No Place to Go: How Public Toilets Fail Our Private Needs, by Lezlie Lowe

Dear Diary,

Here at last is my review of this book, which was published by Coach House Books in Toronto, copyright 2018.

It's been hard for me to evaluate, I think, for two main reasons.  One has to do with Lowe's goals in writing it; the other, with how she wrote it.

I think she had two main political goals in the book:  She wanted to make the case, for the countries she focused on (Canada, the UK, and the US), for more public restrooms, rather than the actual trend, which is fewer; and she wanted to make the case for nicer public restrooms, rather than the actual case, which, in those countries, is that people try to avoid them because they aren't nice.  This is a heavy lift.  What I've found in writing you, dear Diary, is that while I'm willing to complain about the most egregiously nasty aspects of particular public restrooms, I'm reluctant to do it all that often, because their mere availability is so much more important.

(She also wanted to tell interesting stories, of course, because that's how one sells a book on this sort of topic.  And she does tell interesting stories, but that's a rhetorical goal, not a political one.)

A particular element of the goal I'd rather she hadn't focused on is that it encourages her to pay relatively little attention to the important of public restrooms for homeless people.  She actually calls this out herself, noting that public restrooms are much more popular when people understand that the homeless aren't actually the only people who use them.  Since (this is me, not her) the homeless are essentially the untouchables of American society, as long as public restrooms are identified with the homeless, calling for restrooms to be nicer is going against public morality, which is that homeless people never deserve nice things.

So much, then, for purposes.  As for methods...

Lowe is a much more successful journalist than I am, and this is partly, I think, because she's mastered pyramid style:  Important stuff first.  This turns out not to be a good strategy for a book, at least not in the eyes of someone like me who tries to finish books.

She starts out incredibly strongly, with page after page introducing her main points and studded with quotable lines, of which I'll restrain myself to one, from page 2:  "the modern [Halifax] Common's twelve hectares hold tennis courts, ball diamonds, a skate park, a swimming pool, and a splash pad.  The place is built for leisure.  Unless, that is, you're the kind of person who uses the bathroom."

Her central point is that public restrooms aren't just open to everyone, they're needed by essentially everyone in modern cities.  Anyone moving around with infants, toddlers or small children needs them.  Anyone moving around with other charges, perhaps wheelchair-bound or infirm or demented, needs them.  Anyone moving around with any of a range of more or less common medical conditions needs them.  And anyone else often needs them anyway, unless they want to spend all their time at home, or have access to private restrooms at work.  (Which brings in people whose jobs involve moving around.)  Tourists need them, not that any of the 100% of American municipalities trying to increase tourism has noticed this. [1]  Oh, and by the way, women need them more - more often, and for menstruating women, at least, for more purposes - than men do.  Not that 51% of the population is a majority or anything...

She drives home the connection between mobility and restrooms with force in a recounting, as late as chapter 6, of the story of Camden Town, London's third women's restroom.  Discussing the work of architectural historian Barbara Penner, she writes:  "When people argue over public bathrooms, Penner says, they're usually fighting about the right of certain social groups to occupy public space....  To allow for the necessity of women's public toilets was to allow that women had the right to move freely through the city."  (Page 99.)

But she isn't satisfied with some number higher than 51%.  She wants to get as close to 100% as she can.  And pyramid style urges her to put what's most important first, so in the book's second half she focuses on ever-smaller groups:  the homeless (chapter 7; this is where Seattle's last attempt to provide public restrooms downtown comes in, pp. 131-132), people with various specific physical disabilities (chapter 8), the transgendered (chapter 9; she ultimately doesn't come to a conclusion).  And winds up with artists' conceptions of public restrooms (chapter 10).

So this is a book that's actually better when dropped somewhere around halfway through, even though Lowe's stock of trenchant observations, engaging interviews and stories, never falters.  It's not by any means a bad book if one finishes it, and those more idealistic than I might appreciate chapters 7 to 9 in the 1990s-style No Body Left Behind spirit in which they were written.  But read roughly the first half, stopping at chapter 6 or just maybe 7, and it's an excellent book.

[1] On my more recent series of hikes of downtown Seattle's parks, I was staring at the credit plaque for one of the sculptures in Pioneer Square, the park that is, when a woman asked what I was doing, and I told her about you, dear Diary.  So she asked me where I would advise someone to go to find a public restroom from that location.  Because, see, she's a tour guide, and she couldn't think of anywhere.

The answer, near as I can tell, is all the way uphill to Seattle City Hall.  And not outside business hours.  After dark?  Hmmm.  I don't think Pike Place Market's restrooms stay open all that late, and one can never predict Seattle Central Library's hours any more - OK, just checked, still closing at 6 P.M. every day.  So hmmm.  I'm not sure when the restrooms at Pier 62 close at night.  Failing those, probably Seattle Center or Cascade Playground, not even two miles away but with traffic lights most of the way.  Still, probably no more than an hour or two out of her tour group's time, if she has any evening or, um, weekend tour groups.  Every time one of the group needs a restroom.

Seattle does have one advantage over Poughkeepsie in the competition to attract more tourists while offering fewer public restrooms.  It's happy to lie about its restrooms, as we'll see as I get back to the downtown pages still to come.

Dear Diary,

The deadline I imposed on myself to tell you all about the private colleges and universities was today.  But three I e-mailed on Sunday haven't gotten back to me and will have to be called, as will one I just worked on that doesn't seem to have any public e-mail addresses to write to, and way too many of the rest.  And it's much too late to call anywhere until Monday.

I tried to find ones I could work on without e-mailing or calling, but there just don't seem to be enough of those to make spending the evening on them worthwhile.  So all I can do is wish you, and anyone who reads you, a 

Happy Thanksgiving!

The day itself, I'll be photographing as many of the parks of UW's Central and South campuses as I can stand to, given that there probably won't be an open men's room within a mile of campus that day.  (Not only are all the men's rooms in the U-District parks closed, but so is Gas Works Park's.  I think Wallingford Playfield and Laurelhurst Community Center are the only parks in southeastern North Seattle expected to have open men's rooms this winter; Ravenna Park also, for women.  Of course, most days of the winter the University branch of the Seattle Public Library will also be open, as will some UW buildings.)

Speaking of closures, Victor Steinbrueck Park downtown is due to close for most of a year pretty soon for renovations, which are supposed to take advantage of the removal of a public restroom and are not supposed to replace the destroyed water fountain there.  While the homeless in eastern North Seattle suffer, it's good to know downtown hygiene is also going nowhere, isn't it, city leaders?

