A Visit to Cal Anderson Park

Dear Diary,

Surprise!  I had to go to my storage unit today, and on leaving my route passed through Cal Anderson Park.  The park was pretty crowded, so although I rather needed to do Number One, I confined myself to investigating the usual stuff.

Miraculously, though, water is running through the park's water fountains!

 

The first photo is of the fancy new triple fountain, the second of the old one next to the old water tower.  I wonder what Capitol Hill did to deserve water, that North Seattle didn't do.

The park's restrooms are in better shape than they were.  They didn't seem to be lockable, these single user stalls, but no doubt that's to prevent campers from coming back, attracted by the availability of free water.  Or maybe I just didn't grasp the locking mechanism in the time I spent.  I see that I photographed the doors of only two of the three stalls; sorry, dear Diary.  This one is like the one I skipped:

both of those being open (I'm guessing that lock is just stored there to be available when the restrooms are locked), although the one I skipped is red like the one next, which is the third, and isn't open:

There's even water running in a sink next to the black door, in the building's back:

Unfortunately, there were lots of spots on the floor of the room in back that I couldn't convince myself weren't tracks of Number Two:

although more likely they were dirt and grass from someone's shoes.  The one in front, with the red door, also had those, but ...

had, as well, much more disturbing stuff under the changing table.

I looked more closely at the room in back.  It has a dryer, which the men's room in the old restrooms never did:

and whereas the men's room, by the time I became homeless, had long lost its soap dispenser, this stall has two:

So it seems to me there are two possibilities.  One, some homeless person comes back regularly for the sole purpose of messing up the restrooms to which he no longer has regular access.  Or two, messiness in restrooms can actually be caused by housed people.  Supporting this latter theory, I remember the old restrooms consistently being nasty, nasty places, even though homeless people weren't prominent in the park in the relevant years (2012-2014).  Perhaps even if homelessness ended in Seattle, for any reason ranging from everyone getting housed to everyone getting shot, there would still be litter here.

Another thing.  Those ping pong tables that quite unfairly got the brunt of criticism when the park officially re-opened?  Never let it be said that the city doesn't listen.

Only one is there now.

Good night, dear Diary.  I'm not sure when I'll hike again, but happy times until then.