On the Last Day of Summer

Dear Diary,

I didn't fulfill my goal of hiking this summer, as I'd hoped.  I'm just too lazy in hot weather to get it done.  But it wasn't hot today, and I thought I could at least visit four places that have things I understood as summer-specific, things that would be gone tomorrow.  Two of those places have restrooms I've never even seen.  So I went out, though mostly by bus rather than on foot, to:

• Magnuson Park's Armory, the east side, where there are restroom doors I'd never found open, but which supposedly open in summer;
• Matthews Beach's restroom building, the east side, where there are doors to restrooms, supposedly equipped with showers, which I'd never found open because they're supposedly opened only in summer for beachgoers;
• Soundview Playfield's water fountain, which is adjacent to a water play area, so I'd always assumed it didn't work because it was on the same pipes as that area; 
• and Green Lake Park's Bathhouse Theatre building, whose restrooms' doors to the outside open summer and winter, but not spring and fall.  Even before I lived near it, though, I was familiar with this one.

(The links are to folders at my Google Drive account where photos, including ones not shown below, can be found.)

Now, my premise could be faulted.  The last day of summer by astronomical standards is the day before the equinox, September 21st this year.  It's right on the front page of the Seattle Public Schools' website that classes don't start until September 6th for most students, which means tomorrow is the last day of summer for them.  Cliff Mass told us a week ago that meteorological autumn was kicking in early this year.  My personal definition of summer for Seattle (as opposed to other, Midwestern, places I've lived) is that it ends at the end of September.  (See, I don't think Seattle has a winter unless it snows.  So I figure four months for each of the other seasons.)

But Labor Day is still a traditional meaning in the US for "last day of summer", and that meant for me that it was a reasonable guess as to what the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation would use as a cutoff.  Hence my trip today.

So what happened?

Magnuson Park

Nothing new here.

Maybe nobody remembered to open them on Labor Day because the parks department was short-staffed.  Maybe someone at the parks department was watching the weather and said "No point in opening these, the temperature won't exceed 70."  (And how does that affect the crying need for restrooms in that part of Magnuson Park?)  But maybe the parks department has simply forgotten that once upon a time, these doors actually opened once in a while, and were advertised as being open in summer.  All I know is that they were closed, and since they don't have handles, that means they were locked.

Matthews Beach

Matthews Beach has two sets of restrooms.  One set is a pair of ungendered single-user stalls.  The other is a pair of gendered rooms that include not just toilets and sinks, but also, so I'm told, showers.  (As opposed to the outdoor showers offered at Magnuson and Golden Gardens Parks.  I don't remember any at Carkeek Park, but that doesn't prove they aren't there too.)

Because I don't hike in summer, I've never found those rooms open.  Well, not today either.  I took four photos, dear Diary, and will show you just one, saving the rest for the Google Drive folders.

 

See, these doors do have handles.  So how could I prove that the doors were locked without taking an action photo and risking my new phone?  Well, notice not far to the right of the handle in that photo - yes, there's a lock on the door.  That's how.

So.  Matthews Beach was closed to swimming for the rest of the summer in mid-July, because the parks department no longer has the staffing flexibility to keep trying to re-open it.  I suppose it makes sense therefore to close the shower restrooms.  After all, despite the park's distance from places where homeless people hang out, there's always the risk that some homeless person could use the showers to get clean, and we all know that it's evil to let homeless people become more like other people.  More realistically, there's the risk of vandalism, especially without a staffer (lifeguard) on site.

But at this rate, am I ever going to see these restrooms?  Am I ever going to catch just the right eyeblink of summer to go looking?

So I was worried that Soundview Playfield's kind of boxlike restrooms might be hard to reach because of construction (I thought I'd heard something about the play field itself, adjacent, getting a makeover; maybe I had, but there was no construction and no signage when I got there), and I was worried that the buses would take too long (but actually I had excellent luck with buses today)...  So I used one of the single-user stalls at Matthews Beach.  Most of what I used worked just fine.  However, the sink seemed to reach equilibrium with water still at its bottom, and the photo of that I tried to take will illustrate the other problem with that stall:

(Yes, dear Diary, the light didn't come on.)

Things improved from here, however.

Soundview Playfield

For three years now, I've assumed Soundview Playfield's water fountain didn't work because it was on the same plumbing as the adjacent water feature, so when the latter was turned off (most of the time), so was the water fountain.

To prepare for today's trip, I even checked this helpful schedule, but in an epically stupid move, convinced myself to ignore what the page said in black and while about how Soundview's wading pool 

would close on August 20th, I just knew it really had a spray park, and those didn't close until today.  Honestly, after my complaints about tech malfunctions earlier this evening - well, I should be grateful that tech doesn't malfunction as consistently as my brain does.  But anyway, I found out before leaving that I'd misunderstood, but still determined to go.

And I'm glad I did, because it turns out Soundview Playfield's water fountain can actually run while the pool isn't in operation; I'd been wrong about that all along.

Green Lake Park

Nothing new here, either.  The Bathhouse Theatre building restrooms were open, as they should have been (unlike the two sets above).

So that was my summer adventure.  I'll try to take it earlier next summer, or maybe only when there are no algae to worry about, or something.

I hope to check the rest of the park restrooms before winter, but I'm not making any promises.  That said, October isn't far away, and my public libraries spreadsheet did survive the crash, so it'll soon be time for, and I can deliver, another round of library hours pages.  One way or another, anyway, happy days and nights, dear Diary, until we meet again.