So I'll spend much of the rest of the weekend reading, and watching the Korean drama I've now started, and not being public-spirited at all.  And next week, can get back to work on the libraries, the UW buildings, and job-hunting.

Make a happy holiday, dear Diary, and anyone who reads you, and any homeless people roundabout who find a way to survive the holiday, and happy days and nights until we meet again.

 

Buildings of the UW's Seattle Campus, part IID: West, summary and prospects

Dear Diary,

It isn't easy to count the University of Washington's buildings, because one has first to define what one means by a building.  For present purposes, let's pretend that I visited 61 buildings in UW's West Campus and north and south of there, in the area from I-5 to 15th Ave NE and from the water to NE 45th St that I'm calling Brooklyn (well, OK, four are actually north of 45th).  This is more than I expect to list in East or South campuses, and is well over half the number in Central Campus.

Unlike Central Campus, but like the other two, very few of these buildings, most of which are publicly owned, are open to the public.  And fewer still offer public restrooms.  I don't need a whole alphabet for them.  And I don't really need another map for them, although this part includes both building and park maps anyway for completeness's sake.

The present

Here are the buildings that offer publicly reachable restrooms in this area, with the best information available to me about their hours:

• Hours not posted:
  1. University of Washington Medical Center Roosevelt Building 2 - 7 A.M. to 6 P.M. weekdays [1]
  2. University of Washington Police Building - 9 A.M. to 4 P.M. weekdays
• Posted against the public:
  3. Social Work Building (southern half) - 7:30 A.M. to 6 P.M. weekdays
  4. Condon Hall - 7 A.M. to 6 P.M. weekdays, if one can find an unlocked door
     
  5. Fishery Sciences Building - 7 A.M. to 5:30 P.M. weekdays
  6. Fisheries Research and Teaching Building - 7 A.M. to 5:30 P.M. weekdays
  7. Marine Studies Building - 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. weekdays
  8. John M. Wallace Hall - 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. weekdays
• Public restrooms with clear hours:
  9. University Book Store - 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. Mondays through Saturdays, noon to 4 P.M. Sundays
  10. Schmitz Hall - 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. weekdays
  11. Drama Scene Shop - 9 A.M. to 6 P.M. weekdays
  12. Gould Hall - 8 A.M. to 6 P.M. weekdays
      

[1] - I clicked through 24 Web pages of clinics at UWMC - Roosevelt. The Exercise Training Center is open until 6 P.M., and the Spine Center and the Dermatologic Surgery Center open at 7 A.M.  The last-named is in Building 1, which doesn't have public restrooms, but the other two are in Building 2, which does.

Did you notice something, dear Diary?  Weekend hours are only at the Book Store.  And there are no evening hours, nothing after 6 P.M.

I wasn't familiar with most of these buildings before the lockdown, and not all of their previous hours are documented online (for example, the UW's pages for classroom buildings, such as Condon Hall, have never included hours).  But let's see how many are documented.  I already referred to the Book Store's mildly longer hours, three parts back.  The Exercise Training Center in UWMC-Roosevelt building 2 is recorded to have been open until 7:30 P.M. Mondays through Thursdays as recently as December 2019.  The UW Police Building's hours aren't much changed from January 2020.  The Built Environments Library in Gould Hall used to be open until 8 P.M. Mondays through Thursdays, and 1 to 5 P.M. weekends, as I noted in the academic libraries page.  A 1999 UW Daily article ("updated" in 2015) gives the same hours for Schmitz Hall as it's keeping now.

Let's also look at the nature of the obstacles.  At the Social Work Building and John M. Wallace Hall, signs on durable materials announce the public's unwelcome, although in each case signs on paper suggest otherwise.  At the other buildings, the barring signs are themselves on paper.  None of these buildings have the kind of painted-on-glass "Public Keep Out" notices common at the West Campus dorms.

So my best guess is that West Campus and its northern environs have never really been a good place for a homeless person to try to spend a rainy day, but have probably gotten somewhat worse since the pandemic.

I also don't know how long UW has been lecturing the residents of West Campus that they should fear their non-UW neighbours.   All those painted-on "Keep Out" notices suggest this pattern is longstanding.  At least one person other than me who disagrees with the message has been on West Campus recently, though:

The future

The day I photographed those posters (but didn't see, haven't seen, at all the one that seems to have fallen from the top), I also (well, that evening) photographed another poster, on 15th Ave somewhere south of Campus Parkway:

"Be a World of Good".  Comparable ambition to the previous slogan, "Be Boundless"; but decidedly more interested in generosity.

I was born to a geneticist and raised by her and my father, who, I've already told you, dear Diary, was an epidemiologist.  I grew up two blocks from a university library, and used to stay there past my bedtime.  The years I was homeless here are hardly the only years I've spent largely in university libraries.  I'm not trying to grind an anti-intellectual axe here.  It's just that I consider myself capable, given the atmosphere in which I grew up and have lived, of distinguishing a university's good deeds from its less good (let alone its evil) ones.

While looking for a name for what I eventually called the Fishery Sciences Courtyard, I came across a reference to it in the previously mentioned environmental impact statement for the UW's current Seattle Campus Master Plan (327-page PDF).  This eventually led me to a whole page of planning documents.  And one thing that's really up front in those documents is that the UW expects to build a lot in the next decade or so, and fully half of that building is planned for the West Campus.

Part of what that's about is that the UW is planning, although not in a rush, to get rid of most of its surface parking lots.  (The current occupation of lot W35 by the Haring Center's school can be seen as a trial run for this.)  Much of the Seattle campus is given to such lots, so that gives it lots of room to build.  I expect many of the buildings will include underground parking, but also, it turns out UW is subject to a cap on certain categories of parking.  See, the Master Plan is actually an agreement between the university and the City of Seattle, and one component of that agreement for some time now has been this cap.  And this time, the cap is being lowered, from 12,000 to 9,000 spaces.

So that's some of it, but there are much bigger surface parking lots in Central and East campuses than anywhere in West Campus.  The main thing is that the university has asked for, and been given, much higher height limits on much of West Campus than it had hitherto obeyed.  I mentioned that many of the buildings of West Campus weren't originally built for or by the university; they're also rather short, as are many of the buildings further north, outside the Master Plan's boundary.  So the UW can solve two problems at one stroke by tearing those inherited buildings down; it can get purpose-built university buildings, and it can get them taller.

