Dear Diary,
Surprise! I got antsy enough today to go on another hike.
Unfortunately, this turned out to mean another walk through Green Lake Park through an atmospheric river. My phone didn't react as badly as last time (immortalised in your pages, dear Diary, as "Escaping Green Lake Park, part two" and "Fear of Rain") but I still don't want to connect it to the computer, which may increase the risk of a short-circuit. I took 47 photos, most of which are water fountain and restroom door shots meant for the Google Drive folders (Woodland, Green Lake), which I hope I can upload today. But even the exceptions, the ones meant only for you, dear Diary, I may not be able to show you today. I've left double spaces around the places that I want to put them. (EDIT 10/25: They're in now. My phone survived.)
I skipped the water fountain at the far northwest corner of Woodland Park, for reasons I'll explain.
I started from the northeast corner of Woodland Park, walked south to 50th, then along 50th before turning north again. I then walked not down West Green Lake Way, but an internal Woodland Park road roughly parallel to it, to enter Green Lake Park near the shellhouse at the lake's southern end. From there I walked counter-clockwise around the circum-lake trail, past the 64th St and Community Center restrooms to the Bathhouse ones, then moved (and high time, too) to the trail around the edge of the park to visit the wading pool (north) restrooms and the outlying water fountain.
Woodland Park
Erica Barnett at Publicola has recently reported that a sweep of Woodland Park is imminent. Usually, when she reports something like this, I find myself days too late to actually witness the sweep; in the case of what is currently your most popular page, dear Diary, I was only hours too late. One of the main reasons many people have been demanding a sweep is that the city has, for many months now, kept both the roads I just mentioned - West Green Lake Way and the internal park road parallel to it - closed; I and also those making these demands believe that these closures were intended to protect a peculiarly favoured homeless encampment centred on the shelters in the western half of the eastern block of Woodland Park. There have also been demands for a sweep because the presence of so many homeless people prompted enough fear among some housed people that an important annual cross-country track event has been cancelled two years running.
As I approached Woodland Park, I could see cars driving up West Green Lake Way, and concluded that I was days too late once again.
Cloverleaf - Where the four smaller baseball fields along Green Lake Way meet, at the end of a path that continues Clogston Way, there's a building whose roof forms part of the stands for one of the fields. This building has inside it two restrooms. These restrooms are normally seasonal, closed sometime in November and opened sometime in March or so, but were considered safe to open limited hours last winter and will probably be opened similarly this coming one, because the other restrooms in the athletic eastern quarter of Woodland Park are closed. There is a water fountain attached to the building. I found both restrooms open and the water fountain running strongly. I delayed a quarter hour because someone of whose gender I was uncertain was standing in front of the women's room sink that entire time, probably making up presumably her face, and finally tried a couple of complicated shots to work around ?her presence. During that quarter hour I read the front section of today's paper, which I had with me to date the photos. This turned out to be a good thing.
"Rio" (Citywide Athletics building) - This is a smaller building nestled between the bigger baseball diamond and a soccer field. The COVID testing site run by Curative is currently still near it, as reported last spring. Its restrooms were closed today, and the men's room is boarded up, with a sign on the boards announcing it's closed due to vandalism.
The baseball diamond to the south has two water fountains near the first- and third-base dugouts. Both had been eviscerated by metal thieves when I first visited them in spring 2020. On this occasion, my first visit since April or May this year, I found running water fountains of the same make there, whether representing major repairs or outright replacement.
Woodland Park Ave - Some way north of where this street ends at 50th, there's a solitary water fountain of an old-fashioned make. I found it damaged last year, and discerned no repairs so far.
50th St - To the north and west of that water fountain is a restroom building with an extremely old-fashioned water fountain south of it (on the men's room side). I found both restrooms open (although the women's room door has a damaged "Restroom Closed" sign still taped to it), and the water fountain, which had been damaged since I first saw it, now has a spout again, but still doesn't run.
