Abandoned Pages, part XI: Transit

Dear Diary,

Yes, I had a good birthday.  Thank you for asking.  I wish any of your readers at all had asked, but one can't have everything.

Two years ago, I went way outside your usual topic, dear Diary, and wrote about bus stops.  Let's see...

Why?

I'd been seeing signs around the neighbourhood for months saying our bus line was to be cut.  But I'd been busy with school, and hadn't paid attention.

When I finally did pay attention, the signs were saying there was one last survey, one last chance to make our voices heard.  But the survey turned out to have only one question:  "What do you think is the best thing about the planned changes?"

When I started thinking about writing something, I contacted King County Metro's PR people, who were absolutely astonished to be asked for ridership numbers.  As if the level of usage of a bus line had nothing at all to do with its being eliminated.  Well, to be fair, the route 271 had about a hundred times more use than the route 20, and the 271 is now history.

But why, if the 20's lack of riders wasn't the reason, why was it being eliminated?

What?

As I said in the previous part, I went places and I photographed things - went to the bus stops being retired from service and photographed them.

I also did a passel of research, but too much of it relied on fallible me.  In part III of "A Requiem for Seventy-Seven Bus Stops", I listed, I think, six cuts of North Seattle bus stops, previous to those I was writing about.  But in preparing to write this page, I made a list, and I'd missed a cut only one year before.  Also, a relevant cut.

I was writing about, inter alia, the route 28X, but I hadn't noticed two other routes in the same general area that had been cut in September 2023.  In summer 2023, the routes 15X, 18X and 28X all operated west of Greenwood Ave N, south of the city limits, east of Puget Sound, and north of  NW 85th St / Holman Road N/NW.  In summer 2025, they were all gone; only two short loops, 17X and 28X, probably one or two stops each, remained, near the southern edge.

Subsequently?  The route 75 was re-routed in March of this year, eliminating service on NE 125th St from Roosevelt Way NE to 5th Ave NE, and on 5th Ave NE from NE 125th St to NE Northgate Way.

And this fall, the introduction of the route 77 added service on N/NE 130th St from Meridian Ave N to 5th Ave NE.

Why not?

I never intended to add another main topic for you, dear Diary, and to be useful, I think ongoing coverage of transit - well, specifically, of buses - would need a lot of attention, not just a twice-yearly look-see.

I'd actually have to read the Seattle Transit Blog regularly.  Learn how to read it regularly, for that matter.

What now?

I dunno.  A twice-yearly look-see is well within my powers; a twice-yearly photographing hike a bit less so, while I remain in school.

But serious study of transit?  Scary.

Human readers, if any:  The point of this page is not confessional.  It is to elicit comments on what you'd like to read.  It is utterly failing in that goal at present, so I reluctantly concede I'll have to allow more time.  But this topic is exactly the kind of thing where comments really could make a difference. 

Dear Diary, this quarter, I have classes in person, in Everett, Mondays and Wednesdays, and online Tuesdays and Wednesdays.  While I also have plenty of assignments due the rest of the week, you shouldn't expect the parts recently promised:

• In this page, the remaining parts
• In "Building a Baseline", Bitter Lake and downtown Lake City
• And in "Under Construction", the remaining parts

until Thursday at earliest, in any given week.

So happy days and nights until then, dear Diary.

Abandoned Pages, part X: Counties

Dear Diary,

We're almost done here.  This is the last of these from your youth, in this case December 2022; next comes one from late 2024, then updates on the two current pages.

Why?

I'm really not sure.

This was definitely conceived as a desk project, like library hours, and in fact with the library hours remit of western Washington.

It was much my most vainglorious idea, but at least I had the sense to start small, with Skamania County.

What?

The only post was an introduction, claiming that I could find all the public restrooms in each county using online sources.

It turned out that the job grew substantially in the doing, even with the first, simplest county, in which, for example, I tallied but didn't name fifteen settlements:

1. Stevenson, county seat, incorporated, in my terms a "city"
2. North Bonneville, incorporated, "city"
3. Carson, census-designated place, "city"
4. North Washougal River, "suburb"
5. Underwood, "suburb"
6. Prindle, "hamlet"
7. a "hamlet" around Volcanic Manufacturing
8. Cook, a "hamlet"
9. Northwoods, a "village"
10. Skamania, a "village"
11. Stabler, a "village"
12. Home Valley, a "village"
13. Mill A, a "village"
14. Mount Pleasant, a "rural centre"
15. Hood, a conglomeration adding up to a "rural centre"

It's characteristic of Skamania County that both its suburbs are suburban to cities in other counties:  Underwood to White Salmon in Klickitat County, and North Washougal River to Washougal in Clark County.

Why not?

Because I got a very demanding job and spent what little free time I had on a restroom hike of North Seattle, which I didn't quite complete.

And because, when that job ended, I looked wearily at the mountain of material I'd accumulated on Skamania County and thought "How I work is to go places and take pictures.  Why should this be an exception?"

What now?

Why indeed?

There's something repulsive to me about passing judgement from afar.

And there is public transport to eighteen of the counties of western Washington, though to do San Juan County properly, I'd need a private boat to the smaller islands.

But I turn 59 in two days.  Let's say I get a good job, and it's an accounting job.  Then vacation is mandatory, to catch any fraud.  I could study each county for a year, then visit it for two weeks.

Until I was 78?

And restroom availability doesn't just change in winter in Seattle.

Also, recent hikes have shown me I'm a lot more scared of heights than I used to be, and there are lots of mountains in western Washington, and specifically in Skamania County.

This task would obviously be impossible homeless, but just as obviously if I got a good job, especially if that meant sharing my life with others with their own views on how best to vacation.

Maybe funding could get it done, but maybe not.  I think this project was too vainglorious from the start.

It is true, though, that I'd like to see those Skamania County settlements I studied.  Though not with the aim of telling you, dear Diary, whatever the county does wrong. 

Good night, dear Diary. 

Abandoned Pages, part IX: Public access

Dear Diary,

This is one I'm not sure about.

Why?

In October 2022, I was working on a regional hike for the region most of UW is in, and I thought, this is silly.  Yes, there are parks in UW, but none of those in that region have outdoor water fountains, let alone restrooms whose doors open to the outside.  It's actually worth comparing UW's land to Seattle Center's, which also originated in a World's Fair, and which has both those things.

So I went where the money is, where, that is, UW's actual plumbing is, and public access to public buildings turned out to be much less than it had been, or ought to be.  So I wrote about it.

What?