Of the buildings I've discussed, Schmitz Hall, the Transportation Services Building, Condon Hall, Henderson Hall, the Child Center West Campus, the Southwest Maintenance Building, the Brooklyn Trail Building, the Ethnic Cultural Center Theatre, the Community Design Center, the Drama Scene Shop, the unnamed buildings at 3935 and 3939 University Way, the Purchasing and Accounting Building, the UW Lock Shop, the Northlake Building, Stevens Court, John M. Wallace Hall, the Fishery Teaching and Research Building, the Marine Studies Building, the Portage Bay Garage, the Child Center Portage Bay, the Ocean Research Building, and the Washington Sea Grant Program buildings are all candidates for demolition.  24 of the 61.

Also, the following parks I've described to you, dear Diary, will be affected by this plan.  H (805 NE Northlake Place), O07 (another landscaped area near the University Bridge head), R (Transportation Services Building Courtyard), T (Condon Hall Courtyard), and V (Child Center West Campus playgrounds) are all candidates to be built over.  N (Burke-Gilman Trail under the University Bridge), Q (Gould Park), Y (Fishery Science Building Courtyard), and Z (Burke-Gilman Trail near Brooklyn Ave) are all to be expanded, but are likely to change significantly in the process.  This is why I don't know, in particular, whether Tikvah's Garden will survive, to whatever extent it survives now.  It's to become part of what the Master Plan sees as the first really good West Campus park, the West Campus Green.  (Sakuma Viewpoint is perennially tugged between West and South campuses, so doesn't count.  Of course, the block the West Campus Green is to be on, the Fishery Science block, is also perennially tugged between those, but maybe a little less so.)

The UW also agreed to a cap on construction.  That's what the 50% refers to.  It gets to do net 6,000,000 new gross square feet of construction, and has agreed that 3,000,000 of those should be in West Campus.  The Master Plan itself insists that much of what a university does not only is inscrutable, but shouldn't be scrutinised at all.  So it doesn't say much about in what order this very tall order should be executed.  However, a different document, the 2018 West Campus Guidelines (95-page PDF), provides some hints.  On its page 73 is a map, distinguishing two ten-year tiers for the work (five buildings in the first tier), and also giving what sure looks like an exact order for the buildings to be built.  The Master Plan is of course correct that the university isn't committed to any particular order, but I suspect that left to its own devices, page 73 shows what it thinks might work best.

The building marked 1 on that map is the one to go in the southern half of the block between 40th St, University Way, the Burke-Gilman Trail, and Brooklyn Ave.  At this time that half-block is occupied by the Purchasing and Accounting Building (all of whose departments are still working from home), parking lot W12, and the UW Lock Shop, which is preparing to move:

I think it's a reasonably good bet that that building, labelled W27 (but a building, not a parking lot) on the map, really will be first.

And that triggers something else.  On page 240 of the Master Plan, we find what looks very like contract language:

Over the life of this CMP, the approximately
4-acre area designated as the “West Campus
Green” shall be reserved for open space,
except that minor structures supporting
the open space function are allowed.
Structures and improvements required for
utility infrastructure are also allowed. A
design and implementation plan for West
Campus Green and West Campus section
of the continuous waterfront trail shall be
completed by the earlier of: the time 1.5
million square feet of net new development
in West Campus sector is completed; or the
time the University submits its first permit
application for development of Site W27, W29,
W33, W34, or W35. A concept plan for all
three sections of the continuous waterfront
trail—West, South, and East—shall also be
completed by that time. The concept plan
for the continuous waterfront trail shall be
reviewed by SDCI for compliance with the
City’s Shoreline Management Master Program
and the University’s Shoreline Public Access
Plan. The continuous waterfront trail design
and implementation plan for the South and
East campus sectors shall include convenient
pickup and drop off facilities and signage
throughout the length of the trail that reflects
local Native American history. Construction
of the West Campus Green and the West
Campus section of the continuous waterfront
trail shall occur by the earlier of: completion
of 3.0 million gross square feet of net new
development in the West Campus sector; at
the completion of adjacent development sites
W29, W33, and W34; or the exhaustion of the
6 million gross square feet growth allowance.
In addition, as the University completes
development of Site W29, it shall complete
the “Plaza,” and as the University completes
development of Site W27, it shall complete the
“Belvedere,” both identified on page 98.

So basically, if the UW does start its West Campus remodelling at W27, it will deliberately be triggering various deadlines related to public open space.  (However, the first building in the numbered sequence to trigger the West Campus Green actually being built, which entails demolishing three not so very old, purpose-built buildings, is #5, W33.  So they aren't planning to force themselves to make that happen very soon.  Buildings 2-4 are between 40th St, University, the BGT, and 11th Ave.)

The Master Plan also promises that a whole lot of the new buildings will have "active edges".  Turns out an active edge can be almost anything - a classroom, for example.  But not an office.  So this isn't an outright promise that the university will have ground floor retail open to the public, say, let alone public restrooms, in the new buildings; but that's certainly the impression the more marketing-ish of the pages of the Master Plan try to convey.

Which brings me back to "Be a World of Good".  Which is the better deed?  To offer a bunch of parks, of which the West Campus Green is strongly hinted to get the park restrooms Fritz Hedges Waterway Park across the street didn't get [1], and then lock all the other doors?  Or to live up to the claims for "innovation" and "diversity" the Master Plan is full of, and reverse the recent trend of enforcing separation between town and gown with card readers?  I don't think the university, given the direction it's currently going, is even trying to live up to the spirit the Master Plan calls for, and sooner or later it's going to have to decide whether indulging fear is really the best it can do.

[1] Now we have a better reason than sloth or penury for the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation's refusal to build restrooms at Fritz Hedges.  Future restrooms that someone else will pay for are always better than present ones that people can actually use.

The past

I plan, dear Diary, to publicise this part a little bit.  So I thought it would be helpful if I concluded it with references to the previous parts, both on the buildings of and near West Campus, and on the parks of Brooklyn.

"Buildings of the UW's Seattle Campus":

• Part I, Preface
• Part IIA, North of West Campus (actually, north of 41st St)
  
• Part IIB, Northern West Campus (41st St to the Burke-Gilman Trail)
  
• Part IIC, Southern West Campus (south of the Burke-Gilman Trail)
  

The final map:

 

"Six Hikes in Brooklyn":

• Part I, Northwest (parks A-C)
  
• Part II, West (parks D-G)
  
• Part III, Southwest (parks H-M)
  
• Part IV, Centre (parks N-P)
  
• Part V, East (parks Q-V)
  
• Part VI, Southeast (parks W-Z)
  

The final map:

Also relevant:  "Academic Library Hours One Year Later, part I:  Public universities".