This restroom building is there mainly because of three shelter buildings (Woodland Park's shelters 1 to 3) north of it, on the inside of a loop drive. Occupation of this area by homeless people during the pandemic has been hit or miss; the main attraction of Woodland Park has been the electricity available from at least one shelter, but none of these shelters have that or even sinks. That said, this area obviously has not yet been swept. I didn't even see any of the signs that have recently been posted before sweeps. I did see signs obviously meant to deter sweeps, similarly on red paper, as follows:
I went north and uphill to the other shelter area, in which four shelters are strung along more or less north-south roads, 7, 4, 5, 6. Shelter 7 to the south has been the least occupied, but on two visits I'd found campers near it; this time the whole area was empty.
Shelters 4 and 5 didn't appear to be empty.
At the top of the hill, the terminus of the park-internal road that sort of parallels West Green Lake Way, is a restroom building that the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation calls the "Pink Palace" because it's very noticeably pink. Its restrooms were open (though the women's room gate had another "Restroom Closed" sign), and the attached water fountains, which I'd found running on no previous hike, were running today. If I had to guess, I'd guess most of the water fountain work in Woodland Park postdates the June heat wave. I took two hikes in early July, found lots of water fountains on, and stopped worrying; this hike today was the one I most regretted not doing then.
One of the hallmarks of the encampment around this area has been extension cords used to carry electricity around from the shelter that supplies it to other shelters and to tents. I remarked on their curtailment in March. I found this time that they still aren't crossing the main road, but there is again electricity on the other side, around shelter 4, thanks to a circuitously routed cord.
At the northwest corner of this block stands a restroom building the parks department calls "lawn bowling" after the nearby greens. This is normally a seasonal pair of restrooms; I remember asking Rachel Schulkin of the parks department about them, and her telling me that the manager was trying his best to keep them open. Over last winter, the "Pink Palace" and "50th St" restrooms were usually open 24 hours, but the lawn bowling pair were only open the same limited hours as the cloverleaf pair. In any event, they were open this afternoon.
Under the northern eaves of this building stands a water fountain within the lawn bowling greens' fences. Today for the first time I found the gate near that water fountain open.
As on a previous occasion when lawn bowlers opened it for me, the water fountain wasn't running. I have no idea whether that's because of damage or the fence. (In Tacoma there are many fenced athletic areas, available only by reservation. I was told by the park worker who let me into one that this resulted in their water fountains never working; but actually, one of the two at that location was on that night.)
Near shelter 6, which I believe to be the main source of electricity (although I suspect what's now crossing to shelter 4 is from the "Pink Palace" instead), is a water fountain. Last fall, after the city bowed to public health's demands that it turn on the fountains, that was one of only two in Woodland Park that ran (the other was the cloverleaf fountain mentioned above). It was not running today.
Shelter 6 is the only shelter other than shelter 7 not swathed in tarps today. It isn't empty like shelter 7; there's a table of books at one end of the shelter and what looks like a table of utensils at the sinkward end. But none of the cloth, tarps, and whatnot that had made it homelike last autumn for a woman, and later at least kitchenlike last winter and spring for a group of men, remains.
One possible reason the evident enthusiasm for running water fountains didn't reach the fountains at the lawn bowling green and shelter 6 is that there are extension cords across the road near there. I think this is more likely to have been accepted as a good excuse to skip those fountains (conceivably even by agreement among some park workers and some campers), than to be the result of extremely pugnacious campers who wouldn't even temporarily detach those cords.
In my trip today, the rain got a lot steadier around here. I reflected on the fact that the water fountain near Woodland Park Ave is the same make as the water fountain at the park's northwest corner, that is, the northwest corner of the block the Woodland Park Zoo is on, and decided that the latter fountain was unlikely to have been repaired and I didn't need to cross Aurora to verify that.
Green Lake Park
At the south end of the lake used to be a Shellhouse Theatre or some such. One part of their seating survives. Clockwise along the trail from there are the two buildings of the current Green Lake Small Craft Center. One of those buildings holds two restrooms, which I found open. Each building has attached to it one water fountain, which ran during the first drought of spring 2020, but not during the second one of spring 2021. Both were running today.