I was making maps with a mildly complex colour scheme to symbolise ownership as well as status (open/operating), for the regional hikes in general.  I made that much more complex for the buildings of UW.  I doubt I have the software to do that now.

Also, it turned out that many of the buildings in West Campus have perfectly good reasons to keep the public out.  They're dorms, medical places (although one of those did offer public restrooms), research labs...  If I'd started with Central Campus, although it has dorms too, the point would've been much sharper.  (South and East campuses are, in this respect, rather more like West.)

Mind, about as many West Campus buildings are closed to the public for no obvious good reason.  The point was certainly made:  out of about 60 buildings, only five offered public restrooms, fewer on weekends.  Climatologists hunkered down behind locks in fear of the deniers so famously numerous in Seattle.  Fenced playgrounds.  Posters advising fear of every stranger.  UW was no longer the friendly campus on which I'd spent my days a few years earlier.  I documented part of that, had a good talk with one of UW's security leaders, and went on to a very demanding job.

Why not?

To a certain extent, I'd already met my goal.  Since, that winter, I wasn't even able to complete a restroom hike, I had no business picking on UW any more.

Fall quarter had ended, and since one of my targets had been unclear hours signs (I'd called one West Campus building a "trap" for that), I certainly hoped the signs had changed.  So I'd have to photograph them all again.  Since the doors were, in fact, closed, that was a physically arduous task.

And as 2023 wore on, the same lack of psychic strength that afflicted the downtown page kept me from returning to this one.

What now?

My main concern, to be honest, is that UW's Seattle Campus is by far the most extensive collection of public buildings in Seattle.  Much larger than downtown's (and City Hall is actually a reliable place to find public restrooms).  Only Green Lake/Woodland, Washington and Discovery parks, and Boeing Field, are about the same size, and none is mostly buildings. 

So I'd have to go out of town to find a comparable case, to be fair to UW, and even then it would probably be another school, and I'd be anti-intellectual.

I can get to Olympia's Capitol Campus, but I doubt I can stay long enough to do the job. 

Even in North Seattle, the only alternatives are North Seattle College, or Northwest Hospital (owned by UW, and medical).

The difficulty of photographing the hours signs remains, especially while I'm in school myself and have more important things to do at the quarters' starts.

Dear Diary, I think your readers' comments would be the only reason I'd tackle this before fall 2029.

Building a Baseline, part VII: Around the University District Food Bank

Dear Diary,

I first heard of Elif Shafak in the mid-2010s.  I'd been making a list, for a friend, of women writers of speculative fiction who had female protagonists.  I'd detoured into nationality-based appendices about women writers in general, and one appendix, based on the presence in the original list of Persian writer Shahrnush Parsipur, covered the Near East.  Well, it was easy to cover the Turkish writers, because there was a society of speculative writers, with a website that, at that time, pictured all the members.  I don't remember whether Shafak was a member, but everyone named her and Orhan Pamuk as writers of spec-fic.

Only I shouldn't have included her in that appendix at all, because turns out she was born in France.

Anyway, although she writes magical realism, she seems to be a pretty serious person, and is the current president of the Royal Society of Literature.

The first book of hers I've come across is her 2024 novel There Are Rivers in the Sky, which I found in a Little Free Library earlier this year, and soon after read.  In this novel various people of the faith called in English "Yezidi" are important characters, and this is how Shafak begins her account of the 2014 Yezidi genocide:

They kill the water first.  In this land where rivers are sacred and every drop of rain is a blessing, they creep in at dead of night and poison all the wells, shafts and fountains in the village.

I am sickened to have to compare people my sales taxes and my landlord's property taxes support to the Islamic State, but they've willingly weaponised water, so what else can I do?

Let me show you, dear Diary, what I found in the northwest  University District yesterday.  This is not in hiking order.  All the photos are from yesterday.  (Edit 9/19:)  Here's the main map:

Let's take the charities, which I don't blame at all, first.

Blessed Sacrament (A on map)

On page 50 of The Emerald City Resource Guide, in the chapter "Food Assistance", it reads:

Sunday meal has limited indoor seating or pick-up and take to go.  All are welcome to the Friday Food Pantry (modified in-person shopping).  No proof of ID required and no fees.  Grocery delivery is available for residents that are physically unable to visit the Food Pantry and must reside within our Parish boundaries.  Visit in-person or call for delivery requirements.

The page lists a "Helpline" but not what that's about:  Both times I've gotten rent help from St. Vincent de Paul, Blessed Sacrament volunteers have been the local-to-me agents.  Most of my preoccupations 2023 to present have been driven by SVdP case managers, one of whom suggested I might be disabled, and the other of whom urged me to return to school.

For either purpose, food or larger help, the address is 5050 8th Ave NE. 

Blessed Sacrament is also by far the most photogenic of these three charities.

The University District Food Bank (B on map)

On page 60 in the same chapter of The Emerald City Resource Guide, 8th edition not the 9th coming in a few weeks, we read:

Food pantry, baby cupboard and home delivery.  Offers fresh fruits and vegetables, dairy, frozen meat, canned and dry goods, toiletries, baby formula, diapers, and pet food plus connections to important community resources.  Visit once a week.  Serves primarily the unhoused and any residents and ZIP codes 98102, 98103, 98105, 98112, 98115 and 98125.  Visit in person.  Call for home delivery.  Documents required:  photo ID and proof of address.  No fees.

They're at 5017 Roosevelt Way NE, and again the book leaves something important out.  They get the University branch Library's cast-offs.  I visited most weeks for books alone, before the pandemic.

Planned Parenthood (C on map)

On page 41 of The Emerald City Resource Guide, 8th ed., in the chapter "Family and Parental Services", we read:

High-quality, affordable health care with or without insurance.  Services include men's health care, pregnancy testing and services, sexually transmitted Disease (STD) testing, treatment and vaccines, women's health care, HIV services, and LGBTQ+ services.  Language interpretation by telephone available by request.

They're at 5020 Roosevelt Way NE, and I don't have a history with them.  Again, two photos:

OK, that's the charities.  There's no news about two of my stops, and I took no photos:  Fire Station 17 (D on map) still puts out fires, and University Child Development School (E on map) is still completely fenced in, as in "Four or More Hikes in University Heights" from my previous everything hike in this area.

This isn't the case for the remaining six locations.

Land east of I-5

There are four substantial areas of vacant land created by paired entrances to and exits from I-5, at 7th Ave NE and respectively NE 50th St and NE 45th St.  The Washington Department of Transportation has had plenty of time to repair and/or strengthen its fences since those areas were inhabited during the pandemic.

