Things Forgotten, Hikes 3 and 7

Dear Diary,

On rainy days, even when there's no rain currently, it's problematic for me to take notes, so I've relied pretty exclusively on the photos for the hike narratives.  Which is a problem.  Here are some things I forgot to tell you about my hikes of January 9 (hike 3) and January 17 (hike 7), which only included Green Lake and Woodland Parks and only at night, so strictly speaking is still ahead.

You see, on January 17 I set off from the UW campus in late afternoon, and went far enough on NE 45th St to pass the encampments on I-5.  And I didn't see the hand-washing station.  Had it been stolen?  Removed?  I worried.

Last night, in a failed attempt to return to a motel I haven't yet told you about, dear Diary, I went that way again.  And found this:

I'll have more to say about sinks like the one on the left in future, but for now let me just say that it worked, last night, and probably still does, and hooray for SPU.

So all's well, I guess, that ends well.

Next we return to Woodland Park, and to January 9.  Remember, dear Diary, that a man had given me $20 to pass on.

As I pushed my cart up the hill, I heard snatches of music, sounding vaguely good.

I ended up speaking with nobody on that visit to upper Lower Woodland Park.  Not even coming close to giving that $20 away.

Coming back down the hill, with my cart for the last time (on my subsequent eighty-four visits to Woodland Park, oh very well maybe only five, I parked it near the north end of the tennis courts) - anyway, coming downhill I heard that music again.  Sounded like a good band.

Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be just one guy - and his piano ?

Turns out Jonny Hahn has become mildly famous busking Pike Place Market with a succession of pianos, which seem surprisingly more durable than my carts, but not all that permanent in the busking life.  I don't know whether Green Lake Park is a substitute - is the Market COVID-closed? - or a supplement, but anyway I've seen him there again, probably January 21 when I again spent the day there.

Anyway, I did what I usually do when buskers I really like offer the option, and bought an album - in fact, feeling richer than I actually was, with that $20 burning a hole in my pocket, I bought two.  Turns out like most modern musicians he's all over the streaming media, YouTube, Spotify, Apple, Amazon...  The albums I bought are <Collage> and <Words Escape Me>, and I'll probably listen to them on YouTube before listening to the actual CDs.

Well, given that my next stop was Sandel Playground, and Fred Mayer was on the way, I stopped in with two goals.  I wanted to know whether this one had two-pound bottles of raspberry preserves (no, none do, these days), and I wanted, it being a Saturday, not just any old cream cookies, but their peanut butter cream cookies.  See, Safeway's cream cookies are significantly better made, and slightly more numerous, and they're easily within my budget so it doesn't really matter that they're more expensive - but Safeway doesn't have peanut butter flavour.

When I came out of Fred Mayer, then, with my cookies, there was a young woman holding up a cardboard sign.  It claimed she was in "a bad situation".  Now, back when I was younger and had an income, I was well aware of the impossibility of knowing whether money would help any particular beggar.  In this case, for example, her "bad situation" could be an abuser or a dealer who would get the money, or an over-strict but loving mother she'd use it to flee.  But maybe instead she'd use it to flee the abuser or dealer, and in any event, I'd reverted to my method when younger, made a fast decision and stuck with it.  So she got the $20, and had the grace to show gratitude.  And I'm left to contemplate the courage of all the strangers who've handed me money over the years, no clue where it'd go.  Thank you all.

And good night, dear Diary.

Hikes 3C and 6A: Mid-North, the Rest

Dear Diary,

This page concerns three of the parks of Greenwood, which thieves and my own qualms have kept me from timely discussing with you before.  That is, I visited them in June like most of the rest of the parks in North Seattle, but by the time they were next to write about, enough time had passed that I thought I needed to go back to one.  Then before I could do so, my phone was stolen.  So I ended up returning in October, resulting in the only page before this series to say much about them, October 29's "Bad Apples in the Bonny Green Wood".

The photos of Sandel Playground and Greenwood Park date to January 9, those of Licton Springs Park (whose "bad apples" in June had occasioned my delay) January 14.  I went to all three parks both days, though, and to Sandel January 13 as well.  The only material change was that a tent at Licton Springs that had given me photography trouble 1/9 was clearly uninhabited by 1/14.

