Hikes 0 to 7: All Night Long

Dear Diary,

This page's title isn't entirely true.  I didn't reach View Ridge Playfield on hike 1, although I'd tried.  I made no attempt to visit any park I suspected of having 24-hour restrooms on hike 6.  But all the rest, yes.  To a first approximation, my life in mid-January revolved around learning the hours of the restrooms in Green Lake and Woodland Parks, in particular.

Hike 0, January 1

View Ridge Playfield's restrooms were open around midnight.  Photos in "Hike 2A" January 8.

Hike 2, January 6

I visited View Ridge Playfield by day.  Lots of photos in the page already mentioned.

Hike 3, January 9

I spent much of the day in Woodland and Green Lake Parks, as detailed January 24 in "Hike 3A" and January 25 in "3B" respectively.  Then I visited the Greenwood parks (Hike 3C, January 25) before going up to Bitter Lake Playfield (whose restrooms were reputedly 24 hours last summer; hike 3D, March 14).  Then headed back to Green Lake Park, in a hurry to find an open restroom.  I meant to visit all that park's and Woodland Park's restrooms that night but got too sleepy.

It may be helpful in reading this page to refer to these maps.  Green Lake Park:

"Shellhouse" is the Small Craft Center.  "65th St" is near that bend in the shore most of the way from the Small Craft Center to the Community Center.  "Wading pool" is at the north end; "Community Center" and "Bathhouse" are as mapped.

For Woodland Park, I can't find maps showing the lower, eastern, restrooms, which are "Rio" in the Citywide Athletics building near N 52nd St, and "Cloverleaf" north of there in the middle of the four Leo Lassen Fields, the cloverleaf, near N Clogston Way.  For the western part of Lower Woodland Park, see this PDF map for "50th St".  For "Pink Palace" see this other PDF map; that map unaccountably omits the "lawn bowling" restrooms, but they're where all the other lawn bowling stuff is.

Hike 4, January 10

I woke up around 4:30 A.M. and toured the restrooms between 5 and 7 A.M.  The earlier results, for Green Lake Park, probably represent actual night status, but the Woodland Park results got closer and closer to regular opening times.  Anyway, the "wading pool" and "Bathhouse" restrooms in Green Lake Park were closed, as were the "lawn bowling" ones in Woodland Park.  The "Shellhouse" and "65th St" restrooms in Green Lake Park, and "Pink Palace" and "50th St" (last check, practically at 7 A.M.) in Woodland Park, were open.  The doors of the Green Lake Community Center's restrooms were flung open too.  I didn't check "Rio" or "Cloverleaf".

My paper notes on this and the next are retrospective because it was raining.  After that, they're contemporary, from my phone.

I'd told Rachel Schulkin of the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation that I'd be there around then, and the theatrically open doors at the Community Center gave me the suspicion, probably made more plausible by my lack of sleep, that all the open doors I'd seen were a show for my benefit.  This is one reason I visited those two parks repeatedly.

Another is that I didn't believe the schedules offered by the map I was checking.  One pair of restrooms in Green Lake Park was supposed to be 24 hours; three were supposed to close at 7 P.M.; and one, the "wading pool" ones, was supposed to close at 8:30 P.M.  At Woodland Park, "Rio" and "lawn bowling" were supposed to be closed, "Pink Palace" and "50th St" to close at 7 P.M., and "Cloverleaf" to close at dusk.  So whoever closed each park would have to visit twice.  This made no sense to me.

But it was morning, too late to work on these things for hours to come, so I set off on the hikes recounted in "Escaping Green Lake Park", part I, February 7, "Hike 4B" February 8, and "Escaping Carkeek Park" and "Hike 5A" February 13.  Note that the night I spent in Carkeek Park January 10-11, between hikes 4 and 5, gave me the idea that Carkeek Park's restrooms were 24 hours.

Hike 5, January 11

I already told you the story of this night, dear Diary, February 16 in "Escaping Green Lake Park", part II.  Remember that the Community Center's restrooms, with those invitingly wide-open doors, turned out not to have running water that night.

Elsewhere, between roughly 10 P.M. and midnight, "65th St", "lawn bowling", and "50th St" were open, "Cloverleaf", "Bathhouse" and "Shellhouse" were closed, and "Pink Palace" had one restroom each open and closed.  I didn't find the "wading pool" restrooms and didn't try to visit "Rio".

After this came the motel stay ("Fear of Rain" February 17 and "How to Lie to the Homeless", part I, February 18) and hike 6 ("Hikes 3C and 6A", January 25, and "Hikes 3D and 6B" and "Hike 6C", both March 14).