Dear Diary, in the next week I really should finish with the academic libraries, as well as start a really long Korean drama and look for work.  So you probably won't hear much from me until I finish at least one part of the academic libraries remaining.  Happy days and nights until then.

 

Six Hikes in Brooklyn, part VI: Southeast

Dear Diary,

I'm sorry it's so late.  I've been reading UW's planning documents and lost track of time.

This part concerns the hikes of December 22nd, 2020 (except for Fritz Hedges Waterway Park, my photos of which from that date already appeared in "Canalwards, Foolish Mortal", January 2021); October 8th, 2022 (Fritz Hedges and Sakuma Viewpoint only); and October 29th (the other two only).

Anyway, here's the map:

I took the opportunity to make a few corrections.

Let's get started!

Sakuma Viewpoint (W on map)

I already introduced this place in "Street Ends: North Union and Portage Bays" in December 2020, but even though I already had a lot more photos of it by then, restrained myself to the three appropriate to that series.  So five of the photos in this part are of Sakuma Viewpoint as of 23 months ago.

Sakuma Viewpoint is in a tangled ownership state.  In my oldest map of UW, dated October 2017, the one I used in making all these hikes, it's coloured in as part of West Campus.  But when I visited the Husky Union Building for the buildings of UW project, I found two more recent maps, one from September 2019, and one from February 2021 (inside a Visitors Guide 2022).  And neither of those shows Sakuma Viewpoint coloured in as part of any campus.  The current UW Seattle Campus Master Plan (327-page PDF), however, on page 27, which lists property owned by others within the campus, notes that only the part of Sakuma Viewpoint which is also the Brooklyn Ave NE Street End is not owned by the UW (because of the 1990s land grab which the street end program basically is).

Anyway, Sakuma Viewpoint is one of the nicest campus parks.  It and Olympic Vista (which is not one of the nicest campus parks) are the only West Campus parks the master plan commits the UW to preserving (page 41; and it reserves the right to make Olympic Vista better).  So that December I took lots of photos.  If Sakuma Viewpoint were all Brooklyn Street End, it would be hands-down the best street end in North Seattle, but since I don't know where the property lines are, I simply left it out of candidacy for that honour.

First of all, I should give credit where it's due to Agua Verde Café next door.  In December 2020, lockdowns still everywhere, I found this sign:

Unfortunately, my jubilation at finding this out was immediately tempered by another sign:

I don't remember now when I first found the current "No Public Restrooms" sign; that part of campus was never a high priority for me.

Anyway, here are my December 2020 photos of, and, since it is a viewpoint, from Sakuma Viewpoint:

At the time I was under the misapprehension that Fritz Hedges Waterway Park, next door, didn't have wooden benches, so I was very pleased to find so many at this place.  It also has great views; of course, so does Fritz Hedges, but (given that I rarely visit that park either, when I do visit) often other people have beaten me to the places those views can be seen from.

Also, because for years I used UW's restrooms, and had just found a set theoretically open to me even during the lockdowns, I was prepared to forgive Sakuma Viewpoint not having any; but I already knew by then that the City of Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation had been urged to include restrooms in Fritz Hedges Waterway Park and had refused.  (Which made the hike of December 22, 2020 rather painful, eventually.)

On October 8, knowing I had all these, and finding the place fairly crowded, I settled for a single achievable landscape:

Isn't it weird, dear Diary, how much greener Seattle is in late December than in early October?

Fritz Hedges Waterway Park (X on map)

Knowing that I'd already shown you, dear Diary, lots of photos of this bona fide Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation park, I settled for one this time too:

No, correction, two:  I also photographed the parking lot this park so urgently needed even though it didn't need any restrooms:

Fishery Sciences Courtyard (Y on map)

What got me started reading planning documents today was that I was looking for a reference in one of them to this courtyard for an official name.  But in the master plan Final Environmental Impact Statement, Volume 1 (819-page PDF), page 230, it only refers to it loosely and under a name that doesn't sound right:  "the Aquatic and Fishery Sciences courtyard".  That's not what that building's signage calls it.  So I used this name.

Open Street Map calls it "Tikvah's Garden", and thereon hangs a tale.  Tikvah Weiner, 1978-2013, was dying of cancer when she enunciated a wish to see a garden established, from which students in her department (Environmental Studies) and other departments could learn.  She wanted this garden to be built north of John M. Wallace Hall, where she'd worked.  After her death, somewhere along the way the project was moved to the larger space of the courtyard under discussion here.

Money was raised for it, and in 2017 a request for funds was made to the Campus Sustainability Fund, which awarded about half the amount requested and reports to the world that the project is in "post-implementation phase".  Indeed, in September 2017 Weiner's department announced it themselves, with lots of photos.

Here are my photos from December 2020:

Notice those weirdly curved benches on the paved area.  I've been reluctant to sit on them, but I sure think they look neat.  They turn out to be the work of students in the Department of Landscape Architecture.

That's Fishery Sciences, specifically the seductive series of eight doors on its southern east wall, in the background.

Here I'm looking east toward parking lot W35.  This must be the planted part of Tikvah's Garden.

And here I'm looking a bit north of east, toward Fishery Sciences' southern end, at what remained of the original lawn.  I'm reasonably sure I wouldn't have considered this courtyard a park at all without the work done on the garden.

Now, the public part of the courtyard is boxed in between three things.  In 2021, the Haring Center, in the South Campus, got a big donation to enable renovations.  This matters because the building basically houses a school largely (though not entirely) for disabled kids, but parts of it weren't ADA-compliant.  So the school's staff were ecstatic about the prospect of renovations, but had to move the school out while the work is done.

So parking lot W35 now holds a bunch of large sheds or small buildings which currently house the school.  A large planted area just west of parking lot W35 is fenced off with orange netting to protect several trees and one very long log.  And the paved area is fenced off with a real fence to hold the playground equipment.  What's left is a paved path from one end to the other, with a grassy area where those cool-looking benches now are on one side of it, and something like an incipient jungle on the other.  There's a gravel path through the growth, but I found that thorny sticks had fallen partway over it, so I couldn't pass unscathed.