Last time (same enormous page as above) I tried to write about the potential of each area as a whole.  Evidently WSDOT didn't listen to me.  So this time, surprised to find that each fence leaves a fair amount of land at the corner unfenced, I've tried to confine my photos and comments to those corners. 

Past the 50th St entrance (F on map)

This corner is very hilly, and WSDOT has discouraged use of it by planting thorny plants pretty much all over it.  It's possible to ascend the hill more or less painlessly, but I sure wouldn't want to try to do that every day.  I see that in 2022 (where this is area L) I found that the slope leads to a nice, flat, habitable hill, and if Seattle homelessness gets much worse, I expect the brambles will be removed and the hilltop rediscovered.  Until then, though, WSDOT is probably doing the only practical thing doable with this corner, except that if Seattle ever gets serious snow again, this corner could be great for sledding.

(Yes, dear Diary, I'm now seeing encampments begin to sprawl, including in parts of Ravenna Boulevard that were swept yesterday.) 

Past the 50th St exit (G on map)

The corner here is flat, as is much of the land beyond as seen through the fence; this was area H in 2022.  The corner is also paved, and WSDOT should really rent that corner out for small events, such as minor press conferences.

Past the 45th St entrance (H on smaller map)

These two don't appear on the map above.  Here's another map on the same scale:

 The corner here is only paved at its edges.  It probably isn't very useful.  It leads to region K of 2022.

Past the 45th St Exit (I on smaller map)

This corner leads to area C in "Six Hikes in Brooklyn, part I: Northwest".  I see I was too interested in the fences to say anything useful about area C; sorry, dear Diary.  This time the corner is paved, as at the parallel spot at 50th, except where a rather attractive small tree suggests use for press conferences about the arts, or use by an actual art class.

And now, dear Diary, I'm sorry to make you the bearer of bad news.  Because I'm pretty sure I know why University Playground's restrooms, officially open 24 hours, are actually locked.

The reason is this:

"The University Branch is closed until late 2026 for major renovations".  (Source) The University branch Library is at 5009 Roosevelt Way NE, and is L on the main map.

So make careful plans for the solution to University Playground's homeless problem.  There'd been a "sanican" there, behind the restroom building, for years (remember, dear Diary, I slept around the corner, but only until 2017).  Cancel the contract.

The library's behind a fence already; once we lock the restroom doors, the homeless will have nowhere to go, and will be gone!  Victory!

Well, no.  The parks maintenance guy who was friendliest with me and with homeless people in general once told me why camping in University Playground was such a problem.  Apparently a whole bunch of small schools in that area liked to use the park as their actual playground, but were discouraged by campers.  Well, if I were in charge of thirty kids, I'd be about as discouraged by no restrooms.

So I think, dear Diary, with regret, that the open women's room door on Saturday, September 12, probably attests a trial run, and it didn't go well.  And not some park employee who read my sad story and felt bad about it.

In other words, Parks advertises these restrooms as not only open but 24 hours to boot, and then keeps them locked (as they soon will be by winter anyway) for no other reason than to punish the homeless for existing, and too bad for any innocent bystander who trusts what they say.

Not only all that, but once the University branch Library re-opens, even if not in 2026, what's to stop the homeless from coming back?  People do adapt. 

People in Parks have weaponised water, and in doing so are like ISIS.  That can't be good company to be in, and I feel sorry for them.

Abandoned Pages, part VIII: RV parking

Dear Diary,

This is kind of a frustrating abandoned page.  But let's get to it, shall we?

Why?

I'm sure, dear Diary, you've long since read the good article by Vivian McCall, who's now interim editor-in-chief of The Stranger, in which the article appeared, about the fully evolved, and now rapidly devolving, security measures adopted by the giant grocery chains after several years of complaining that they were losing trillions of dollars every minute to theft.  (No, I admit, that could be an exaggeration, because they never quantified the damage.  They just made it clear that they considered it worse than, say, an upsurge in ritual murder.)

Anyway, though, in fall 2021, their experiments on the way to what McCall described really came home to me, because I made the mistake of buying, at the Ballard Fred Meyer, a pair of socks that insisted it had been stolen, and screamed bloody murder about this all night.  For years after that, I annoyed any number of Fred Meyer employees by demanding that they remove security tags before I left the building.

Something about effectively stealing from me the things I'd paid for [1], while at the same time putting the notorious "eco-blocks" illegally into the streets, congealed in me into something nasty.

And then I had a simply brilliant idea.

What?

I don't fully remember.

But the core issue involving homeless people who buy run-down old Recreational Vehicles to live in - seems to me the core issue is a Seattle law that says vehicles wider than 80 inches can only be parked in places zoned industrial.

My brilliant idea somehow applied actual ecological concepts, such as niches and succession, to the conflict between RV dwellers and businesses, not all industrial in character, but located in places zoned industrial, which in North Seattle mostly means southern Ballard.  Hence "Ecology in Southern Ballard".

Why not?

Because I couldn't get legal help.

The now finally partner, yay! who organised the GoFundMe that got me housed earlier in 2021, was of course the first lawyer I thought of.  I wanted to know when the 80 inch Seattle law had been passed, so I could find out why it had been passed.  But online records didn't go back far enough, and I'm not sure what excuse I had for not going to the King County Law Library, but anyway, I asked her, she said she'd look it up, and there it ended.  So I must have forgotten my brilliant idea pretty quickly, what with downtown parks and library hours to focus on, not to have asked her again.

I also have a feeling that the opacity of Seattle zoning, which strongly discouraged me from using "urban villages" to structure my hikes this year, may have made an appearance then too.  Giving me trouble identifying just which zones allowed RVs.

On an entirely different front, November 2021 isn't that far from January 2022, when I came down with omicron COVID. 

Finally, I'm quite sure that, not being a driver, I had too little sympathy for the RV dwellers, whose main problem, parking, is viscerally important to most Americans, but not to me. 

What now?

I'm not sure.

I'm unlikely to recover the brilliant idea, but its outlines are fairly obvious.  And my esteemed city council representative is currently trying hard to revive all the key components of the issue - RV parking, eco-blocks, and trouble for the homeless.

More importantly, either I have to get to the King County Law Library, or I have to find a lawyer who'll do it for me.

Again, dear Diary, we'll see.

[1] Sort of happened again this year.  I bought two pairs of shoes there only to find that the left shoe of each pair was unwearable thanks to a security tag.  They fixed the problem, and I'm currently wearing out the first of those pairs hiking for you, dear Diary. 

