Dear Diary,

You must remember that I wrote in you, about a month ago, an argument that "Cal Anderson Park Is Not a Park". Since then, thousands, nay billions, of people have, um, not read it. Flush from this success, I want in this page to focus on one part of that argument.

We were told, and I repeated, that the closure was for purposes of "cleaning and repair". This turns out to be a summary of rather more complicated wording in the original announcement, but a pretty good summary. Now, "repair" may be difficult to show from photographs (at least without before and after), but vision is the usual way we assess "cleaning". So if, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, prepare for 40,000 words' worth of the titular trash in Cal Anderson Park as of September 30.

These pictures aren't all that appealing, and are pretty repetitive, so I'll say my piece up front. Seems to me two reasonably organised groups have effectively claimed, in recent months, to control Cal Anderson Park. Let's call these "the city" and "the kids". I'm pretty sure both groups' leaders and many of their members would agree that environmental stewardship and public health are Good Things. Neither group is showing this by their actions concerning the trash, and although the city is led by our wonderful mayor, I must admit that the far too little that is being effectively done is all the kids' work.

Addresses in this page are not in "NE" and are not abbreviated by omission of any directional signs.

Titration

I took most of these pictures in late afternoon. Much park trash removal is done in mornings, so eventually I decided to shoot pictures of some nearby trash cans for comparison. First, from a bus shelter on the north side of E Pine St, just steps from the park:

Next, from the ground level of the Sound Transit station on the south side of E Denny Way just east of Broadway:

Although these cans varied in fullness, it wouldn't be completely unreasonable to call them all about half full.

The City's Work

The current closure system is supposed to consist of people who inform visitors of the closure. I wasn't informed myself, so I don't know whether any of the people I saw in the park were such people, but most of those I saw had obvious non-closure-related activities in progress, so probably weren't.

I overheard many conversations in the park, mostly while following the paved path equivalent to E Olive St and its southward continuation, with the common theme of disapproval of the Seattle Police Department, which has carried out at least two closure enforcement efforts.

I looked for the closure signs profusely posted in July, of which only ten remained a month ago. This time I found only one:

The fence mentioned and photographed in the previous page no longer encloses the restrooms, but that doesn't exactly mean they're open:

The Kids' Work

Cal Anderson Park is much longer north-south than east-west, and the main places I saw the kids having a positive effect on the trash were in the middle, along the paved path at the level of E Olive St, and around the gravel path near the western side, north of the paved path and south of the water tower. Examples:

I should probably also count in this category a rack of clothing well south of all this, in the playfield.

The Bad News

I'm grouping these geographically, based on my memory of my route, but I don't remember each individual trash can and may have a photo or two grouped wrongly at the edges of some groups.

North (along E Denny Way)

I only stopped to take one picture in the morning, when, as mentioned in the previous page, I was accompanied.

When I returned alone, not much had changed:

These photos were taken from the park entrance at 11th Ave and E Denny Way. Here's the entrance at Nagle Place and Denny:

From somewhere in between:

East (along 11th Ave)

The entrance at E Howell St. I was trying to catch four trash cans at once, of which I think three are visible, one not overflowing. The bright green satchel in the foreground was, at that time, my own trash transport system, and not the fault of any other park visitor.