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.