Abandoned Pages, part VII: Downtown

Dear Diary,

I apologise for not getting you part of "Building a Baseline" last night.  I was too tired.  Not much hiking today, so it should happen.

Why?

I was working near downtown, and because my problems with mornings are magnified by where I live, I was working pretty late.  It irked me not to have anything to write in you five days a week.

Separately, The Seattle Times had invited me to ask a question in a mayoral debate on homelessness they were sponsoring.  Based on my belief then that Magnuson Park had once had seven restroom pairs, and on my knowledge of restrooms in downtown parks, I asked how we could stop throwing away restrooms. [1]  For months afterward, I tried to back up my claims.  Hence "Magnuson Park Restrooms:  A Relative Chronology", and hence "The Parks of Seattle's Downtown".

What?

I wasn't, at that time, the happiest of people, and I didn't want just to barrel into the depressing story I had to tell.

So I asserted, correctly enough, that I couldn't count on anyone else writing about the downtown parks as I would have, so I'd do park appreciation first, then the plumbing.  And this was November 2021, when I was still at maximum OpenStreetMap, so my list of parks kept growing.

It grew considerably more once I realised that the parks near downtown, many of which had restrooms that hadn't been thrown away, were part of the story.

Downtown:  waterfront to I-5, Mercer to Dearborn.  Near downtown:  within one mile of those boundaries. 

Why not?

Well, for one thing, I haven't worked downtown since.

But also, I've always preferred to credit artists whose work I show you, dear Diary, and I'd gotten massively behind, because every downtown official park has art, and it's often impossible to photograph the park without including the art.

And most importantly, I still didn't feel strong enough to write about downtown Seattle's public restrooms. 

Well, I may be strong enough now, but can't do that now.

What now?

I'm pretty sure I've told you, dear Diary, during this revival, that I'm leaning toward giving downtown (and, you now see, near downtown) parity with North Seattle.  This is, obviously, not quite true.  When I faced the reality that I couldn't do both regions this year, I unhesitatingly chose the larger one.

Still, I figure I've admitted not only Freeway Park but also Dr. Jose Rizal Park, and even whatever Amazon still has, to our remit, and sooner or later I'll get back to those.  This isn't an abandoned page your readers need to comment on to get me to revive it.

[1] The debate was between Bruce Harrell and Lorena Gonzalez.  Harrell tried to answer the question, although he must have known that "we'll just have to try harder not to throw restrooms away" isn't much of an answer.  In fact, there are more park restrooms in downtown Seattle than there were when his term began; I didn't vote for him either time, but he actually did that right, and that makes the psychic burden of telling the story lighter, so thanks!  Gonzalez didn't even try to answer the question, instead mouthing pieties.  All this from memory, as the debate now seems to be paywalled.

Abandoned Pages, part VI: Libraries

Dear Diary,

Of the pages in you that aren't about parks - even glancingly, as in "The Biblically Heroic Sweep of Cowen Park" - a solid majority are about libraries.  So why am I calling them "incomplete"?

Because libraries still exist, still post hours, and I haven't looked at those hours for years.

Why?

I'd kept library hours important to me on an index card the whole time I'd been homeless.  But when the libraries started re-opening during the pandemic, those hours wouldn't fit on one or even two cards any more.

This led me to write a popular page in October 2021.  Six months later, I knew a lot more about libraries, and started to share it. 

Also, library hours could be tracked at my desk, without much hiking.  Library hours became my bad weather go-to, the way topography, in part III of this page, and the counties, in part X upcoming, shouldn't have been.

What?

To start with, I just translated the Washington Secretary of State's Directory of Washington Libraries.  Embarrassingly, it took me a long time to notice the existence of the Ocean Shores Public Library, which at that time wasn't in that directory.

I think I did a good job in and, um, after, April 2022, explaining public libraries' card eligibility and rules as well as hours, and covering, with varying degrees of geographic completeness, other categories in the directory.

In October 2022 I finally began academic libraries, the main category thus far omitted, and updated public libraries' hours and rules.

Finally, in October 2023, I extended public library coverage to all of western Washington, and added a category of "institutional libraries" because a Skagit County librarian with whom I'd talked suggested I learn which schools still had librarians.

Why not?

Well, I never figured out how to deal with the schools, and found myself blocked.

By October 2024, I was in school myself, and not only too busy to think about you much, dear Diary, but also too pre-occupied with real accounting to want to do the pseudo-accounting that tracking library hours basically is.

What made me busy in October 2025 and will make me busy next month differ, but the soonest I could try is anyway next year.

What now?

Some of what I did was, I think, a sort of public service, and I'm open in principle to resuming it, but to the extent that I work as an accountant, the uncanny valley element of hours tracking will remain.

I tend to think of the library hours pages as among my most confident, so I was surprised, re-reading today, to find how much I allowed my sources to steer my writing, and how much I flailed around.  It would be very nice to know how to do it and just get it done.  Notably, public and academic libraries.

One of the things I was trying to do was convince librarians to improve their websites.  I thought I'd actually made a difference in a few cases, tribal libraries covered in October 2022, and community college libraries never actually covered (as best I can tell now), but of whose librarians I'd asked some questions.

We'll see. 

Abandoned Pages, part V: Other Cities

Dear Diary,

This next project is one I'm really not sure about resuming.  So let's take it through the format and see if that sheds any light on the decision.

Why?

On impulse, I hiked across Tacoma in July 2021, and discovered that such impulses could be surprisingly dangerous, because although I passed many major parks, none had water fountains available.

What?

I was going to apply my methods to accessible cities of over 100,000 people, so as not to punch down too much.  Just go there and see what I found.

Cities that large in Washington, other than Seattle:

• Spokane, very unlikely to be accessible
• Tacoma, accessible
• Vancouver, unlikely to be accessible
• Bellevue, accessible
• Kent, accessible
• Everett, accessible
• Renton, accessible
• Spokane Valley, very unlikely to be accessible
• Federal Way, accessible

Why not?

I'll let my slightly younger self answer that.  As hinted in part II of this page, I took two project management classes earlier this year, and early in one we were supposed to pick a project gone wrong and explain how it had done so.