All three of these parks have restrooms, and all three were on the map from the homelessness division of the Department of Human Services (HSD) on the morning of January 9 and at 10:30 P.M. as I write this January 25.  However, none was on last year's list of park restrooms to keep open.  The map didn't, I think, originally include Greenwood Park, but the other two made for a promising indication that more park restrooms actually were being kept open this winter, as had been reported.

In June, Greenwood and Licton Springs Parks had campers.  In October, only Greenwood Park did.  In January I found relatively few tents at each.

That reminds me.  I forgot to mention in the page on hike 3B that tents in Green Lake Park had become considerably more numerous again, from their low last October.  I also had more to do with that park's borders this time, so saw many RVs, but have no idea how long they've been there.

It's a pity this year's point in time count was cancelled.  There's a lot of noise, but I suspect the number of homeless is already growing, eviction moratorium or no.  It would be better to have a more reliable basis.  Anyway...

Sandel Playground

The restroom building:

The closed doors:

For complicated technical reasons I'll explain to you pretty soon, dear Diary, the people responsible for the map may experience more shame over lying about this park than over the other two, or more ahead.

Greenwood Park

The reason I'm pretty sure this park wasn't originally on the map is that I e-mailed another journalist - well, a rather more real journalist than myself - a list of the things I didn't believe in the map soon after it came out, and didn't list this one.  I've complained about this park's single restroom and its twin at Little Brook Park, coming up, on several grounds, but the one relevant here is the ventilation holes through which peeping Toms can look.  As this suggests, each restroom is just a big box.  I e-mailed Rachel Schulkin a list of three parks that shouldn't be on the map, and the next day, as I recall, this one was.  I'm amazed the people behind the map don't realise that such absurdities weaken their whole case.

The box:

The locked door, in whose vestibule someone has pitched a tent:

The "sanican" listed by the map:

Licton Springs Park

This park was on the list of improbabilities I'd e-mailed, but I had hopes.  I had, after all, that very day, found Woodland Park's Cloverleaf restrooms, closed in October, re-opened; its lawn bowling rooms, closing threatened and expected, still open; and Green Lake Park's Bath House rooms open for the first time in my (limited) experience.  So the mere fact that I'd seen early closure notices posted partly to get rid of the slobs camping there?  Pah, what matter?

I've recently learnt that Blogspot removes both the ways my phone's camera dates its photos.  Conveniently, in January daylight serves as a proxy:  since standard park restroom hours (7 A.M. to 7 P.M.) include all the daylight, a day photo settles things.  (But my work on all-night restrooms, later in this series, includes no photos, because at this time of year night photos of open doors convey nothing.)

Anyway, on January 9 I arrived just before sunset.  The photos were good enough, but I deleted them and took new ones around 1:30 P.M. on January 14.

The building:

That's its best side despite the full-on view of both trash and "sanican"s because of all the lovely shelter from rain it would have offered if the bad apples hadn't messed it up.

The closed doors:

The "sanican"s the map lists:

And that's all for this page, dear Diary, and from me tonight.  Tomorrow I expect to be busy, but I hope to tell you about lots of hikes and related incidents on Wednesday.

Awkwardly On-Topic

Dear Diary,

I wanted to dismiss this as off-topic to you, but I can't.  True, it has nothing to do with parks, or hygiene, or (except as a dark mirror) homelessness in general.  But I've always made my own homelessness prominent in my writing on that topic, and perhaps nowhere more than in you.  Not just as a random example, either.  I'm well aware that by being middle-class in origin (and standards, albeit Bohemian middle class for those), college-educated, and non-trivially white, I seek sort of a "there but for the grace of God" effect among those likeliest to read me.  This is probably part of why you have few faithful readers, dear Diary, but more who read what they can stand and then leave.

Well, as it happens, I'm trying to leave myself, which is the point all that verbiage is trying to hide.  I think most homeless people keep a desultory lookout for chances to improve their lives, but without much imagination for wholesale change.  But the Seattle Times profile that recently brought new readers to you, dear Diary, also brought about an attempt at just such wholesale change, to return me to the housed workforce.  As I write this, it's anyway raised enough to get me out of COVID winter.

I'll be narrating, as I continue with the January hikes, events that make me readier to leave homelessness, and maybe to return to housedness.  Some of these events make it harder to finish the series, and I'll probably pop into and out of a motel soon to be named if only for that reason.  In February, which it'll probably be before I can return to boring few readers with "Land and Water" and working on your last series, dear Diary, I expect to be in a hotel, motel, or if I'm lucky SRO the whole month.  With the hope that by March I might, really for the first time since I came to Seattle, be stably housed.