Hike 7, January 17

I arrived in Woodland Park around 5 P.M. and stayed over six hours.

"Rio", which had been posted as closed due to vandalism, was indeed closed at 5:05 P.M.  "Cloverleaf" restrooms were closed at 5:10.  Remember that those were (still are) presented as open dawn to dusk; sunset that day was at 4:48 P.M.  In Green Lake Park, "Shellhouse" restrooms were open at 5:22, "65th St" at 5:38, Community Center, with cold water running, at 5:49, "wading pool" at 6:03.  I didn't note my arrival at the "Bathhouse" restrooms, but meant to stay until they were closed, because they were the only ones in that park I was confident would be closed.

This turned into a three hour wait.  Finally at 9 P.M. drove up, not a parks department staffer, but a man from the private security firm Phoenix Patrol.  I'd only encountered this company in one place before, also a park; each of the few times I slept at Laurelhurst Playfield, a Phoenix Patrol staffer had driven up in the wee hours, unlocked both the single-user stalls, verified they were unoccupied, sometimes used one, locked them again, and drove off.  This exercise in security theatre hadn't much impressed me, but at Green Lake apparently they'd graduated from checking on the maintenance workers to replacing them.

I waited over half an hour more to give the guy time to finish, then went back through Green Lake Park, and on to upper Lower Woodland Park.  The "wading pool" restrooms were open at 10:00 P.M., "Community Center" closed at 10:18, "65th St" open at 10:31.  Then I got worried about having my phone visible.  The "Shellhouse" rooms were closed, sometime before 10:56.  "Pink Palace" was open close to 11 P.M., "lawn bowling" closed at 11:06, and "50th St" open at around 11:15.

From there I went "home" at least as far as the UW campus, maybe even to my formerly usual Laurelhurst doorway.  I think this page has already gotten long enough, dear Diary, and I'll have to tell you the rest of the story in later pages.  Good night!

Hike 8B: Near Northwest

Dear Diary,

This page is about two parks and one so-called street end.  It may be a few days until I can tell you about the rest of Ballard; what will remain after this page is more or less downtown Ballard, to my account of which attaches a story that, in turn, makes finishing another page necessary.  So this is the last page for a while which I can write in you, dear Diary.

On January 19, then, after visiting B. F. Day Playground and some Fremont shops, I finally got around, mid-afternoon, to going west.  First stop, as usual:

Ross Playground, or Playfield, or Park

This small park, which I sort of like although so many other people like it more that I can never stay long, well, anyway, I first discussed it June 25 in "History and Parks" part I, which I now see two more people have had the courage to read, and then December 16 in "The Water Fountains of Ballard".

It has restrooms separated by a mosaic that I no more succeeded in photographing in January than any previous time:

Those restrooms were supposed to be closed this winter, by all my sources, and sure enough they were, as you can already see, dear Diary, but let's have the door shots anyway...

Although this park has a baseball field that proclaims "Ross Playfield", it's too small and sports-deficient otherwise for that title, as discussed in some detail January 6 in "What's in a Name?"  But it does have a basketball, um, hoop:

Next comes a park that I've belatedly noticed is on some paths to the Ballard Fred Mayer:

Gilman Playground

which I've told you, dear Diary, about in the same pages as Ross, yes, including "What's in a Name?"  I'm considerably more reconciled to this one's official name after this visit, anyhow, after surveying the evidence for its athletic offerings.  But let's get the restrooms out of the way first.  Like all other park restrooms on the NW street grid, separated by cliffs from both the beaches and the rest of North Seattle, well anyway, Gilman's restrooms are supposed to be closed this winter, but the map I was hiking to check lyingly claimed they were open, with the excuse of "sanican"s, of which this park has several:

I heard two people conversing inside the big one while there.

So here's the restroom building:

And here are the closed doors:

And now maybe we can talk about the sports.  Gilman has provision for four.  It has perfectly ordinary and acceptable tennis courts.  It keeps its moveable goalposts for soccer next to those:

Soccer is, of course, during non-pandemic times, played not there but on the baseball diamond:

And then there's the basketball hoop:

Gilman Playground devotes so much space to sports that, after the example of Ross's three names, I wanted to blame its blandness on the sports, call it a playfield, but it really doesn't have the space to do them right.  Sorry for misleading you, dear Diary.

Gilman Playground does have one distinctive feature.  Probably out of kindness to the homeless people who were back camping there in January, its water fountain ignores city-wide shutdowns.  You may remember, dear Diary, that I found it running last June during the COVID shutdown.  Well, guess what I found in January?