Insufficient Research and Data:  "The Grass Isn't Always Greener", My Seattle Parks Diary, July 2021

... I hiked North Seattle parks three times in 2020-2021, before I got housed, mostly pushing a shopping cart ... to hold all my food and bedding, with the help of a battery ... to recharge my phone. ...  But then I did get housed, and ... felt pretty cocky.  That summer, following an unbelievably parched hike across Tacoma, I decided to go visit other large cities in the area and see how they handled running water accessible to homeless people during the still-raging pandemic.  On my first visit to Tacoma for this planned thread ... I visited a bunch of parks, took lots of photos, actually found a few running water fountains.  And missed the last bus to Seattle.  Which meant I got to spend the night in a park without any bedding, and also without a battery to recharge my phone.  Oh, but it doesn't end there.  In the morning I found that I was miles from the nearest grocery, and once I finally got breakfast, I gave up.  See, I'd never actually grasped the lesson of that unbelievably parched hike.  When I later ran the numbers, it turned out all the large cities in the vicinity have much lower population densities than Seattle.  They're more spread out, and so are their grocery stores and water fountains, and for that matter their parks.  They are, in other words, intrinsically less amenable to my methods, which really amounted to just hiking; they're places made for drivers, and I've never learnt to drive. [1]

What now?

The obvious solution is transportation.

The question is whether it'd be worth it.  Recall, dear Diary, that we're unlikely to see any more water fountains encased in garbage bags.  We already know that, five years ago, Tacoma had way too few water fountains.  What else would justify these hikes?

Transportation is also problematic.  I don't expect to have money for taxis until I'm out of school.  I'm picky about bicycles, and electrical transport relies on charging.  And nothing is as safe as a car.  This will come up again later, re "The Counties of Western Washington".

If any of your readers, dear Diary, actually want this project revived, they'd best say so, and make good arguments for it.

[1] My mother wouldn't let me take driver's education in high school, because having a male teenaged driver in the house would drive up her insurance rates.  I never put together money and time to pay for adult driver's education until she died and the inheritance started coming, in 2004.  And before I did that, I noticed my reaction times were already much slower than they had been, and gave up.

 

Abandoned Pages, part IV: Everything Hikes A

Dear Diary,

An "everything hike" for me, in relation to you, is actually at minimum what I'm trying to do right now, visiting all the properties known to me of the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation in North Seattle.  The contrast is with "restroom" or "water fountain" hikes, not with "Parks-specific" hikes.  The hikes of 2020 were mostly Parks-specific, but were everything hikes.

Why?

I'd gotten housed, and had found that this limited my ability to hike as I had while homeless.  I thought dividing North Seattle into regions was a good solution.  And I'd decided I'd looked at the real property reports too narrowly.

What?

I formulated eleven regions divided by major streets.  These regions turned out not to be doable all at once, but I stuck with them for three regions.  At that time I classified locations in North Seattle as "NE", "N" or "NW".  I tackled "N" south of 50th, "NW" south of 50th and/or Market, and "NE" between I-5 and Lake City Way.

Later, I tackled "NE" south of 65th and west of 25th, and finished 5/6ths of it. 

Why not?

I'd noticed that the only water fountains running were in parks without restrooms.  By telling the homeless to rely on Parks plumbing, mayor Jenny Durkan had invited encampments in parks.  This was meant to get rid of those encampments, as if the sweeps then running constantly weren't enough.  So I gave up on everything hiking for a while, and did water fountain hikes twice that summer - first documenting the second "Durkan Drought", then, after citizens became outraged by not getting drinking water in the parks, documenting the mayor backing down. 

What now?

I don't know about any of your readers at the time, dear Diary, but I found "snippets" tiresome and pointless to try to locate.

Also, the effects of OpenStreetMap on my hikes had grown, and it hadn't occurred to me to winnow them with the King County Parcel Viewer.

Those are the two biggest differences between the regional hikes and "Building a Baseline", which I still hope to complete, and in fact plan to put out another part of tomorrow.  Well, OK, one more big difference is the Emerald City Resource Guide.  Back then, I considered adding landmarks, but found reasons not to.

I know I made a priority of photographing everything in the regional hikes, so I'm photographing less when I'm in an area those hikes covered.

Finally, when I started "Building a Baseline", I tried using the eleven regions to organise things, but the only place they really came in handy was dealing with OpenStreetMap.

Good night, dear Diary.  Tomorrow, besides the next two abandoned pages, another part of "Building a Baseline". 

Abandoned Pages, part III: Topography

Dear Diary,

Let's get started, shall we?

I think a format is best, so I don't get carried away and leave stuff out.

So:

Why?

I was looking for something I could write without venturing out into the rain, in December 2020.  (This is the only one of these abandoned pages which I started while still homeless, but that's still a recurring pattern in this page.)  And as I said at the time, I really wanted a useful topography, to plan hikes better.  I'd downloaded some topographic maps, and noticed a pattern that clearly meant valleys.

What?

Basically, I was trying to render the 2020 U.S. Geological Survey topographical map of Seattle North into words.

Why not?

I knew the parts were badly written even at the time.  And the numbers reported by Blogspot, as compared with the numbers for, say, "North Seattle Street Ends", showed my then-readers agreed.

So when Jenny Durkan's Seattle government gave us the gift of a map pretending to tell the homeless where they could find restrooms, but pervaded in oh, so many ways by lies, I ventured out into the rain anyway, in January 2021, and that was that.

What now?

Well, I still wanted a topography of North Seattle, but it gradually dawned on me that I didn't know enough to write it yet.  When I found a good book about the Ship Canal, and added a modicum of research to it, that became one of your most popular pages, dear Diary.

But there is, near as I can tell, no good book about the topography of North Seattle.  So I'd allowed those parts to devolve into lists of valleys.  They were supposed to be about "Land and Water" but I'd let the water win, and made neither the land nor the water worth reading about.

This summer, I finally downloaded a free physical geography textbook and started reading; I'll finish pretty soon.  It's not a very good book - no equations, few chemical symbols, and no attempt to present a coherent field.  But it isn't worthless, and I decided to give physical geography another try.  I probably won't finish that, which I was able to download for free at Suzzallo Library, very soon.  It still doesn't have equations, and not many more chemical symbols, but it does begin with a chapter about physical geography as a discipline.

Anyway, the University of Minnesota's Open Textbook Library has introductions to geology and to pedology ("Soil Science").  I haven't found any for hydrology yet.  But once I'm fully introduced, I'll have to apply all this knowledge to a lot more kinds of maps, and then use those maps to, yes, venture out in the rain and take photos.

(And I'm taking an introduction to digital photography class this fall, so maybe by then, I'll know how to photograph creeks.)

