Hike 9B: Far Northeast

Dear Diary,

I'm going to try to consolidate two visits to Green Lake and Woodland Parks into one page, thus giving me a better chance of finishing with the January hikes before summer.  So hikes 8D and 9A are being postponed to accompany hike 10; all you need to know for now is that on January 20 I went northeast from Green Lake Park to Lake City.

Albert Davis Park and Lake City Community Center

Introduced May 28 in "Top of the City", part I, and later discussed November 17 in "Lake City Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us!"  Please assume these same pages for the rest of the parks in this page, dear Diary.  Each time I've visited this park, it's been the site of a large homeless camp.

All the "sanican"s here are in the park, but for some reason the map these hikes were meant to check thought they were in the community center, so I've used both names.

About the time I got to the main bloc of "sanican"s, so did a young man who informed me, as I puzzled over my first encounter with an SPU sink, that it didn't work.  Neither, quoth he (and I soon verified), did the hand-washing station.  Sensing a major story, I asked how long things had been this way.  "Well, that worked yesterday [the hand-washing station], and that [the sink] is new in general."  Nope, no story, just bad timing on my part and on my young informant's.  His timing was rescued by another guy who showed up with a small water bottle, which he tossed to my contact.  That gentleman then proceeded to do what ablutions he could do in public with maybe twelve ounces of water.

So I couldn't photograph that setup just yet, and instead started the surprisingly complex task of circling the community center so as to decide where to focus the postcard shot.  Along the way I came across a "sanican" that apparently had misbehaved enough to get it ostracised from all its peers, way off at the other end of the park:

By the time I got back, the group of young men was gone.

The open door at the end wasn't a malfunction, just an airing out:

Anyway, here's what I thought the community center's best face:

and here are the (mostly) closed doors:

Lake City Mini Park

Oops.  Apparently this one isn't in the page from November?  Anyway, also a big homeless encampment served by "sanican"s:

Of course I checked, and yes, this hand-washing station had water:

God's Lil' Acre

This not being a park, I haven't brought it up before.  It appears to be one of the crutches allowing the city to get away without proper park restrooms in Lake City during this pandemic, like the Dick's Drive-In mentioned in the November page.  It also appears to be more of an all-around charity, as opposed to the primary focus on hygiene of the two North Seattle branches of the Urban Rest Stop.

Anyway, my main interest in the charities was verifying that they were open, or more precisely documenting that they were open, giving the map that listed them credit where it's due.  So here's my best attempt at a postcard shot:

And here are the open doors:

Cedar Park

Not, that I've observed, a campsite.  But it does have a "sanican":

Just as the map said, then and today.

Little Brook Park

I've also observed no camping here.  Like Greenwood Park, covered January 25 in "Hikes 3C and 6A", it has only one restroom, designed so as to be latchable but with that capacity usually impeded, with nice big holes for peeping Toms to look through, oh, I could rant for days about these rooms' blatant inadequacies, but what's relevant here is that as simple boxes, they aren't at all winter ready, so:

My best try at making this bad building look good:

Now, arguably Meadowbrook Pool, Community Center and Playfield, and maybe even Matthews Beach, are in Lake City, but I took far too many photos at Meadowbrook, and didn't get to Matthews Beach at all that day.  So I'll stop here for now, dear Diary, but may still get to Meadowbrook tonight.