I thought I'd found the tree I'd originally photographed:

Those hoardings are from the school; I think that tree is now surrounded by the playground.  What I'm less clear on is how I could've seen W35 from east of this tree.  Anyway, here's the would-be jungle:

And here's my best guess as to what's become of the lawn I photographed two years ago:

So I don't know much about Tikvah's Garden, but I've told you, dear Diary, everything I can currently figure out about the Fishery Sciences courtyard, which isn't much either.  Except what I'm saving for tomorrow's part of both this page and the buildings one.

The Burke-Gilman Trail (Z on map)

In counting Brooklyn's parks, I neglected the fact that this concerns two different areas.  Each is a big grassy sward adjacent to the trail, and each has picnic tables and benches.  I'm only using my photos from December 2020 here; the only change worth mentioning is poorly illustrated by my October photos.

The bigger one (mapped as Z2) is between University Way and Brooklyn Ave:

It has three of those picnic tables; I think that photo shows all of them (two very small).  The smaller is between Brooklyn and (on the north only) Cowlitz Road.  It has one picnic table and one bench.

This one is right next to the Brooklyn Trail Building, where the Center for Child and Family Well-Being used to be.  So I always figured it was more or less the back yard for the kids to play in, and tried to limit my use of that bench.

Unfortunately, this one is now going to seed.  In each of my visits to this area the past couple of months, I've found the same discarded items just lying there.  I don't know whether this is because UW (which owns the Burke-Gilman on campus, as I've already told you, dear Diary) is short of grounds keepers, or because the School Psychology Clinic now in the Center's former home doesn't get visits from kids who need the space any more, or what exactly.

So that's another sad ending, dear Diary.  I'll have to see whether I can contrive a happy one for tomorrow's page.  Until then, a good night and a good day.

Buildings of the UW's Seattle Campus, part IIC: Southern West Campus

Dear Diary,

This is a story of vicious crime and moral turpitude.  Depending on whom you believe, I may have broken the law multiple times yesterday by photographing UW buildings' doorways.

First, though, the map.  You may have noticed, dear Diary, that I've been making the maps sort of cumulative.  The parks of Brooklyn, while numerous, just exactly fit into one alphabet, so I've made their map completely cumulative.  The West Campus buildings, on the other hand, are much more numerous, so while the colours and so forth have been adding up, I've had to use three separate alphabets as keys.  But this part is the last - for West Campus - in which I'll need to do that.

I've completed and corrected the depiction of roads named after counties of Washington on this version of the map.  Adams Road NE (where I previously had part of Cowlitz Road) and Adams Lane NE are in a sort of pastel yellow, and NE Pacific St is in a brick red.

Southern West Campus is, over all, the most campus-like of the parts of West Campus.  There's lots of greenery.  Several roads lack both traffic lights and sidewalks, and have little vehicle traffic not moving fast, although Pacific St, in particular, has plenty of lights, sidewalks, and faster vehicles.

OK, now for the true crime story of my evil photography.  The photos for buildings A-C, J and L-O were taken November 3; those for buildings D-I and K were taken yesterday, November 14.  (I also took a few photos for apartment complexes H and I Wednesday, November 9, and a few for buildings D, N and O today.)  They're all in a folder on my Google Drive.

Red - Locked

Child Center Portage Bay (A on map)

Address:  3745 15th Ave NE

The other child care building on West Campus, after Child Center West Campus in the last part.  Of course it's locked.  This one, unlike the university's other child care centers, doesn't seem to have its own playground outdoors; I'm not sure how big it is indoors, because it's basically carved out of another building which I'm treating separately, the Portage Bay Garage (K on the map and below), but it certainly could be big enough to have a playground there.  It's also about a block from each of the four southwestern parks of Brooklyn, one of which presently includes a locked playground.

Washington Sea Grant Program (B on map)

Addresses:  3716 Brooklyn Ave NE and 3710 Brooklyn Ave NE

The office is in 3716 Brooklyn.  It carries an hours sign of weekdays, 8 A.M. to 5 P.M., but is locked.  (When I tried the door, back in October, though, this was one of the buildings from which someone came out to ask why I was there.  So someone pays attention to that locked door.)  There are lots of other doors on both buildings which I assume lead to individual grantees, and not restrooms at all; they have no signage of the kinds I looked for, and I tried none of their doors, which I assume are all locked most of the time.

Ocean Research Building (C on map)

Address:  3718 Brooklyn Ave NE

Again, an hours sign saying weekdays, 8 A.M. to 5 P.M., on locked doors.  This building is apparently home to the fund-raising office (currently named Advancement Team) of the College of the Environment.

Benjamin D. Hall Interdisciplinary Research Building (D on map)

Address:  616 NE Northlake Place

Named after:  Benjamin Downes Hall, 1932-2019

This is where my infamous career of photography and thumbing my nose at the law was first brought to light.  I started with what I'd considered the building's front door, on Northlake Place.  As I turned toward Pasadena Place, I passed a man with a dolly that had various boxes on it.  He was about my age.  When he saw me, he asked what I was doing there.  I replied that I was taking photos of doorways for my blog, that is, you, dear Diary.  He informed me that photographing UW buildings is against the law.  "Buildings?  From outside?"  "Just look at the website."

(Digression:  Last night I did so.  I couldn't find any such policy.  Maybe I really am eight years old, just as that UW PR guy thought I was, but my birth certificate disagrees with that.)

I replied that I'd been posting such photographs for a week and hadn't heard from any lawyers.  He then left me alone until I'd taken all my photos of the doors in the loading dock, then informed me that I couldn't "go wandering around in here".

Well, he was more or less right about that.  Maybe there is a policy somewhere that says this building's loading dock area is off limits to public pedestrians, though I didn't see a sign there.  But in any event, all the doors are locked.

(Later correction:  Indeed there is a sign, although it's such that only people to whom it doesn't apply are likely to notice it.  The loading dock area is normally held closed by a gate.  A card reader is adjacent to it to open that gate.  And on that card reader it says:

"Not for pedestrians".  That's the gigantic sign that's supposed to tell people not to walk around in the loading dock area.)

I don't know whether that man was a delivery guy or a tenured professor, but I do know that at the University of Washington, interdisciplinary researchers, perhaps to prove they're just as good as the more common intradisciplinary kind, don't want the public visiting.  In particular, there isn't even an hours sign, except the one at the loading dock for delivery guys.

Optical Remote Sensing Laboratory (E on map)

Address:  668 NE Northlake Way

I was wrong, dear Diary, in the preface to this page.  UW doesn't have a wind tunnel.  It has the one I knew about and also the one in this building, which makes at least two.  This building isn't mapped as part of West Campus but south of it, and is privately owned and pays property taxes.  It doesn't have any door signage at all.