Green Lake Park's circum-lake trail had, for all the months of my acquaintance with it, a profusion of signs. "Crowded Parks Lead to Closed Parks". "Wrong Way". And so on, and so on, and so on. I saw basically none of these today. Indeed it was far from clear whether we were still in pandemic-time rules, in which wheels were barred and everyone walked counter-clockwise, or in regular rules, which are completely different.
I, like most people, went counter-clockwise, not least because that's how I'd planned the hike. Counter-clockwise, then, the next restrooms, the parks department calls "65th Street" because they're near where 64th Street ends at East Green Lake Way. Ahem. The official 24-hour restrooms of Green Lake Park used to be further north, but perhaps because of the encampment relatively nearby, last winter the 64th St restrooms were officially open 24 hours instead. (In reality, both pairs were normally open 24 hours.) Unsurprisingly, I found the 64th St restrooms open today. I've never found a water fountain near them.
The Green Lake Community Center has restrooms whose doors open to the outside. Last winter there was renovation going on, resulting in unpredictable access to those restrooms and, separately, unpredictable water supply. Thankfully, not only were they open today, but also the men's room, at least, had both warm and cold running water and unblocked toilets. (However, the men's room was less affected by the renovation throughout, so the women's room may or may not have the same.) The water fountain trailward of the Community Center was running.
As I walked north from the Community Center the wind got considerably stronger. I had to furl my umbrella, which did not do wonders for my comfort or the cohesion of the newspaper front section I was carrying to date the photos. The wind started to break branches off trees and whip them at the people walking the trail, including me; I found seven tiny twigs in my hair while writing this page, dear Diary. This made me more certain that my planned path, arguably shorter and not requiring me to go back along the lowest parts of the lake trail, was the right one. So on I went to the Bathhouse Theater.
This building's restrooms have doors that open to the outside, but they're one of three sets of those in North Seattle that officially open only in summer, when I generally avoid hiking. (The other two are in Magnuson Park and at Matthews Beach). However, they were open last winter. I did not find them open today. There's a freestanding water fountain near the men's room, running today, and attached fountains on the other side of the women's room (lakeward), also running today.
So then I went out to the park's edge, and started back clockwise. This brought me to the usual official 24-hour restrooms, near the northernmost point of the lake; the parks department refers to these restrooms as "wading pool" after a nearby feature. They weren't the official 24-hour restrooms last winter, but were open 24 hours most nights anyhow. Of course I found them open. The water fountains attached to the building were running, as was the freestanding water fountain nearby. (EDIT 10/25: I didn't end up with photos of that fountain, and am not positive I checked that it was running. Sorry, dear Diary.) The newspaper section was disintegrating, and my phone was doing weird stuff all the time. This was pretty much the trip's nadir.
So from there I went back to the park's edge and looked for a freestanding water fountain I'd found this spring for the first time, around where 72nd St intersects East Green Lake Drive. This fountain had run for a while and then been vandalised. I think it's been partly fixed, but it still doesn't have a spout, and I didn't hear water when I pushed the button.
The weather suddenly turned much nicer around the time I took the last photo, and I made my way home. The last stop was the neighbourhood shop where I'd bought the paper; I bought another copy, because it was hopeless to salvage the section I'd carried all that way.
Dear Diary, I don't understand why I didn't see sweep notices already up, and why it looks like things have improved again for the campers at Woodland Park. The most important change is that the roads are open (and the park-internal road seeing frequent but not constant use), but at least by day, I didn't see vigilantes trying to harm the campers. I find it hard to believe our present mayor has finally decided to be nice to homeless people, but that hypothesis fits the current facts better than any other I can think of. Perhaps sometime in the coming days the confusion will be reduced. But for now, the people in Woodland Park remain relatively fortunate among the unsheltered homeless of this pandemic, as, of course, still more so, am I. Good night, dear Diary.
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