Unfortunately, not much later we got a cold spell, and I warned Rachel Schulkin of the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation about this and the other two water fountains I found running in NW, one of which, at Loyal Heights Community Center, I told you, dear Diary, about February 8 in "Hike 4B". I don't know whether whoever keeps turning it back on has done so again this winter.

Because the temperatures where pipes are can be several degrees lower than those where temperatures are usually measured, I'm not sure it's safe to leave ordinary water fountains running over any night forecast to go below 40° F.  That's why it's so shocking to me that the street fountains with their presumably heated pipes have gone to disrepair, and the winter-adapted ones in Cal Anderson and Northacres Parks have been shut off as if they were ordinary.

The Ballard Bridge (15th Ave NW) Street End

You may remember, dear Diary, that in the pages from December 21 on "Street Ends" in north-central and northwest Salmon Bay, I made quite a muddle of this one.  This time, actually on my way back east from Ballard in the late afternoon of January 19, through careful study of the photos included in the GIS info on the street end map, I think I sorted it out.  The "street end" is west, not east, of the bridge.  One has to walk along the eastern edge of a private parking lot to reach it.

So photo 2:  The land the city appears to claim:

Photo 3:  A view over the water:

All for tonight, dear Diary, and until I can get some hiking done.  Happy days!

The Extreme Left

Dear Diary,

As a lifelong pedestrian, I've been very puzzled by something I've observed hiking as much as I have this past year.

I've made it a point to walk on the right about as far back as I can remember.  (But of course, dear Diary, you know well how inadequate my memory is.)  Normally I've found this a reasonably safe proposition.  But since this pandemic got going, more and more people have insisted on walking to the left, specifically to my left at that.  It's gotten to the point that I worry one of these people will succumb to road rage and attack me for my obdurate right-side walking.

At first I encountered this mostly in situations where the street was on my right and these people's left, so it was easiest to see this as a rational response to the occasional need to go into the street to maintain social distancing.  But I don't think it was ever entirely that way, and I was recently really, though thankfully not literally, struck by a guy who clearly would have pushed me out of the way if I hadn't allowed him to continue walking within an inch of a building to my right and his left.

I think we can rule out one obvious explanation.  In normal times one could imagine Seattle overrun by people accustomed to walking on the left in their home countries.  But during the pandemic Seattle hasn't been overrun by anyone.

Another obvious explanation is too weird to believe of rational Seattleites, except that, well, these are weird times.  Maybe these people think there's some prophylactic effect from switching sides of the sidewalk.  Like the old advice to turn clothing inside out so demons couldn't see you.  Maybe these people figure the virus has Americans pegged as right-side walkers, and won't notice them if they walk on the left.

Anyway, whatever the reason, I really hope these people get over this before pedestrian traffic in this city returns to normal, or there will be a boom in pedestrian collisions, and maybe even some murders.

What an unpleasant thought.  Oh, well.  Tomorrow, dear Diary, southern Ballard.

Hike 8A: Near North

Dear Diary,

On January 19 I set off for Ballard.  My plan was always to visit the three parks in this page along the way, which is why I designated Wallingford Playfield and Meridian Playground, too far up the wrong hill, as "inconvenient" right from the start.

And although all these hikes were kind of predictable once I had decoded the map, from the city's Department of Human Services, of restrooms supposedly open this winter, the map these hikes were meant to check, a decoding described in "How to Lie to the Homeless" too many days ago - still they were part of the task.  They'll also get a bit more interesting after this page, which hasn't much story to it.  Sorry, dear Diary.

Sunnyside Ave N Boat Ramp

This small park is also presented as a street end by those who deal with those.  I've told you about it, therefore, dear Diary, in "At the Centre of the Universe, Does Gas Work?" on June 9, and again in "Street Ends:  North Lake Union" December 21.  But neither park nor street end brought me there on January 19; instead, the presence of a city-funded "sanican" did.

While I was there, for some reason I thought I hadn't photographed the view from the shore in October, so I took another photo.  I think it's slightly worse than the one in the street ends page, but anyhow:

In these hikes I'll take what beauty I can get.

Yes, this stop was kinda trivial, or so it seems.  But a lot of people appeared to be living, that day in January, in the parking areas across Northlake Way from this "sanican", and not all of them had RVs.  I really have no idea how much daily use the thing gets, but wouldn't be surprised if it were significant.