Publication Services Building (F on map)

Address:  3900 7th Ave NE

This building actually hosts a variety of operations, notably UW Recycling and something managementy called UW Lean.  But it's primarily about pieces of paper.  Someone has bindery equipment there; "Creative Communications", an important part of UW marketing, is there; and "Mailing Services" is there.  Unsurprisingly, every locked door carries the same slogan:

"Building for Official University Use Only".

Northlake Building (G on map)

Address:  814 NE Northlake Place

This building belongs to Facilities Services, specifically the Building Services and Custodial Services parts of it, although the Applied Physics Laboratory has some space and its own door there.  Again, no surprise that it's locked.

Mercer Court (H on map)

Addresses:  3925 Adams Lane NE and 3927 Adams Lane NE

Named after:  Asa Shinn Mercer, 1839-1917

This apartment complex houses both undergraduates (in buildings A through C) and graduate students (in buildings D and E), mostly in multi-person apartments; I don't understand the lease terms of this complex or the next one.  We've already encountered Mercer Court's surroundings as a branch of the UW Farm, which has its "clubhouse" on E's bottom floor.  Other things multiple buildings have include bike storage space and music practice rooms.  Only building A, on the north, has the kind of ground-floor retail found in the dormitories proper further north:  it has a currently closed branch of the same Husky Grind café as is open in Alder Hall up there. [1]  It also has a "Graduate Student Learning Center", open only to graduate students.

I photographed the doorway of one of the music rooms.  My phone did the thing it sometimes does of presenting red as green.  The rooms are in fact locked, with red lights on their card readers.

[1] One thing that annoys me about these closed sites is that they all have signs in their doors saying they'll be re-opened in phases during the 2021-2022 academic year.  Can't anyone even bother to open the doors and change the signs once per year?  What if there were a gas leak in the interim?

Stevens Court (I on map)

Address:  3801 Brooklyn Ave NE

Named after:  Isaac Ingalls Stevens, 1818-1862

Stevens Court, whose apartments are open to both undergraduates and graduate students, is very unlike the relatively high-rise dorms and apartment buildings elsewhere in West Campus.  Each unit appears to have its own entrance from the outside, up a stairway as necessary.  The surroundings are rustic rather than paved (or farmed).

That doesn't mean Stevens Court is free from the fear that's inculcated into West Campus residents.  Far from it.  I found a poster area that had not only the "Safety" poster I abused in the previous part, but also this:

Housing and Food Services at least had the decency to put "Get to know your neighbors" first, but 2nd and 3rd reiterate the equation of non-university people with Bad Things.

Anyway, what with all the rusticity, Stevens Court doesn't have ground floor common areas.  Instead it has building H, which appears to be entirely common areas.  (It's the small building toward the east side of the court.)  Interestingly, a lounge in building H appears to be open to some conference attendees, who are admonished similarly to how more lastingly homeless people are:

But the evidence that I really am a hardened criminal came a little later in my photos:

"Use of the outdoor areas of this apartment community are [sic] restricted to residents and authorized personnel."  I bet the guy I met at Benjamin D. Hall wishes such a sign applied to the Pasadena Place sidewalk, too!  Anyway, it's a good thing I decided the Stevens Court courtyard doesn't need to be mentioned as a park, since it's apparently yet another university space from which the public is barred, in words and perhaps sometimes in deeds.

Orange - Unlocked, but no public restrooms

Agua Verde Building (J on map)

Address:  1303 NE Boat St

This building holds the Agua Verde Paddle Club and the Agua Verde Café.  It does not, however, as I already pointed out in this page's preface, hold any public restrooms.

Portage Bay Garage (K on map)

Address:  3740 Brooklyn Ave NE

Um, duh, it's a garage.  I didn't actually investigate this building even closely enough to figure out how much of it the Child Center Portage Bay (A on the map and above) occupies, certainly not closely enough to say whether it includes public restrooms, but really, what are the odds?  In any event, visitors are strongly (though not at all clearly) warned off:

Green - All good except we aren't wanted

This is as high as the buildings of southern West Campus go, dear Diary.  There are no postcard shots of buildings brave enough to admit the public in this part.  These buildings all appear to belong to the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, part of the College of the Environment; beyond that, I have only limited information on which buildings hold what.  (Locked buildings B and C above probably have the same ownership.)

Fisheries Research and Teaching Building (L on map)

Address:  1140 NE Boat St

I found one of the four doorways of this building without the sign "This building is open to University of Washington students, faculty, staff, and invited guests only."  Its posted hours are 7 A.M. to 5:30 P.M. weekdays.

Marine Studies Building (M on map)

Address:  3707 Brooklyn Ave NE

I found one of the four doorways of this building with that sign.  On my first survey of this area in October, I also found a sign at that door saying the restrooms were out of order.  Now, without that additional sign, somewhat trap-like.  Hours, 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. weekdays.

John M. Wallace Hall (N on map)

Address:  3737 Brooklyn Ave NE

Named after:  John Michael Wallace, known as Mike, born in 1940

For this building, I do know of some specific tenants.  The Climate Impacts Group is here, as is the Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean and Ecosystem Studies, and also the Program in Environmental Studies of the College of the Environment.  The building's hours are 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. weekdays.  And the public isn't wanted; it says so, clearly, on each doorway.

Now, this is only to be expected.  After all, Seattle routinely - practically every month - churns up violent mobs howling for the blood of climatologists, right?

What's that you say?  We don't?  Gosh, then I wonder why the building isn't open to the public.  I wonder if the weird phrasing offers a clue.  "Building Restricted to U of W Faculty, Staff, Students and Authorized Account Holders".  For whom does the climate authorise accounts?  Furthermore, at least two of the doors have card readers, which I found green.  Wouldn't it be more effective protection for our desperately needed climatologists if the card readers were active?

Curiously, this building used to be the Academic Computing Center.  That's still its acronym-like code, ACC.  I dare say that in fact, the building used not to be open to people who couldn't use the computers there, and those signs have just been preserved in the building's new existence because it's always wasteful to throw away a sign that says "No public restrooms".  After all, think of all the children in Third World countries who grow all the way to adulthood without a "No Public Restrooms" sign of their very own!

That would also help explain why Wallace Hall has other sorts of signs.

