Dear Diary,
Happy Thanksgiving!
Last night I was itching to go hiking, and the weather forecasters were claiming that there wouldn't be that much rain. Also, Boeing Field has started to record temperatures of 32° F, but only just barely. So I thought of parks whose restrooms seemed likely to be open 24 hours and which I hadn't yet visited in that capacity, and got started.
And there's something to be thankful for! The restrooms were indeed open at all three parks I visited - Bitter Lake Playfield (where they'll probably be closed soon, though not because of the temperature), Gas Works Park (where they should stay open all winter), and one to be named soon (that link to the Google Drive folder with the photos won't work until then; those restrooms not only close each winter, but have to).
On a less delightful note, I found the shelter at Gas Works Park empty for only the second time since I first found it, probably not too long after 2014. Maybe it was swept in mid-September. Unfortunately, that huge, dry shelter is right next to the playground, which makes its semi-permanent occupation more problematic. I was surprised, of course, to find the shelter empty, whether or not it had been swept, and wondered whether the campers - who all had tents, even though they didn't really need them there - had moved to other parts of the park; but I hiked around for a while without finding a single tent. Anyway, I was too disheartened by that, and by the realisation that I actually lacked the strength to end the night by walking Woodland and Green Lake Parks, to take any photos of the newly revealed shelter.
Still, this is not a story of the parks working normally. It is commonly claimed that Seattle has only six 24-hour public restrooms. I've encountered this meme being attributed to at least two sources; one isn't online, but the other, Review of Navigation Team: 2018 Quarter 2 Report (PDF), by David G. Jones, City Auditor, has all the bits of the meme familiar to me on the report's pages 21 and 22, and on page 23 lists the alleged six. I can't help thinking Jones must not have looked very hard. His list turns out to be four "sanican"s, and the "wading pool" and "65th St" restrooms at Green Lake Park. But "sanican"s were far more numerous in the parks than that already in 2018. Perhaps he was misled by the parks' official hours; it's true that Green Lake is one of the few parks officially open 24 hours, but I don't think the average person experiencing late-night need is going to care, and at least I have never been challenged for late-night visits to parks. Perhaps he never encountered the park workers' gossip through which I first heard that View Ridge Playfield's restrooms have been 24 hours for "many years". And maybe park workers used to be much more on the ball, and got the restrooms locked diligently at out-of-the-way places like Bitter Lake Playfield and Carkeek Park. But in any event, last night, there were probably four pairs of restrooms open at Woodland and Green Lake Parks, and four more open north (Bitter Lake), south (Gas Works), east (View Ridge) and west (Carkeek) of those. Not even counting the "Portland Loo" at Ballard Commons, which also existed in 2018. That's eight, or maybe nine, sites just in about a third of the city. Some - Woodland, perhaps Bitter Lake - are likely to start closing once the famous homeless encampments there are swept, and Gas Works was opened specifically in response to the pandemic. And Bitter Lake is needlessly seasonal (which, from its geographical position, it oughtn't be). But nothing requires the city to go back to its old ways of doing things, and even those included more 24-hour real restrooms, to say nothing of the thousands of "sanican"s, than Jones found.
So, being as generous to Jones as I can manage, let's give thanks that in this regard, at least, things have changed for the better, and let's resolve to try hard to keep them changed. Park restrooms are too inconvenient to be a real solution, but if we can't even keep what we've got now, we'll never get the restrooms we really need. Thanks!
Speaking of the restrooms we really need, I expect to finish surveying the downtown parks this long weekend. Until then, dear Diary, a happy holiday, and happy days.
No comments:
Post a Comment