Dear Diary,
As I continue preparing for the pages actually about throwing away amenities, it is, of course, important for me to visit the relevant parks. And anyone who's read many of your pages could expect that these two parks would be relevant.
At Cowen Park, the water fountain is running fine, but I found the restrooms closed at 4 P.M. on a Saturday. I had trouble finding a Saturday newspaper, so it doesn't appear in the photos in this page, but the four door shots are at the relevant Google Drive folders (Cowen, University), which means all the other tools I use to preserve date information for photos are still there.
This means, essentially, that probably because of the men's room's untimely re-opening in March, Cowen Park's restrooms haven't opened (otherwise) all year. This is less of an issue for knowledgeable homeless people in the U-District than it could be now, because this autumn Savery Hall at the UW re-opened to the public, as, with more limited hours, did some University libraries, and perhaps, other buildings. But it must have made for a hard summer and spring there, especially now that Safeway, whose restrooms were very limitedly open to customers, is closed, as, of course, is the Urban Rest Stop's U-District location.
[Correction 11/18: Savery isn't open its full hours. So basically, homeless people around there who, like me, abhor "sanican"s still have to fast on weekends, or hike a long way.
In case that card's too dark for you, dear Diary, what it says is that Savery is only open 7:30 A.M. to 6 P.M., and only Mondays through Fridays, not including holidays. Significantly shorter hours than park restroom hours, if any park restrooms in the U-District had opened this year at all. Sorry for the mistake, dear Diary, and sorry to the homeless of the U-District for claiming that their troubles are even partly over.]
Meanwhile at University Playground? I immediately noticed an absence. The tent to the right of the main park entrance, which had been there for years, was gone. Someone had taken the trouble to write about that:
The park maintenance man whom I first met at Laurelhurst Playfield, and again at Ravenna and Cowen Parks, had spoken well of her to me. He said she had taught at the UW. He said that it was an ongoing headache for the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation to make sure that, whenever University Playground was swept (in those years not by parks staff), her increasingly baroque setup was left alone. So I never expected to find this. I never spoke with her - she took pains to present a prickly exterior by leaving notes outside her place, and I rarely try to break through such - but I'd seen her sweeping the tennis courts. She is an old, petite, black woman, and if anyone reads this who knows what's become of her, please comment.
Anyway, as a result, I can now photograph the important piece of park property her tent obstructed, thus ruining the enjoyment of millions:
Yep, a piece of pavement, which was undoubtedly severely damaged in ways invisible in this photo by the presence for so long of a homeless woman. We're catching that way, aren't we?
Anyway, perhaps thanks to the removal of her restraining influence, the park is now the scene of a sort of arms race. Someone seems to have drilled out the locks that have kept the restrooms there closed for at least two years, and probably longer. So the parks department has installed temporary padlocks. The women's room door:
Someone has burned down the latest "sanican":
And, um, the men's room door:
A close-up showing how that came to pass:
I did walk in, wanting to see again the one park men's room in North Seattle I'd been in before the pandemic, but not since. It didn't occur to me to check whether the water was running - stupid of me, dear Diary, and I'm sorry.
I've been affected enough by the Korean TV shows I've watched for so many years that one reaction I have to this whole thing is that Jenny Durkan should be ashamed of herself for picking on a woman so much older than she is. I'd very much like to hear that the person who wrote the comment on that sign was ill-informed, and this woman I never spoke with got a happy ending at least as genuine as my own, but partly because of the subject I've been researching, I find that difficult to believe.
The two parks maintenance men I've talked with at length have two different theories as to why University Playground's restrooms have been closed for so long. The vandalism-hater thinks it's because of a pretty specific, hard to fix, example of vandalism. The homeless-woman-respecter thinks it's because if the restrooms were open, she would camp in the women's room. This horrifies me, because I remember University Playground's men's room as nasty even as park restrooms go. During their 24-hour-open weeks at the beginnings of school years (which I first learnt of well after I became homeless), I've found men sleeping in the men's room, and that always gave me a similar feeling to, say, cockroaches - extreme disgust. Maybe the women's room normally used to stay a whole lot nicer, but in any event, his theory seems to be exploded, because even after her departure, the parks department is at pains to keep these restrooms closed.
The parks department has, in fact, been at pains since the pandemic began to deny that these restrooms exist. The whole series of hikes I took for you, dear Diary, this past winter, to check this map offered by the city's Department of Human Services, began because I was offended by what I took as an error - the map represented closed park restrooms as open as long as there were "sanican"s nearby. With the exception of University Playground. So I started with the expectation that University Playground was the norm, and didn't really understand that the city's homelessness agency was really deliberately lying to homeless people about access to hygiene services - specifically, sinks and soap - until the disastrous stay in a motel halfway through the hikes. I still don't know why that map omitted University Playground, and only that park, last winter, and am waiting to see what it does this winter. Also, the list I received, of seasonal restrooms that are seasonally closed because they really can't take cold weather, omits University Playground, even though it's obviously an example.
The parks department's page for University Playground does still recognise that this park has restrooms, both in its coded list of amenities and in its text. So there's room to hope that demolition is not the next step in the arms race, but not much more than hope. Which is about the same feeling I have for the future of the old woman who lived so long in that park, but no longer does. After several weeks of work, I could even contribute some money myself, if that were necessary, if I knew how. Please, if anyone knows, tell.
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