I mean, if it's wasteful to throw away a decades-old sign, how could it not be wasteful to throw away one that's just a year or two old?  So at Wallace Hall, again at all three doors, COVID-19 is still governing building hours.

Nevertheless:  Which is it?  If a homeless man is observed wandering in and using the restroom during the hours that outdated sign advertises, without causing any other trouble, should he be prosecuted for it or shouldn't he?

I'm not sure how much Wallace Hall is a trap, how much it's just a museum.

Fishery Sciences Building

I am, however, absolutely certain that this building is a trap.  I don't know how often it snaps shut.  There was an event of some kind being prepared for when I visited on November 3rd; perhaps all the attendees were invited, and so were allowed to be in the building.  It's possible that I no longer get smelly and dirty enough to spring the trap myself, housed as I currently am.  But it's still a trap.

My evidence?  Well, Fishery Sciences has a lot of doors.  There are four on its south wall, in a row 12 34 two double doors.  There are eight on its southern east wall, strung 12  3  4  5  6  78, with double doors at the south and the north ends.  There's one on its northern east wall.  And there are at least three, depending what one counts as a door (here I mean one with a means of entrance), within the loading dock area on its west wall.

Fishery Sciences' hours are posted as 7 A.M. to 5:30 P.M. weekdays.

I tried every door around 4:30 P.M. today.  Here's what I found:

Here's what the signage on each door suggested I might have found:

Here's some signage from the northernmost double door:

"Welcome to Fishery Sciences".  And here's some from the loading dock door:

"This building is open to University of Washington students, faculty, staff and invited guests only."

Essentially, Fishery Sciences hides its warnings that it isn't open to the public on its loading dock and in an entrance hidden by shrubbery, meanwhile putting signs literally saying "Welcome" on its front doors.  And then it unlocks nearly all the doors, regardless of their signage.  "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence", it's said.  I'd like to know by what incompetence this state of affairs could come into existence.  It looks to me like a baited trap.

I'm sorry, dear Diary.  This structure for these parts is supposed to lead to happy endings, but it can't when there simply isn't anything happy to report.  Anyway, this is all for today, but I'm already ready tomorrow to write about the last four parks of Brooklyn.  Then the day after, I expect to sum up West Campus building hours.  From there, I'm not sure.  November 29th, I have to return SPL's copy of Lezlie Lowe's No Place to Go; there's a lot of work to do to re-start the downtown series, but that's one deadline for that work.  It's a bad idea to try to finish the academic libraries later than Thanksgiving, and I haven't even worked on them for over a week.  I also haven't watched any Korean dramas for months, and want to change that; and although the increasing certainty of a recession makes me increasingly certain that it's futile, I should also at least try to look for work.  So although I still expect to spend Thanksgiving weekend photographing the Central Campus parks (assuming it's legal to do so at that time), I'm not sure when I'll get back to UW otherwise.  I'll be astonished if the need to do so goes away in the next months.

But for now, good night, and I expect to see you tomorrow, dear Diary.

Six Hikes in Brooklyn, part V: East

Dear Diary,

This part of this page concerns two hikes, on December 22nd, 2020, and on October 29th, 2022.  In a summary of the hikes two parts ago, I claimed that I'd also visited this area October 16th, and I indeed did walk past it, but the photo I thought was evidence of that visit turned out to be of an area covered one part ago.  (On the other hand, I went and took the photo I thought I'd taken, today.  So maybe not just two hikes after all.)

Since I visited and photographed all of these areas (except one) on each of the two hikes, this goes in the order I visited them in December 2020 (with that one at the end).  I was then pushing a cart, so moving a good bit slower than I currently walk.  So I find that order hard to explain now, but the photos' timestamps prove it's the order I hiked in.  The map:

I asked the person who does "communications" for UW's Facilities Services department for names for four of the parks this part covers.  I got a reply from someone in UW's main PR department, referring me to the university's standard map, which I'd been using for years; evidently he assumed I was eight years old.  Well, I've nevertheless found a name for one of the four.  I'm just calling the rest "courtyard".

That's a problematic name for me.  As you'll see when we get to Central Campus, dear Diary, the UW parkifies a whole lot of its land.  So when I set out to survey the parks of UW, I had to set standards.  And one of those standards was that a single-building courtyard generally had to do more than look good to qualify.

All four of those parks I wanted names for do the same something more:  they all offer seating.  Some do more than that, but they all do that.

We'll start with the one not on Campus Parkway.

Gould Park (Q on map)

This park's name comes from its makers, who were participants in a then nearly new class from the Department of Architecture, a class which is currently called the Howard S. Wright Neighborhood Design/Build Studio.  Inconveniently, the class's Web page is down right now (more precisely, the College of Built Environments' local domain name service in general seems to be down), so I've had to consult Google's cache, and am unable to see their photos of their work.  It's possible that more of the parks of UW, even the ones in this page, are on that list, and I just can't tell.  But anyway, the class started in 1988, took 1989 off, and in 1990 did two projects, the Danny Woo Community Garden in southeast downtown, and this.  (Or maybe one of the 1990 projects was actually the 1989 class's work, delayed.  They also missed 1992 and 1993, and also did two in 2005, but otherwise have one project every year through 2021.)

Again, this specific park's Web page is down too, and I'm going by the Google cache, which says, oddly, that "The benches photographed here have since been demolished."  And here I thought that was vandalism.  It also says this project involved not only architecture students, but also students from the departments of Construction Management and of Landscape Architecture.

Here's the proof that this park, adjacent to Gould Hall, really is the Gould Park referred to:

I like this park much better than the three north of Campus Parkway, so have taken more photos of it, and have just enough room to show you them all, dear Diary.  One thing I really liked in 2020 was that it was a semi-classical design (complete with inspirational quotes which I don't much like), left to fall to ruin in approved classical style.  For example:

And here's more ruin, nearly two years later.  I tried to find the bench with that "V" on it, and am pretty sure it's one of the now-damaged benches in the second photo.

This park is also adjacent to the University of Washington Police Building, but is worth a visit even for people who don't have crimes to report.

Transportation Services Building Courtyard (R on map)

This could be called any number of other things - the Jones Playhouse Hillclimb, for example.  But because the Transportation Services Building's door is at least notionally open, I've chosen to interpret it this way.

Campus Parkway is a reasonably long walk, and it's a place where scads of people wait for buses.  So the fundamental thing parks can offer along it is seating.  The south side of the parkway has wide sidewalks, allowing seating at the bus stops and some away from them.  But on the north side, Schmitz Hall just has a complicated plaza (usually crowded with people using its skybridge or waiting at a bus stop, with some seating); each of the other blocks does something different and park-like with the seating it provides.

