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.