Dear Diary,
Under a slightly longer version of my name, I maintain about a hundred playlists at YouTube. Nearly all, and all the public ones, came about because I watch Korean TV dramas. The most popular are playlists that reproduce individual dramas' soundtrack albums. But those are a minority of the total. The rest instead concentrate on a few specific musical performers I first encountered through dramas: Jisun, the ChungWonYoung Band, Jadu, and IU.
IU is much the most popular of these, partly because she's an "idol". As a result, most of her work has been on YouTube throughout her career. In contrast, some of the ChungWonYoung Band's still isn't there now. As for Jisun and Jadu, both were lead singers of bands that were about equally popular in their heydays, but maybe because The Jadu's heyday was a few years earlier than Loveholic's, or maybe for some other reason, Jisun's career has mostly been documented at YouTube all along, but not so much Jadu's. However, it became clear, when I built all my IU playlists, that Loveholic wanted some of its music kept off YouTube, so I was nervous, and only made private playlists concerning Jisun. I built one public Jadu playlist, but nothing else was at YouTube at the level of individual songs, so I went no further.
This was all years ago. In February 2016, for some reason, I stopped updating the spreadsheet I used to keep track of the playlists, and in November 2017 my laptop was stolen, after which it was hard to do much of anything with them. So once I got the laptop I'm writing on now, one of my first concerns was to do what I could to repair years of neglect. I'd always done updates on the 15th of the month, so on June 14 I started, and on June 17th finished.
And since YouTube has aggressively been acquiring Korean popular music since I'd last worried about the playlists, I then made public the (repaired) Jisun playlists, and started working on Jadu ones. Much of her work still isn't there, but quite a lot is, including much of what I love most. (She is, so far, the only Korean performer all of whose discs I own.) However, the songs that interested me in her in the first place were ones she sang as a character in a drama. The network that first aired that drama used to have the whole thing available at YouTube, though without subtitles, but now offers only part of the fourth episode. So I thought maybe it was time I figured out how to violate copyright at YouTube - no, not to upload the whole drama, but maybe the individual songs - and in order to decide, looked for the DVDs I'd first watched.
The Seattle Public Library has long ago disposed of its copies. The easiest place for me to get them now was the University Place branch of the Pierce County Library, so off I went, on July 3.
And that's where you come in, dear Diary.
Pierce County Library, University Place branch
Once I'd picked up my hold, and picked another couple of dramas, it occurred to me to check the restrooms and water fountains. But I didn't get very far, because I was shocked to see the water fountains like this:
Mind, I wasn't shocked just because the water fountains were disabled. Disappointed, yes, but not shocked. What shocked me was that the Pierce County Library had considered it reasonable to spend money for the sole purpose of disabling its water fountains! As we've seen, the Seattle Public Library was disabling some of its water fountains, for social distancing purposes, but it was just using plastic bags to do it. PCL wasn't doing it for social distancing, and had thought it more worthwhile to buy these things than to buy books. I was shocked.
So I asked a librarian about it, identifying myself first as your writer, dear Diary, in other words as sort of a member of the press. This librarian said it was "because of COVID", to "keep everyone safe". She also said all the PCL libraries were doing this (I don't know the current status, but did later find one other library doing so), and not only that, but the Tacoma Library branches too, in particular the Swasey branch "just up the street". (We'll get to the truth of that statement later, repeatedly.)
Obviously, the myth that COVID-19 spreads through touch is still widespread in Pierce County. In fact, absurdly widespread. Outside the University Place Library, there's a sort of fountain or perhaps water play area. Adjacent to it stands a double water fountain (plus a bowl down at the bottom, probably for dogs). And as of yesterday, that water fountain - outside, where COVID-19 spread is even less likely - was still turned off. But these are the photos I took on July 3:
In University Place, if you want to drink water, you need to drink it from display fountains, not drinking fountains. Probably to this day.
But that's all I have to say about University Place, which is not a very big place and may be prone to silly ideas. I was horrified by the idea that a major city like Tacoma would be the same way. So on finding through Google Maps that a bunch of large Tacoma parks were on the bus route I was taking, I got off and started an excursion.
Wait Demons
I got off the bus rather too soon, in fact, and this is how I discovered that one of the things I like least in Seattle is even more present in Tacoma.
Pedestrians approaching intersections may find one of three things there, in one way of looking at it: timed traffic lights, push-button traffic lights, or no traffic lights. (Some lights with push-buttons are actually also timed.) In recent years, Seattle has enthusiastically been installing a particular kind of push-button light, each of which, when the button is pushed, starts yelling "WAIT!" once per second until the light changes. Since this yelling is punishing only the obedient, only those who actually do wait, it is obviously perpetrated by a demon. The only thing that makes Seattle's penchant for this kind of traffic light tolerable is that the demons' voices wear out fairly quickly, so until they're replaced they can be ignored.
Well, Tacoma has far more push-button lights than Seattle, on many intersections that would here either have no lights, or have timed ones. And a far higher percentage of Tacoma's push-button lights have wait demons in them. And not only that, but Tacoma is much more diligent in summoning new demons when the old ones' voices wear out. Those who don't like being yelled at should re-consider any plans they may make to go hiking in Tacoma.
But anyway, I'd started
A Hike in Western and Central Tacoma
The first place Google Maps pointed me to, it called "China Lake Park". It's quite large, so I figured for sure it would have restrooms and a water fountain, and I could see where things stood.
