.

I don't have a clue how to draw a map on my phone, but I can anyway document the easy part, the fields' north-south extent.

• 1.  Mariners All-Star Field.  A baseball diamond starting a house or two south of 51st and reaching 52nd Streets.
• Citywide Athletics Building.  An office with restrooms, nestled into the northeast of the diamond's area.
• 2.  Playfield #2.  Everything about this field, from 52nd to 54th Streets, shouts "Soccer!", but it doesn't even have a name.
• 3. - 6.  Leo Lassen Fields.  Four smaller diamonds, from 54th to well north of 55th Streets.  A building including restrooms is attached to the southwestern diamond's (field 6's) home plate structure.  Access through a wide path continuing Clogston Way.
• 7.  Playfield #7.  Although this has similar goalposts and markings to #2, it's also surrounded by a track, whose users are warned to beware flying lacrosse balls.  From the northern edges of fields 4 and 5 to West Green Lake Way.

OK, so the plumbing.

Freestanding water fountain behind the first-base-side dugout at Mariners All-Star Field - UNUSABLY DAMAGED (as first reported June 8 in "A Shower at Green Lake", which did a fairly bad job of introducing this park, but does link to the maps)

Freestanding water fountain behind the 3rd-base-side dugout at Mariners All-Star Field - UNUSABLY DAMAGED, very similar to the above (first reported same place)

Restrooms in the Citywide Athletics Building, found open at 6:10 P.M. yesterday and at 10:37 A.M. today, with neither door nor dryer in the men's room.

Restrooms in the 5427 Green Lake Way N building attached to field 6 found closed at 6:23 P.M. yesterday and at 10:47 A.M. today.  From both doors emerges a sound which, last night, I interpreted as hosing down; but now I doubt these will re-open before spring.

Water fountain attached to this building - ON (previously reported as only trickling)

If you climb West Green Lake Way to a currently locked gate, and turn to climb that way, you eventually reach a third pair of restrooms.  All the woodland restrooms are well west of the athletic ones.  All were open past 7 P.M. last night, and I now wonder whether they're currently open all night too.  Hypothesise a deal offered by Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation - trade Green Lake Park for Woodland.  I'd have to be crazy to accept if it meant trading 24-hour restrooms for ones rarely open 12 hours.

Anyway, the men's room at the top of the hill has doors and a dryer.

Water fountains attached to this building - NOT RUNNING (as previously reported)

North of there, restrooms very near the lawn bowling.  No doors nor dryer in the men's room.  There were lawn bowlers there last night, so now I can tell you, dear Diary:

Freestanding water fountain behind a lawn bowling fence - NOT RUNNING (previously reported unknown)

But also:

Freestanding water fountain next to Shelter #6 - ON (not previously reported)

There is a path, partly gravel, south to the remaining restrooms from the hilltop, but it's actually better approached from 50th St.  The southwestern men's room has an old-fashioned dryer but no doors.

Freestanding water fountain outside this restroom - UNUSABLY DAMAGED

Freestanding water fountain on the path that continues Woodland Park Avenue - UNUSABLY DAMAGED

I reported these in June as not running, but not as damaged. Since I did, then, not only mention but photograph the damaged water fountains near Mariners All-Star Field, I suspect the damage to these two fountains is new, but can't prove it.

Finally, one I missed in June, the fountain I thought there should be in the northwestern zoo block, near the playground.

Freestanding water fountain near Phinney Ave and 59th St - UNUSABLY DAMAGED

Yes, these last two are the same make.

On second thought, if only two water fountains are on in all of Lower Woodland Park, I'd have to be crazy to leave Green Lake's profusion anyway.

My experience has been that water fountains are much likelier to be vandalised when not running.  I have no idea how many years we'll be paying for the mistaken belief that metal objects outdoors were good vectors for COVID-19.

Good night, dear Diary.