In this case, it's combining the seating with, and focusing its attention on, a pretty unnecessary stairway, adjacent to, and actually ending at, the sidewalk of University Way.  But within this space whoever designed it managed also to jam in a fair amount of greenery and two bike racks, one looking rather like an exercise machine.  I'm sorry, dear Diary; the other two Campus Parkway parks don't measure up.  This part is turning out front-loaded with the good stuff.

The first photo is from 2020, the second from 2022.

Olympic Vista (S on map)

This is the only city-owned park in this part, and although, given that this park consists of boulevard islands, it makes sense for it to be City of Seattle Department of Transportation property, I can't help thinking the university was involved in its design.  Two things lead me to this belief, but I'd better show you my photos, dear Diary, before trying to explain then.

There are "vistas" in each of three of the UW's standard parts of campus.  From the top of Rainier Vista on Central Campus, Mount Rainier can in fact be seen on occasion; I've seen it from there myself.  From the top of Portage Bay Vista on South Campus, Portage Bay can easily be seen most of the time.  But as it happens, Olympic Vista's highest point is at its west end, so one can't even look toward the Olympic Mountains, nor, by turning around, does one have much chance to see them.  To put this politely, that name is purely aspirational.

In 2020 I walked this boulevard west to east, taking photos from the east ends of the islands; in 2022 east to west, taking photos from the west ends.

Island 1, Eastlake to 12th Avenues (S1 on map)

This island is actually two blocks long, so I have more photos.  This is from the westernmost edge, from Eastlake, in fact, well above the island itself.  This is the interruption in grass along Eastlake's east side that I mentioned in the last part this block of Olympic Vista provides; this is the photo I took today.

 

On the west side of Condon Hall, in line with 11th Ave, there's a stair to the ground level, leading toward a paved path across this island.  I think both my December 2020 photos were taken from that path.

Island 1 begins as a forested slope.  Enough of the trees are coniferous that the ground is carpeted in needles, rather than grass.  Toward the east it's rather more like island 2, next.

Island 2, 12th to Brooklyn Avenues (S2 on map)

First, 2022 from the west end, then 2020 from the east end.

We're now in a cultivated woods, with a carpet of grass, sustained by a shortage of conifers.

Island 3, Brooklyn Ave to University Way (S3 on map)

Same order.

We're in a garden.

Island 4, University Way to 15th Ave (S4 on map)

Same order.

And here, we're in a park, verging on a plaza.  See, as Olympic Vista gets closer to the Central Campus, it also gets more civilised.  I find it hard to believe that SDOT just happened to decide to do that.

And in fact, according to University of Washington by Norman J. Johnston, cited in the northern West Campus part of the UW buildings page, pages 104-105, SDOT didn't.  Not that he agrees with me that the existing parkway was in any way planned.

In the 1920s [university] President Suzzallo dreamed of a grand ceremonial route leading from the west and the north end of University Bridge to the university campus.  Difficult to achieve because of the intervening extant residential and commercial properties, it was nevertheless an idea that was given additional clout by its inclusion in the 1948 Campus Plan.  Its completion in 1953 brought University Bridge traffic to the campus, but abruptly so, with only a hint of panache and with no destination clearly established.  Cluttered with utility poles and wires, it is unfortunately aligned visually with the new skylit portion of the Henry's addition, which inauspiciously blurs the parkway's visual axis on the George Washington statue and Suzzallo Library's façade beyond.  At the parkway's western end the irregular plantings of trees (remnants of a 1961 international forestry conference) add to a general dishevelment that does violence to the ambitions Suzzallo had.  This is a parkway leading nowhere.

Wow.  And I thought I was mean.  Anyway, aside from the message I see that the university is a civilising influence, the other thing I saw as evidence for the university's involvement in the design is that those metal benches in island 4 all carry inspirational quotations, with attributions, just like the pavement in Gould Park and a few other things here and there around campus.

Anyway, that's three more or less good parks.  The other three - well, one is closed,  and the other two aren't exactly bad, but don't impress me over much.  To proceed:

Condon Hall Courtyard (T on map)

Remember, dear Diary, I said each of the parklets along Campus Parkway had a different solution to the question of seating along Campus Parkway.  The Transportation Services Building's courtyard says what people need is distraction.  Condon Hall's courtyard says what people need is separation.  I'm pretty sure it isn't actually true that this courtyard is only accessible by climbing stairs - the way land slopes around there, there's probably a wheelchair-accessible route.  But the only way to it from Campus Parkway is up stairs.  Physical removal from the madding crowd.

So I've probably been a little unfair to this parklet because of the stairs, but also, I don't find that solution all that appealing.  My December 2020 photo is slanted, for some reason, but is still probably the fairer of the two to what's there:

It does have wood benches (look against that window) as well as those concrete ones.

Elm Hall Courtyard (U on map)

Elm Hall has a courtyard full of undergrowth, rather than grass, with three paved paths along which there are wooden benches.  So it's oversimplifying to say this, but because by far the most-used benches are those adjacent to the sidewalk, it isn't oversimplifying very much:  Elm Hall's courtyard answers the question of seating along Campus Parkway by saying that what people need is involvement.  Visibility.  To be part of the scene.  I think the Transportation Services Building's courtyard is more successful as a park, but Elm Hall's placement of seating is certainly the most sympatico of the three, for me.

I think in December 2020 those benches were just too popular, and the only photo I could take was the very weird one I have.  So here's a photo from October instead:

I'm pretty sure there are actual benches along the path to the left of that photo, although only one thing visible in the photo even vaguely resembles a bench.  I'm quite sure there are actual benches along a path only hinted at in the photo, well behind the ones in the foreground, between levels of undergrowth.

Note that for all that each of these parks is easily understood as revolving around seating, none dips a toe into the shark-infested waters of sheltered seating.  They all leave that for the bus shelters.

Child Center West Campus Playground(s) (V on map)

I haven't tried to take any photos of this area, locked up as it normally is, and crowded as it often is.

Well, that's it for this part of Brooklyn.  Brooklyn sure has a lot of parks, doesn't it, dear Diary?  I still have four left to tell you about, sometime this week.  Tomorrow, though, I hope to finish photographing the door signage of West Campus, leaving me Tuesday to write up the remaining set of West Campus buildings.  Happy nights and days until then!