Given school and work, of these abandoned pages, this first one is likely to be nearly the last of those I try to revive, but it isn't forgotten, dear Diary, and because I'm so interested, it's pretty sure to be revived.

Abandoned Pages, part II: Time

Dear Diary,

I've neglected you for a long time.  Already in March 2024, before I returned to school, I posted about "silence".  It's true that I haven't wholly abandoned you, but I'm unlikely ever to match the totals of 112 pages in 2020 or 149 in 2021.

What else do I know about my recent past and future?

Let's do a list!

• Summer 2024 - Three classes at North Seattle College
• "A Requiem for Seventy-Seven Bus Stops" during fall break 
• Fall 2024 - Four NSC classes plus a Work-Study job
• Winter 2025 - Same
• Spring 2025 - Three NSC classes plus a Work-Study job
• Summer 2025 - Same
• Fall 2025 - Two NSC classes
• Winter 2026 - Four NSC classes plus an internship.  Associate's degree in accounting
• Spring 2026 - Three NSC classes, one Bellevue College class, plus an internship.  Bookkeeping certificate
• Summer 2026 - One Everett Community College class.  This revival

From here is stuff that's only come clear since Monday morning, the 14th. 

• Fall 2026 - Four EvCC classes
• Winter 2027 - Two EvCC classes
• Spring 2027 - Same
• Summer 2027 - One EvCC class
• Fall 2027 - Two EvCC classes
• Winter 2028 - Same
• Spring 2028 - Same.  Bachelor's degree in accounting
• Fall 2028 - One Bellevue College class
• Winter 2029 - One NSC class.  Project Management certificate, probably.  Plus one BC class, maybe
• Spring 2029 - One BC class, maybe

How much can I do, then?  The prognosis for this fall is not good.  I think following every trail is out, and I'm unlikely to want to write much in you in November, regardless of my success or failure in September and October.

After that, well, much depends on what else I do besides one or two classes.  I predict one of five futures will happen, and which one greatly affects the odds of the projects in this page being revived or completed.

A good job

In this scenario, I can afford to spend money, but am constantly short of time.  Hiking boots, at long last, but not many hikes.

This scenario is also the one in which I'm likeliest to find a wife, or other partner, and maybe even father children.  Which would limit my freedom to hike still more.

At least I could get my prescriptions back.

I might move out of North Seattle in this scenario. 

A bad job

I haven't spent much of my life in this kind of job; uncertain schedules for me have resulted from temp work, not from capricious bosses.  I'd probably see hiking as a refuge, although it would take a while to get boots.

A family in this scenario would be a disaster to all non-work and non-home activities.

A part-time job

Well, it would take longer for both the boots and the prescriptions.  But this is by far the most optimistic scenario for you, dear Diary.  It also makes marriage pretty unlikely.

Problem is, it might not be stable.  I might be promoted to full-time, or might be laid off without much nest egg. 

Homelessness

In this scenario, I'm much poorer than when I was last homeless, because all the people who paid for my storage in the past have since retired.  All tech I now own, including this phone and the laptop I make maps on, would be highly vulnerable to theft.

On the other hand, I'd have huge amounts of time, and no prospect of a woman wanting any of it.

This as my job

I'm not normally an optimist, but I believe enough in the education I've been getting that I think the above possibilities are in probability order.

I certainly won't apply for grants on your behalf, dear Diary, but it's more likely that you have a rich reader who'd pay me to write you, than that I'll be struck by lightning exactly at noon tomorrow.

I take for granted that such a reader would want me to work citywide.  Beyond that, I can't predict, but can speculate.

I doubt this scenario leads to either health insurance or marriage.

Well, dear Diary, enough about my future.  Tomorrow, back to yours. 

Abandoned Pages, part I: Overview

Dear Diary,

I think I now know more of my near-term future than I have for months, and so it's time to talk about your near-term future.

I currently have two projects going on in you, dear Diary, about which I'm writing slowly.  Nine past ones that aren't finished are worth remembering here.  So that's eleven, all told.

This part, in particular, is the third in a succession of lists of links relevant to you.  The first is a publication history that I wrote, outside you, in 2021, or at latest 2022, and then put into Microsoft Word format, with internal and direct external links, in 2025; I've kept each version up to date.  This publication history currently lists the following materials from you, dear Diary:

• "My Book of Hours"
• "Standing Room Only"
• "North Seattle Street Ends"
• The January 2021 hikes
• The library hours pages of October 2021, April 2022, October 2022, and October 2023, plus other dates mainly about Seattle Public Library
• "Magnuson Park Restrooms:  A Relative Chronology"
• "The Parks of Seattle's Downtown"
• A series for Christmas 2021
• "A Requiem for Seventy-Seven Bus Stops"

The second link list is another page in you, dear Diary:  "Past Hikes of North Seattle in These Pages".  (Awkwardly, "Publication History" and "Past Hikes" have the same acronym.)  This page, which I've revised once so far, lists my main hikes for you as follows:

• Finding plumbing, 2020, everything hikes.  This omits "Standing Room Only" and "North Seattle Street Ends" because the publication history already covered those.
• It slots the January 2021 hikes in next, and calls them restroom hikes, but doesn't list them, because the publication history already did.
• Regional hikes, everything hikes in spring 2021.
• Water fountain hikes, summer 2021.
• Regional hikes, everything hikes in autumn 2022.
• Restroom hikes in winter 2023.
• Water fountain hikes in summer 2024.

The publication history covers pages with at least some degree of completeness.  Similarly, "Past Hikes" covers attempts to deal with all of North Seattle.  This list, and this page, cover pages with at least some degree of incompleteness, and at least partly failed attempts to deal with all of North Seattle, or some other topic.  They are:

1. "Land and Water in North Seattle", December 2020.  Topography.
2. The regional hikes (mostly "A Hike"), May 2021 and later.  Everything hikes.
3. "The Grass Isn't Always Greener", July 2021.  Other cities.
4.  "Library Hours", October 2021 and later.  Libraries.
5. "The Parks of Seattle's Downtown", November 2021.  Downtown Seattle, and meant, later, to expand to parks up to one mile away, for the contrast.
6. "Ecology in Southern Ballard", November 2021.  RV parking.  Dear Diary, this is the only one of these I never before told you about.
7. "Buildings of the UW's Seattle Campus", October 2022.  Public access to public buildings.
8. "Counties of Western Washington", December 2022.  County-level work.
9. "A Requiem for Seventy-Seven Bus Stops", September 2025.  Transit.
10. "Under Construction", July 2026.  Park construction. 
11.  "Building a Baseline", August 2026.  Everything hikes.