At this hour, today, the map correctly reports that this park hosts one "sanican", that it isn't ADA and doesn't offer hand-washing.  I think that map, all in all, represents a deliberate attempt to lie to Seattle's homeless, but it's so constructed that it also tells a fair bit of truth, and this is an example.

Gas Works Park

This is one of North Seattle's marquee parks, dear Diary, though the smallest of those.  So I've told you about it in plenty of pages.  See, besides "At the Centre":  June 21, "Past Work and Gas Works"; September 6, "Cal Anderson Park Is Not a Park"; October 8, "South of North Once More", part I; and November 23, "Standing Room Only", part III.

This park's restrooms have been announced as 24 hours, so it was no surprise at all to find them open in broad daylight:

The, um, least unattractive side of the restroom building:

From there I climbed up the right hill, by way of Troll's Knoll Park (stopping along the way to replace the photograph of the Troll my stolen phone had held) to 

B. F. Day Playground

This smallish park has figured in two of the same pages as Gas Works Park, "At the Centre" and "South of North".  And in the latter, dear Diary, I mocked it unfairly.  I showed photos of a sign saying the playground equipment was open and another saying the playground was closed, and made fun of the mixed message.  Problem is, the sign saying the playground is closed actually refers to a different playground, that of the school next door, which actually is closed.  Sorry!

To try to make up for that, I looked at the basketball court and got a pleasant surprise:  two baskets facing each other from a reasonable distance:

But the reason I was there was that the map had initially shown a "sanican" there, but then had retracted the claim, so I wanted to see for myself.  Well, here's where it used to be:

My guess is that with no ball games happening there, but COVID testing happening at Northgate Park, the city decided there was a greater need elsewhere.

Anyway, after that I went to Ballard, but I'm out of time to tell you about that tonight, dear Diary.

Hike 6C: Far Northeast

Dear Diary,

This is a short page about two parks that I introduced to you much earlier than the previous page's parks.  It also features my first surprise from not reading the map carefully beforehand (and, may I add, from not expecting the worst).  All photographs were taken on January 14.

Northacres Park and Playfield

This large-ish park on the western border of northeast Seattle first appeared in you, dear Diary, May 28 in "Top of the City" part II.  Most of the photos I've shown you appeared November 12 in "To a Land of Water and Honey".  And I've mentioned the park many other times, which brings me to the surprise.

Northacres has two entrances with very different features.  The "playfield" entrance on 3rd Ave NE leads to two big things, baseball fields and to a dogs' off-leash area.  The "park" entrance on 1st Ave NE leads to a playground, picnic area, and miscellaneous other stuff that isn't so big.  Between the two is a woods strewn with trails.  Each of the two has a restroom building; two water fountains are attached to the park building, while one is either attached to or free-standing very very close to the playfield building.

And the reason I called a previous page "To a Land of Water and Honey", as well as mentioned Northacres a bunch more times, is that I'd been told by an employee of the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation that Northacres Park's park-side water fountains would stay on all winter.  Jackson Park, in the same general area, is the only other park where I was told that.

So imagine my surprise to find these on the doors of Northacres's park-side restrooms:

Now, the building these restrooms are in does look kind of old:

but with that old building's shiny new single-user all-gender stalls closed, would the building's water fountains be running?  They would not.

Now, here's the thing.  Northacres Park's park-side water fountains are so made that one has to press the button to call the water for some seconds before the water comes.  I was told that this was so as to make those water fountains safe to run in the winter.  Cal Anderson Park's shiny new main water fountain has the same property, so I assumed it was another winter-safe fountain.  In January I found neither of these running.

I asked Rachel Schulkin, the parks department's communications manager, whether any parks elsewhere in Seattle had such water fountains that actually were running this winter.  This question led to confusion over terminology, and finally to a statement that according to the department's plumber, the department owns no water fountains that can safely run in winter.

This has several implications - for example, does that mean that the water fountains in Jackson Park that run in winter aren't department property?  But I want to focus on one:  Why did the department saddle Northacres and Cal Anderson Parks with water fountains that have an annoying wait built into them if that wait does nothing useful?

The department can't win this one.  Either it has white elephant water fountains, one new last summer, or it has an incompetent plumber, or it has deliberately denied the homeless of Seattle (and the rest of the public) water this winter.  Which is it?

Anyway, I would have been less surprised, though not less outraged, if I'd looked carefully at the restroom map for this winter which I was hiking to check, which clearly said then, and says as of just now, that the open restroom is at "NORTHACRES PARK PF".  PF is, of course, department-speak for "playfield", and while most readers of the map probably don't know that, I did.  Sure enough:

At the playfield side, the restrooms were open.  (Much to my relief by that point.  That day I'd hiked through the parks of Greenwood and the far north, and then found the first restrooms I'd expected to be open, closed.)