Or to abbreviate:  To apply the purity standards of 1980s alt-rock to homelessness, I'm selling out, and cursing the rest of you, dear Diary, with the dread shade of inauthenticity.

This is, of course, a dark mirror of another path.  The government could have paid for the hotel (though probably not the blog-enabling motel, although its stimulus money will in fact pay for that), could have eased the transition out of the hotel.  But I've already lived through two entire presidential terms homeless, and would expect the current one to pass too before the government noticed me, shouting as I've been since 2014.  Some might argue that things are different now, but I dismissed insta-change in the first Times article to quote me (and publicise you, dear Diary), and the recent hikes have only driven home how right I was.

So I should get on with narrating them, but first, dear Diary, my thanks.  You're where all these events started, and I won't forget that.

Hike 3B: Green Lake Park

Dear Diary,

Green Lake Park is just north of Woodland Park, and in these hikes I visited it all the same days (and, sigh, nights).  It seems I've told you rather less about it, though.  June 8 in "A Shower at Green Lake", of course, but then only October 8 in "South of North Once More", part I.  I'm sorry, but this page isn't going to do much better by this park which pretty well deserves its considerable popularity.

For example, when I visited it right after Woodland Park January 9, I took twice as long to shoot about as many photos.  That's partly because I stopped to eat - but there hadn't been anywhere in Woodland Park I wanted to sit and eat after I found those dugouts locked.

So let's assume for now that I owe Green Lake Park better treatment, and get on with checking the map put forward this winter by the Homeless Strategy and Investment Division of the Department of Human Services, or "HSD map", also with reference to last winter's list of park restrooms intended to stay open.

In this park both say all restrooms should be open, and both pass with flying colours, but since the map, a GIS thingie like the street ends map, tries to be much more informative, as befits the greatly changed reality for homeless people, it gets more details wrong.

We start at the parks' shared border, so at the south end of Green Lake's trail, with the restrooms of the Green Lake Small Craft Center.  The preferred name used for these rooms by Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation is "Shellhouse", a name we'll encounter in different contexts in your last series, dear Diary.  These restrooms, like those in the Laurelhurst Community Center, have a mixture of indoor and outdoor - well, professional and park - that I attribute, here, to the presence of professionals in the Small Craft Center and among its usual clients.

The open doors:

The building:

Next, in the counter-clockwise direction still expected of travellers on Green Lake's loop trail, are the "65th St" rooms near the exit to, um, N 64th St; I've previously identified them as southeastern.  I discovered on these visits that the men's sink often gives warm water; since I don't remember that from last year, I guess it to be the result of accidental proximity between the pipe and the heat.  Which means the women's sink may not have this feature.  Open doors:

Building:

This brings us to the Green Lake Community Center on the northeast, at the end of Ravenna Boulevard.  Where things have ... changed.

Details from those shots:

Most of the things the map is wrong about in this park have to do with hours, as in Woodland Park reserved to an upcoming page, but here there's another issue.  The map correctly states the undead state of these restrooms, replaced:

but unwilling to leave the stage.  The last time I checked, only cold water was available; I'll save the real horror story for its proper place in a different upcoming page.  The map's only wrong about showers, which at least on the men's side really have ended.  They're replaced by a "mobile shower unit", which, given my fastidiousness toward "sanican"s, dear Diary, you might expect me to hate.  But Green Lake's high-school-gym-style communal showers with paper towels already set the bar so low that these actual port-a-showers have no trouble vaulting over it.  Not only do they offer privacy, but also real towels.  I should've photographed those, but you'll have to settle for their signage:

And - oh, yes, the building.  This is its front anyway, facing the parking lot like any modern building, but with those showers, civic duty, and trees all thrown in, this is by miles this building's best side:

Well, zombies plus high technology make a hard act to follow, but I did continue on.  Next are the "wading pool" restrooms, at the park's northern edge.  They actually are near that edge, farthest of the restrooms from the circum-lake trail, and I managed to miss them one night.  But anyway, the open doors:

The building:

And finally.  Dear Diary, I have some crow to eat.  The restrooms attached to the Bathhouse Theater ("Bath House", northwest) are officially open summers only, for the actual theatre season.  Since that didn't happen last summer, I was sure those rooms hadn't opened (not that I got there to check), and I was sure they didn't open winters either, using that as a basis for questioning last year's list in general.  Well, ...