Of these, 4, 5 and 9 are listed in the publication history, 2 is listed in "Past Hikes", and 6 doesn't have anything to list.  The rest of this part lists what's available for 1, 3, 7 and 8.  Time will tell which of the currently incomplete series 10 and 11will end up listed where.

The next part will explain elements of my near-term future and past relevant to these projects.  Then each project gets its own part.  I've been thinking about this page for months, so it should roll out pretty quickly, and not become recursive.  ("Abandoned page #43 is "Abandoned Pages"??")

Dear Diary, please tell any human readers that I very much want comments from anyone particularly interested in any of these projects, whether here or on the parts devoted to those projects. 

Topography

"Land and Water in North Seattle, part I: Introduction"

"Land and Water in North Seattle, part II: The Lake City Coast"

"Land and Water in North Seattle, part III: Thornton Creek's North Fork"

"Water and Water: The Lake Washington Ship Canal"

Other Cities

"The Grass Isn't Always Greener: Introduction"

"The Grass Isn't Always Greener: Tacoma, part I"

Public Access

"Buildings of the UW's Seattle Campus, part I: Preface"

"Buildings of the UW's Seattle Campus, part IIA: North of West Campus"

"Buildings of UW's Seattle Campus, part IIB: Northern West Campus"

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

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

Counties

"Counties of Western Washington, part I: Introduction"

 

All Night Long, Questions Edition, part III: Some Answers

Dear Diary,

I have access to two 24-hour restrooms simply by virtue of being housed at present.

So who needs 24-hour restrooms in public places?  People who are in public places, obviously.  But only a subset of those, who are outside when most others are inside.  Such as:

• Drunk partiers.
• Truckers and other travellers.
• Shift workers. 
• Homeless people.

And, in fact, Google Scholar believes only homeless people use them.  I guess scholars whose work shows up there don't party or travel much, let alone work weird shifts.

Or wait...

Actually, Google Scholar believes something very specific about 24-hour restrooms.  It only finds seven results, and of those, the first four are about this state, and the first three are about Seattle.  Three different studies discussing Seattle's lack of 24-hour restrooms as a really efficient way of criminalising homelessness, Seattle as a place that could give Burien lessons in cruelty.

But the thing is, homeless people aren't an efficiently serveable market.  I don't think one can map where 24-hour restrooms could best help the homeless, although a bunch downtown would sure help.

One can map how to serve those other markets, though.

For drunks, you want restrooms where the party is.  Belltown (and why does Parks have responsibility for providing 24-hour restrooms, but Seattle Center escape that task?).  Pioneer Square.  Capitol Hill.  The Ave.  Southern Fremont.  The obvious solution is for SPU to set things up there.  University Playground was always a poor substitute, and will probably never get an actual useable restroom pair back until its 24-hour heritage is forgotten.

For truckers and such, you want rest stops.  Not being a driver, I don't actually know where the nearest ones are, but having been homeless for eight years, I do know they aren't close.  This is, then, the proper responsibility for Parks in this area. Without snarky lies.  The most obvious examples are up north.  Bitter Lake Playfield and Northacres Park and Playfield are both close to major routes.  Problem is, none of their restrooms, not even Northacres Playfield's that usually stays open year-round, are really set up for cold weather.  If Parks is serious about weatherising its restrooms, those three should be high on the list.  I also observed many, many drivers on Sand Point Way stopping at the park I used to call BGPP, now Pathways Park; a good use for a security contract might be longer hours for that park, if Sand Point stays busy late.

I would expect any park positioned as a sort of rest stop to try to monetise this with nearby businesses.

Finally, for shift workers, transit agencies should take the lead.  Unfortunately, the tradition around Seattle is for transit agencies to pretend that we're all bodiless energy beings, and build restrooms but allow nobody to use them.  (And no, Northgate Station is not, after all, an exception.)  I don't know how many centuries it'll take those agencies to get over this - I've seen physical evidence of it as long ago as the 1970s if not earlier.  A governor or U.S. president might be able to hurry it along, though.

I wanted to put, somewhere early in this part, the about-face "The Parks department has no business running 24-hour restrooms", but I don't think that's quite true.  Seattle Center would probably be better at the park/commerce mix ideal for a rest stop, but I suspect Parks already has the real estate all over town, and I certainly wouldn't want to see Freeway Park Center-ised.

But there's another issue with regard to Parks and 24-hour restrooms.  It would probably be expensive to hire attendants for a public restroom at Broadway and Pine, but as long as a Seattle that takes the need for public restrooms seriously tries to rely on Parks, it'll have to hire people just to check whether Parks is lying about them.  Attendants could get tips, so they'd probably be stabler employees.

All Night Long, Questions Edition, part II: Official

Dear Diary,

I was going to wait until Saturday to tell you what's in this part, and then another week for part III, but after tonight's hike, I don't see the point.

As you know, dear Diary, I'm not doing "Building a Baseline" the way I wanted to, because that way wouldn't have gotten me to all the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation water fountains before they started getting turned off.  And that, in turn, was because Parks didn't get me a trustworthy list of water fountains when I asked for one.  So instead I'm making a mad dash to visit all of Parks's locations looking for water fountains.

And the obvious place to start, dear Diary, the richest trove of close-together Parks locations, is where we in fact started way back when, in the U-District.  Well, I decided to combine it with Ravenna, and trying to follow all the trails in Ravenna and Cowen parks soaked up much of a day.  But on Friday, September 11, I finally arrived at University Playground at 8:47 am and found the restrooms not open yet.

Only wait a minute.  Didn't I see in the popular tool Parks runs, "Find a Restroom in a Park", that University Playground's restrooms are not only open, but open 24 hours?  Yep, there it is:

Now, how could it be that someone went to University Playground on September 10 specifically to close its restrooms so they'd be respectfully closed on the anniversary?

Still, I thought it better to wait to say anything.  So I wrote part I of this page even after getting photos at 2:30 pm on the 12th:

and without mentioning it.  And then on the 13th, imagine, dear Diary, my surprise when I showed up at 3:30 pm and found this:

So, tonight.  I'd been more careful than on September 5th, but the house I live in has a "quiet time", and I had a sandwich at home I wanted to eat, so I wanted to wash my hands.

I didn't get going until pretty late, indeed not, as I'd thought, within "park hours" (6 am to 10 pm), but I was so optimistic.  Only to find that women's room not only locked but chained and padlocked as if to shout as loudly as possible, "Yes, you want it, but we won't let you have it".  And I didn't even actually want it - with my luck, the woman of my dreams would show up while I was washing my hands and shriek in horror.