The restroom building (not a spring chicken either, and Ms. Schulkin, while we were confusing each other with terminological differences, said it would have to close in real cold):

And this side has a "sanican":

Pinehurst Playground

For this park, see the same November page as for Northacres, but it was introduced in "Top of the City" part I on May 28.

I'd mentioned a messy encampment in "To a Land of Water and Honey".  By January this encampment had grown, though the mess hadn't kept pace.  This mildly surprised me, because this park has a self-defense system which I'd encountered just resting there.  I think it's centred on a local church, but anyway, in my experience a visibly homeless person can't spend an hour there without being offered help.  In October I saw a minister interacting with the then few campers.

So anyway, one of the few attractions the park itself, as opposed to the helpers, might have for the homeless is this:

You may recall, dear Diary, that in "How to Lie to the Homeless", part I, February 18, I noted that there isn't room here for the ADA "sanican" the map still claims is there.  That fence is what I meant.

Well, from Pinehurst I headed, um, home, or anyway to University Village and points nearby.  I'd been away for five days, and although I went three days later, January 17, on yet another attempt to sort out the hours of Green Lake and Woodland Parks' restrooms, I otherwise stayed put until the 19th, five days later.  Which I hope to tell you about tomorrow, dear Diary.

Hikes 3D and 6B: Far North

Dear Diary,

It's been weeks, hasn't it?  I'm sorry.  I've been distracted by issues related to housing, by yet more big unrelated projects I've taken on, and by feeling too cold, in early March when I was unsheltered, to write.

My big news, which this time you, dear Diary, are getting before that other page, is that now I'm actually housed.  As of three days ago, I sleep in a room that I've paid for and, for the first time in nearly fifteen years in Seattle, leased.  And yes, this makes it easier to forget about parks - except that I'm still hiking a lot, so I still need places to eat and do other things while out and about, so it isn't that easy after all.

The winter may be ending - I have hopes that the current spell of lows in the 30s might be the last - which would, in the normal course of things, lead to the now-closed restrooms re-opening, and, not less important, the water fountains coming back on.

Where I left off, I'd just decoded the map claiming to show open restrooms.  So I figured I had no more surprises coming, and stopped looking at the map before each day's hike.  As a result, I got several surprises.

But the first place I went, I went to twice.  It was the last park I visited January 9, but it was full night and I didn't take any pictures.  Then I went back January 14.

Bitter Lake Playfield

This was one of the parks introduced to you late because of my phone's theft and various other delays, dear Diary, first described November 12 in "Top of the City" part III, then getting its own page, six days later, in "Hygiene Is a Luxury I Can't Afford".

I found the restrooms open, apparently and according to people I spoke with, 24 hours last June.  In October I found them locked thanks to a delayed construction project.  And in January...

The closed doors:

The "sanican"s that, as I knew by the time I took these photos, were the excuse the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation was using to claim that the restrooms were open:

On the night of the 9th, I needed to do Number Two.  But the regular-sized "sanican" on the left of that photo was out of toilet paper that night, and the ADA-sized one on the right was occupied the whole time I was there.  So I hiked the whole way back to Green Lake instead.

The restroom building:

I didn't, on these visits, explore the park much, or look for the campers whose plumbing had been reduced to those "sanican"s for months.

Bitter Lake Community Center

In February, while I was in SeaTac, this building hosted a cold weather shelter for some days.  I doubt its restrooms and water fountains have re-opened to the public since then, but it's possible.  But on January 14, this is what I found:

I think it was hosting child care.

I debated which entrance would appear in this building's postcard shot, and eventually went with the more conservative side:

but wouldn't be at all surprised if an actual postcard featured the much livelier other entrance.

Helene Madison Pool

Also introduced in "Top of the City" part III.

In that page there's a photo that's pretty much the same as this attempt at a postcard shot:

I found it, of course, closed:

So basically, dear Diary, this winter, and for some months before, there was no public place for people in the far north of Seattle to wash their hands, which is pretty much what "Hygiene Is a Luxury I Can't Afford" dramatises.

All for now, but I hope to get back to you, dear Diary, tonight.  As I said, the parks department may soon begin re-opening restrooms and turning on water fountains.  I probably will continue banging the drum about this winter beyond that point, but it would be nice to finish telling you about the hikes, at least, before they're so obviously outdated.