China Lake Nature Area
Oops. A while later, as I continued on 19th, I saw this fairly incongruous sign:
I'd already found that one of the trails marked on Google Maps was probably made by someone other than parks staff, and on seeing the information that people not members of the public would be punished for intruding, decided to give up. (After all, I'm not a member of the version of the public that pays for Tacoma's parks.) Seattle's Natural Areas don't have plumbing, after all; why would this park?
Heidelberg Sports Complex
This is also called the Heidelberg-Davis Sports Complex, or Heidelberg Park. I walked along its north side (19th) and part of its west side (S Tyler St), and found nothing but fences. Along the west side was a sign announcing Foss High School, so I figured it was just something like the Seattle parks' deal with Nathan Hale, and dropped it. In yesterday's hike I went back and found I'd gotten things wrong, but all in good order. On the 3rd, I crossed Tyler to
The Tacoma Nature Center
I was to find that many of Tacoma's parks are mapped, a much higher proportion than of Seattle's parks. Here's one:
Now, this map doesn't show any plumbing, but that could just mean it wasn't intended to, not that there wasn't any, and there were buildings nearby, so I plodded on, and found these things:
See? At least Tacoma was being more parsimonious than the Pierce County Library, if not more generous with water. I returned to this park, also, yesterday.
DeLong Park
This is another large park like the Tacoma Nature Center and China Lake Nature Area, but this one is officially an actual Park, see:
It too is mapped.
I was getting tired of not checking these maps out, so I went into the park. At its north end is a big grassy sward with a few benches. Towards its middle is a tree-ringed clearing with one. That's basically it for amenities in DeLong Park.
I was beginning to get the impression that the Metropolitan Tacoma Park District (which provides parks to a few small areas outside Tacoma's own boundaries) was a hardcore park purveyor, for which benches were extravagant luxuries. I think it's true that in general, Metro Parks Tacoma (as it's now known) wants more hiking than Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation, and although Tacoma is a much smaller city with far fewer parks, it may offer more hiking and certainly offers more hiking maps. But the next park I went to was very different.
Franklin Park
This is the first of these parks where I found the following things:
- A playground
- A picnic shelter
- Restrooms
- A playfield, on which a game involving a soccer ball was happening
- Crowds, watching the game
It's also the first of these parks where I didn't find a park sign like the one I just showed you, dear Diary, for DeLong Park.
But it was like most of the others so far in lacking a water fountain. This, right there, is distinctive by Seattle standards. At least in North Seattle, all parks with restrooms have water fountains. Not in Tacoma.
Anyway, here are the restrooms' doors:
There was a line of women waiting to use those restrooms, so even if I'd had a newspaper with me to date the photo, I wouldn't have tried for open-door shots. You'll just have to take my word, dear Diary, that the doors were in fact opening. Because most of the restroom doors I've photographed in Tacoma are single-user stalls' doors, in fact, they aren't set up to stay open, and in all my hikes so far there, I've taken few such shots.
And here's the sign I did find and photograph, after circling the entire park, futilely looking for the name sign:
I returned to this park yesterday too.
Peck Athletic Complex
Remembering that I'd ditched Heidelberg too soon, I did circumnavigate this much smaller park, and found the place where the fence would open, if it did open. I saw a building in there, which I inferred had restrooms, but it doesn't look like my photo caught that.
Here's the sign:
Stanley Playfield
Google Maps shows two parks here: Stanley Playfield on the west, Sewell Park on the east. Google is quite sure Sewell Park is a real place, but Metro Parks Tacoma doesn't know of it, and doesn't have any signage up naming it. (Really. I explored this park quite thoroughly, looking for that sign.)
Anyway, Stanley Playfield is adjacent to a school, which has weird results here. Something I took at first for a weirdly built and weirdly empty picnic shelter is actually, on the school side, a sheltered basketball court. Next to that are two playgrounds, one for the school, one for the park. The park seems to have no plumbing, and it was getting pretty late, so I just photographed the sign:
Ferry Park
This is Tacoma's oldest park, at least according to the local signage. It has a playground and a lawn, and not much else.
Oh, you wanted to see the historical signage, dear Diary? I photographed that too. Turns out this small park has had a pretty contentious history, going back and forth on whether playgrounds were appropriate to it, of all strange subjects for arguments.
Water, Water Nowhere, and Nary a Drop to Drink
As I headed on toward downtown and my bus back to Seattle, I passed a service agency. It had a poster up, prompted by the then-recent heat wave:
That lists cooling centres and places to get water bottles. Too much trouble to turn some water fountains on, much better to waste plastic and money on water bottles. That's how Tacoma's homeless were told to deal with the hottest weather in the city's history.
Much of what I learned on the 3rd of July about Tacoma turned out to be false, as future pages will show, but as far as I now know, it's true that the city's solution to homeless people needing water, not just in that heat wave but throughout the pandemic, was bottles.
Tonight, however, it's approaching quiet hours, and the drama I'm currently watching I still have two episodes left in. So I have to get back to that. That drama, which I'm beginning, on this second watching, to believe is really excellent, is available free at a site called Viki, which also has the (somewhat worse) drama I found Jadu in, but that's paywalled.
So the next page about Tacoma is coming tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment