Dear Diary,
Sorry it's a day later than I predicted. It turns out I can't keep all the geography of I-5 in the U-District in my head at once; I went out twice yesterday and once today to look at it again. Anyway. This page concerns hikes on the 8th, 14th, 16th and 18th of this month, and the dozen places I think fit best here. That's rather a lot, so let's get started.
We're going to need two maps for these places. Here's the first, which shows most of them:
On the 8th, as with the other parts of this region of North Seattle, I wanted mainly to visit places owned, leased or otherwise controlled by the City of Seattle, according to the city's 2020 real property report. (The main reason I don't use later reports is that they only inconsistently include leased property.) I'd started with Ravenna, and then taken the Burke-Gilman Trail to the area south of University Heights, Brooklyn. So this was the last area where I took photos that day, though I then unwisely returned to Ravenna chasing an SPU property that turned out to be a mirage.
University Neighborhood Service Center, take 1 (A on map)
I was a quarter hour too late to go inside this rented space, because I'd been looking for ball point pens at the University Bookstore a block south.
On the way to my next stop, I noticed an informational pillar. It's good to know the U District Partnership is on the ball, keeping up with things timelier than I do:
University Heights Plaza (B on map)
Dear Diary, two and a half years into this, I think I've got the hang of this. University Heights Plaza, a park owned by Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation, is a rectangle that's mostly a basketball court, right?
The King County parcel viewer seems to agree. As I've previously mentioned to you, dear Diary, the "sanican"s and hand-washing station that had been in the plaza during the lockdowns are now gone, so this park is even less a part of my usual rounds than it had been then. The street sink the cited page mentions isn't on the plaza, but on University Heights's private land, a little north of the P-patch. Speaking of which...
University Heights P-Patch (C on map)
I think I'm obviously the wrong person to see what, if anything, is distinctive about particular P-patches. This one at least doesn't have any stairs.
Fire Station 17 (D on map)
When I visited Fire Station 9 in Fremont last summer, I photographed a bunch of signage showing COVID-related closures of various kinds. Not so here this time:
So my doubts about continuing to point the fire stations out are returning. I'll have to think about that and let you know, dear Diary.
University branch Library (E on map)
From the downtown hikes of September, I've concluded that it's silly to keep taking restroom and water fountain photos inside buildings, since defects in these things are rarely tolerated for long, unlike in parks. Also, people inside buildings seem much readier to take offense than people in parks at the use of a camera near restrooms. However, the only photo I took here, this time, that wasn't a restroom or water fountain shot was a similarly boring door-signage one:
University Playground
The restrooms here have been closed since before the pandemic. There's still a "sanican", without hand-washing station, in the park, but it's no longer at the back of the restroom building, instead near the northwest exit from the park. The water fountain works fine. Relevant photos from October 8th and several past visits are in the Google Drive folder.
I took a landscape shot, unsure whether I'd be back before the next encampment makes such a photo more difficult to take, given my rules:
It occurs to me, dear Diary, that I mostly don't have a clue who reads you any more, so should explain my rules for photo taking again, since they'll be relevant pretty soon. I don't deliberately photograph people, originally because I didn't want to negotiate image rights while socially distanced, now mainly because I don't really want to negotiate them at all. I take pains not to photograph homeless people's tents. I bend these rules where necessary (e.g., photographing anything near Pike Place Market) as long as the people or tents are significantly distant, and even then strongly prefer that the people's faces aren't visible.
Anyway, the remaining stops from October 8 are on the other map, which we've seen before in the first part about hiking Ravenna:
Two snippets (F on second map)
Real property reports mention lots of "parcel"s and "snippet"s. In previous cases, I've only intermittently been able to identify these. My record is now a little bit better; I'm pretty sure these protrusions into 8th Ave NE are the two intended by 799 NE 56th St and 810 NE 55th St, 56th first:
I'd rather the report listed the reasonably attractive street circle at 8th Ave NE and NE 56th St:
but although that's pretty certainly city-owned, it isn't what's meant.
Shiga's Garden (G on second map)
Another P-patch:
As implied, that's it for the hike of October 8th in this area. On October 14, I went to places suggested by Open Street Map, specifically two of them, plus I went back to the Neighborhood Service Center. But first...
Notes on the land east of I-5 here
In the northwestern part of this region, there's little land east of I-5, as opposed to reasonably generous amounts west of it, enough for a park (NE 60th St Park) and a volunteer garden/orchard (Freeway Estates). South of 53rd, that all changes, and down to 42nd or so, all the land worth mentioning is east of I-5. This is partly, but I think not entirely, because of lots of entrances from and exits to the U-District.
The story of this land that I'm prepared to tell today and most likely tomorrow is a story of fences. For whatever reason, much of the land is fenced in, or fairly recently was fenced in. Much of the fenced land is steep, which argues that safety is the main concern, but I doubt that's all or even most of it, because much of the fenced land isn't steep, and there doesn't seem to be much correlation between steepness and fencing. At least one substantial park housed people could plausibly enjoy would be possible near I-5 in the first area I'll discuss below.
Another element of the story: Some of this land is currently inhabited. In general, dear Diary, I haven't identified homeless people's use of the land since the previous mayor ramped up sweeps again sometime in 2021. As I predicted in "Away from the Manger", the last part of my Christmas triptych last year, homeless people have metastasised throughout the city, no longer allowed to be anywhere in numbers, but still finding enough nooks and crannies in both public and private land to avoid (at least as far as I've seen) having to risk using residential porches. However, in this case some of the land (south of the area this page covers) has recently been swept of holdover encampments; this suggests that the use of the rest (mostly also by holdover encampments) is known to the sweepers. And I can't tell the story of the fences without talking about the ways in which they've been circumvented, which obviously suggests the land's homeless residents as the agents of circumvention (though hardly the only possible ones).
East of I-5, area 4 (H on first map)
The circumvention here, going south toward 47th St from 50th St, is simple. The fence has a gate in it, not far south of 50th, and that gate has been open every time, in the over two weeks I've been hiking for these pages, I've gotten close enough to check. (Mind, that's only been three or four times, but still.) Near as I can tell, nothing was destroyed unless there was a padlock or some such on the gate.
There aren't many tents here, and it's easy to avoid them while hiking south much of the way to 47th in this substantial area. It's mostly overgrown grass:
with occasional outcrops of thicker vegetation:
I can't see why these however-many acres have been abandoned like this. Maybe because of the same sluggishness, on the part of the State of Washington Department of Transportation, that has exasperated the city's leaders because WSDOT hasn't gone all-out to sweep homeless people from its properties as the city has. But if WSDOT is finally doing sweeps now, I have to wonder why it can't also do something positive at least with this space.
University Child Development School's playgrounds (I on first map)
Dear Diary, when I started writing you, I wondered what the U-District had done, that most of its playgrounds were locked. There are at least three examples on the UW campus, there's the University Heights playground (on the first map above, but no photos), and then there are these. Obviously private land owners, like U-Heights and UCDS, have the right to lock up their playgrounds, but where are the public ones that could make such locked private playgrounds irrelevant? University Playground, whose restrooms haven't been open for years. And in other neighbourhoods. That's where. What's wrong with the U-District having more and better?
Anyway, typical signage for the private playgrounds, emphasising private property:
University Neighborhood Service Center, take 2 (A on map)
On the afternoon of the 14th I managed to get inside this place. I didn't get anywhere near the counter, there were so many people in line. I noticed that the public use computer that had been on a desk in the front of this rented storefront was gone; some people were at that desk filling out forms.
This is meant to be a general place for residents of Seattle to deal with their government, and its signage still sort of reflects that. But they've adopted a sideline that now more or less wags the dog.
From the things they were holding and the things they were saying, I'm pretty sure that all the people I saw in line, with maybe one or two exceptions, were there to get passports, which isn't even a city function.
Unable to reach the staff, I couldn't ask whether they offered a public restroom, but I'm pretty sure I remember their not having one when I visited while homeless a few times, and because where I stood while assessing the situation was near the storefront's back door, I could see signs warning the public away.
Since the 14th most of my hiking has been about loose ends and University of Washington buildings. You already saw a few signs of the latter, dear Diary, in the third Ravenna page; the first map above has more; Brooklyn's map has tons, which is why I've left that area for last. But for this region and Brooklyn, the main loose end has been that my record-keeping setup wasn't adequate to handle the land near I-5, so the rest of this page concerns those areas. I went to these next two on the 16th.
East of I-5, area 5 (J on first map)
This area sandwiched between I-5, an entrance, and an exit, north of 45th St, is pretty seriously inaccessible, even though, as best I can tell, it isn't fenced at all. I doubt it's inhabited.
East of I-5, area 6 (K on map)
As you can see in the above photo, dear Diary, and still more in this next one, this area, the accessible one north of 45th, is quite steep:
This area is thickly inhabited, so I didn't explore it much. I think it's possible that the fence survives entirely. That fence appears never to have enclosed the area shown in blue on the first map, but there are tents on both sides of the fence. A door-sized gap in the fence along 45th St, where there may have been a door-sized gate, now stands empty; this is presumably how people in the western, fenced-in, tents get out. Unlike University Heights Plaza, this encampment still has "sanican"s, and an SPU sink that I found running on the 16th, although I screwed up photographing that.
I think most of this area is steep enough that there probably isn't anything more worthwhile to be done with it than what's happening now. I realise that for the haters of the homeless so common in city government that isn't enough reason to leave things as they are, but I hope whoever makes the decisions about this space continues to make sweeping it a low priority, maybe even contingent on treating the people living there as if they were actually people.
East of I-5, area 7 (L on map)
This area north of 50th St is another steep area, but differs from area 6 in that the hilltop is long, wide and relatively smooth, sort of flattish. There are several places to climb to it; the further north one goes, the easier the climbs are. Most of the tents are on or near the hilltop.
There are at least two fences. One, a typical chain link fence, starts from the bridge and runs some distance along 50th, then turns north. The other fence, which comes from the north, is made not of metal but of some stone, perhaps concrete. The hilltop is between the two fences as they now exist. I find it hard to believe homeless people have done anything to the stone fence, because its present endpoint looks orderly; I don't fully know what the state of the metal fence is, but certainly the two fences don't meet now, if they ever did. The map above shows my best guess as to what areas WSDOT intended to fence.
Photographing this area was my main loose end for the 18th. I'd been put off the first time by the density of tents and the difficulty of the climb I chose that time. So first I photographed the hill side itself:
And then took two views of the other hill side, from the bridge, the first close-up, the second not:
Finally, dear Diary, maybe you've noticed the smaller "M" on the first map. I went back out today to look specifically at that space between 7th Ave, an entrance and an exit, into which 47th St ends. It isn't very big at all, but even so, there's a single line of fence running its length, probably to discourage people from trying to walk or drive across it and into traffic.
Well, dear Diary, that's it for now, and since I haven't even started the map for Brooklyn, probably it for today. Happy hours until we meet again.
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