I was wrong.  (Those are posed shots; the doors are normally closed this winter.)

The restrooms are like those at Laurelhurst and the Small Craft Center, a mix of professional and park, and no doubt because they're meant primarily for paying audiences.  Speaking of which, the building

looks better by night, with the marquee all lit up even in winter, even in this year, but that defeated my phone's camera except maybe in this oblique shot from January 17:

All for now, dear Diary.

Hike 3A: Woodland Park

Dear Diary,

Woodland Park is a large park north of Fremont.  My policy in photographing the large parks whose hours fluctuated much of last year (as well as the smaller Gas Works Park) has been to stay strictly functional, on the grounds that they're photographed enough.  So I introduced Woodland Park June 8 in " A Shower at Green Lake" with photos of its restrooms' doors, and then gave it its own pages as part II of "South of North Once More" (October 8; photos of water fountains) and part IV of "Standing Room Only" (November 24; photos of shelters).  It gets its own page this time too, and lots of photos, but half are of restroom doors again.

I refer to quarters of this park, but only cover half of them.  You'll remember, dear Diary, that the western block of the park is dominated by the Woodland Park Zoo, which is kind of complicated to visit these days (oh, dear, I don't think I mentioned to you that already in October it had partly re-opened).  All the restrooms in that block are paywalled inside the zoo, and the HSD map ignores them, so I have, this time, too.  One of these days I'll have to figure out a way to show you that zoo, dear Diary, and its restrooms and water fountains.

In these hikes I visited Woodland Park's other half many times, but mostly at night, trying to figure out its restrooms' hours.  I'll discuss those visits in later pages.  The only times I'm sure I saw Woodland Park by day are January 9, hike 3A, and January 21, hike 10.  All the photos below were taken in about an hour, 10:48 A.M. to 12:06 P.M. on January 9; I remember photographing one shelter one night, but now can't find the photo.

Between e-mailed exchanges with Rachel Schulkin, communications manager for Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation, and the map published by the Department of Human Services ("HSD map") that I checked in these hikes, I now know the names the parks department uses for all of Woodland Park's pairs of restrooms, and figure clarity will be aided if I use them.  So here goes.

The first restroom pair is northeast of the big, fancy baseball diamond, but I actually started my trip by going to the southwest of that diamond; I wanted to find a dry place to set my satchels down, so I could put a coat I'd removed into its proper place on top of my cart, and thought one of the dugouts would do fine.  Unfortunately, although I'd rested there in October, they're now locked:

(But then, that doesn't look too dry anyway, does it?)

The damaged water fountains near home plate looked unchanged.

While I was there, a man came up to me and offered me $20.  I told him I was pretty rich just then and he should give it to someone else.  He insisted, saying I could pass it on, and since I was going up the hill to a huge encampment, I agreed.

The first restroom pair is, as I said, not far from there.  The Citywide Athletic Building

has restrooms whose doors open to the outside; the parks department calls these "Rio".  Unfortunately for anyone who works in that building, those restrooms are, unlike last winter, closed:

Bad vandals!

The parks department has compensated by opening the other pair of restrooms in the park's lowest, easternmost, athletics-focused quarter.  This, you'll remember, dear Diary, is in the middle of four smaller baseball diamonds grouped together.  The parks department name is the obvious one:  "Cloverleaf".

The building with the restrooms is also seating behind home plate for field #6, which is obviously its most attractive side:

The restrooms:

Again with the fine print.  That announces a schedule from dawn to dusk, like Jackson Park.

The map also says these restrooms, unlike any others in Woodland Park, have "sanican"s near them.  I vaguely remember these as being pretty near the restrooms, but at the moment there's a Curative COVID-testing site back toward the parking lot, and so they've been moved there.

Ms. Schulkin complained to me that I'd pointed out (in "Hike 1A:  Inconvenients", part II, January 4) a new "sanican" in Northgate Park; that's there to support another Curative site.  Apparently that one, being temporary, isn't appropriate to notice or something.

Well, that's it for the eastern quarter of the park.  The road uphill branches off from West Green Lake Way toward and then past the tennis courts.  Now, the restrooms in the western part of this block were open 24 hours last summer, and the obvious explanation is the encampment up there.  But the official explanation given me by Ms. Schulkin is that with roads closed to shut off parking lots, there's no need to close the restrooms.  Consistent with this, although parking lots elsewhere have re-opened, these ones and their access roads remain blocked, well enough that it was a hassle for me, each time I visited Woodland Park, to get my cart past the barriers.

On the way uphill one passes one of the visible signs of why so many people have moved here.  Well, actually, three of those signs:

Notice how much thicker the one at the bottom of the second photo is.  There's serious electricity being provided to the campers in upper Lower Woodland Park.

In October I'd noticed that nearly all the campers were in the northern part of this quarter of the park, presumably because the electricity was there.  This time I saw more tents in the southern part, although the vast majority are still north; probably not coincidentally, I thought I saw evidence that the electricity had reached the south.  I'd meant to investigate more carefully, but at this time can't.

I think the electricity is routed through shelters with that amenity, though I'd hope by now it's got a sturdier basis.  My October visits were largely about the shelters, and on these trips in January I paid particular attention to three of them, one for each restroom pair.

So let's start at the top of the hill.  The parks department's name for this restroom building is "Pink Palace".  Unfortunately my phone's camera's trouble with reds makes the reason less than obvious in this photo:

The restrooms are open, as expected considering that both the HSD map and last year's parks department list include the Pink Palace.

The shelter near this one that I wanted to investigate is shelter 7, set deepest in the woods that are this block's most photogenic feature, with no amenities.  I'd found it unused in October.  Well, now someone has pitched a tent whose edge is within about a centimeter of the shelter - outside it, mind you, this person isn't trying to hog the shelter, but I suspect trying to start a new neighbourhood.

Not far from the Pink Palace, up so close to the block's corner that it's actually pretty easy to reach from Aurora Ave N, is a restroom building whose parks department name refers to the sport whose greens are right next to it, "lawn bowling".

Neither the HSD map nor last year's list says these restrooms should be open, and Ms. Schulkin told me by e-mail that the park's manager was worried about it, because of the encampment, and had requested a "sanican".  Well, there's no "sanican" there.  Instead...

It dawned on me that those photos maybe didn't make it obvious that these are open, so I also took a close-up of the men's room:

Yes, they're open.  Establishing their hours was the main reason I kept coming back to Woodland Park, specifically, but they're certainly open daytimes.  UNLESS - I don't have confirmation but it seems obvious - unless it gets really cold, in which case these will be as closed as the map says they are.

The shelter near these that I wanted to investigate is shelter 6, which in October had seemed to be one woman's remarkably homelike domain.  This time it was much less homelike, though still enough so to notice, and I didn't hear a woman's voice from it until one of my last visits.  Instead it was a communal kitchen, like shelters 4 and 5, used mostly by men.  I'd half expected something like that.

I could've sworn I photographed it one night, trying to capture its size, the way the walls have been supplemented with tarps and cloth, the electric light shining through those - none of which my previous photo at considerable distance conveyed - but I suspect my phone's camera didn't successfully take the shot; I certainly can't find it now.

Dear Diary, I should probably tell you more about my impressions of gender and homelessness, but this isn't the place.  Let me just say that while the woman I briefly met may feel hard done by, I have no trouble imagining that the change happened without violence, and that of course most of the people camped nearby would be men.

This area is still behind on trash collection, near as I can tell, but the problem hasn't gotten any worse since October, it just hasn't gotten all the way better.

Anyway, we're almost done.  The third pair of restrooms normally meant for picnickers and hikers, now supporting an encampment, is in the block's southwest, which is still higher than the block's eastern half, but not nearly as high as the Pink Palace area.  One of the three shelters here was certainly being hogged in October, with two tents inside it, another I guessed might be shared, and then there's shelter 1.  When I visited it I thought it was in use, but my notes and photographs indicated nothing to justify that.

Well, it's certainly in use now.

The restrooms for these three shelters, and the apparently increasing number of tents nearby, are called for the access "50th St".

These are supposed to be open per the HSD map, and were supposed to be open last year, so it was no great surprise to find this:

These photos were posed.  Park restroom doors are usually propped open in summer, but in winter, lower temperatures and more violent winds discourage that.  So here I propped the doors open with nearby garbage cans long enough to take these pictures.

Woodland Park is the place in North Seattle where the parks department has most gone out of its way for my peers.  I'm going to tell you much more problematic things in the coming days, dear Diary, but we'll have to remember while discussing them that at Woodland Park the department has shown real kindness.