So on I went to the nearest, at that point, of the city's other official 24-hour restrooms, at Gas Works Park.  Where I wandered for some time before accepting that the old restroom building was gone.  It's been replaced by three single-user stalls, which is definitely fewer than the old building had, 

and are you surprised, dear Diary, to hear they were all locked?

At this point, I can't even pretend to care whether the remaining one, the Portland Loo at Ballard Commons, has an external lock or not.  Obviously the list of restrooms open "park hours" in the "Find a Restroom in a Park" tool is simply another batch of lies from the Parks department.

Your readers, dear Diary, may be able to play along at home!  So here are the ones not in North Seattle:

• Alki Beach 57th Ave SW
• Alki  Beach 63rd Ave SW
• Alki Beach Bathhouse
• Armeni Boat Ramp
• Discovery Park South Bluff
• Queen Anne Bowl
• Seacrest Park
• South Park Community Center

Are any of those really open 24 hours?  Let us know!

Two details to finish up with before part III.  All the restrooms I'm talking about are, according to the now tainted tool, open "park hours", not "24 hours".  Why is that?  Well, Parks wouldn't want to encourage any lawbreaking in pursuit of anything so trivial as the cessation of pain, now would they?

But it only takes a moment's thought to see this as a charade.  First of all, Parks only has a few schedules for their parks.  To take North Seattle alone, Green Lake Park and Ballard Commons close at 11:30 pm, Gas Works Park and University Playground at 10 pm.  Are they really keeping two staffers busy at such hours locking restrooms in North Seattle?

Second, nobody but homeless people with smartphones is going to care about restrooms open "park hours".  The point of the charade is to associate the reliable 24-hour restrooms at Green Lake with all these lies, to make the lies easier to swallow.  Why they'd want to make lies easier to swallow, though, I have no idea.  Is the person in charge of the tool a sadist?

And Green Lake is the other detail.  On September 5th I visited that park's North restrooms (in the tool, and in Parks parlance, "wading pool").  And tonight I finally washed my hands at the 64th St restrooms ("65th St").  For some reason they don't lie about the real 24-hour restrooms at Green Lake.

This is a depressing page, dear Diary, and I'm afraid the only way I can offer hope in the next part, coming up soon, is based on the premise of Seattle doing things right.  Well, Parks wouldn't have gotten away with what they're doing if Seattle were in the habit of doing things right.

Under Construction, part IX: Pickleball v. Tennis

Dear Diary,

I identify myself, politically, as a "radical conservative leftist".  I ask dumb questions, which is the hallmark of a radical; I'm suspicious of change, which is the mark of a conservative; and the things I want not to change make me a leftist.

All this to say that the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation has recently admitted to a mistake, but it's a mistake of which I approved.  I'm discussing the topic in "Under Construction" partly because it's in the project list and happening in 2026 (that is, the plans linked to, which this whole part is based on, are being revised this year), and partly because some of it involves actual construction.

See, dear Diary, tennis is a game codified in the 1870s, played on "courts" with "racquets"; as those names suggest, its origins are in mediaeval France.  Pickleball is a vaguely similar game invented in 1965 on Bainbridge Island here in Washington state.

So when pickleball surged in popularity, Parks pointed out that parks don't change very fast, and shouldn't recognise fads.  I completely approve.

When the surge didn't abate, in 2017 they started adding pickleball striping to some of their existing tennis courts, then calling these courts "dual use".  Now, they say, dual use was a reasonable plan:

New courts require significant space and funding - for acquisition of land and/or development of facilities at existing parks.  Furthermore, many of the existing parks currently without courts were purchased with grant funding that restricts active recreation and/or impervious coverage.  Therefore, dual striping was an effective tool to add pickleball courts quickly and economically.

They ended up with twenty dual use courts, five of which are in North Seattle.

However, as dual use increased, so did complaints; they imply, but don't state, a correlation.  So pickleball and tennis are breaking up.  Of the dual use courts in North Seattle, Bitter Lake Playfield and Ravenna Park are designated for pickleball, while Gilman Playground, Soundview Playfield and Wallingford Playfield are (re-)designated for tennis.

As part of this process, they also started designating "hubs", including one for tennis in Woodland Park, and one for pickleball at Green Lake Park.  They're considering designating more hubs, including Laurelhurst and Meadowbrook playfields for tennis and Magnuson Park and Bitter Lake Playfield for pickleball.  One element of "hub"ness for pickleball is allowing "open play"; in contrast, Ravenna, Laurelhurst, Greenwood Park and Maple Leaf Reservoir Park will be reserved for "closed play". 

They warn that expansion is a tough row to hoe, but in 2027 they'll explore adding tennis courts to Froula and Magnuson parks, and look for room for pickleball courts at Gilman and Magnuson.  They also say that Bitter Lake and Maple Leaf may have room for expansion whenever their courts are resurfaced.

Wow, dear Diary.  I had no idea sports at the parks were so complicated.  Anyway, I've now cleared the decks for Bitter Lake's "Building a Baseline" part, so I'll see you tonight or tomorrow with that.  Until then, happy times, dear Diary. 

 

All Night Long, Questions Edition, part I: Unofficial

Dear Diary,

This is a story I think is worth telling, but it's more than a little disgusting about Number One.  I've tried to make it a bit less so by letting English Wikipedia links do most of the talking about, for example, this.

Last Saturday, I had to do laundry, but also wanted to go to Bitter Lake Playfield to get the construction-related photos I'd forgotten to get on previous visits.  Suddenly it occurred to me that Bitter Lake Playfield was one of the parks I'd heard had 24-hour restrooms, and is sort of near Carkeek Park, whose restrooms' 24-hourness I'd seen for myself, so I should do an "All Night Long" hike.

Well, I got to Bitter Lake around (checks to confirm, OK, I'm not senile yet) 5:30 pm.  Now, September 5th was before Labor Day this year, so I figured maybe park restrooms were still closing at 9 pm, so I had to find things to do until 10:30 or so.

The construction photos filled quite a lot of that time, since one of them was to be of the playground, which was never deserted that night before sunset.  So along about 8 pm I headed for Carkeek Park.

Now, one thing I failed to do before I left changed the whole night for me.  My mother had taught me, when quite young, that I should always go potty before going out.  But I didn't want to take my satchels into Bitter Lake Playfield's restrooms, nor leave them unattended in the crowd.  So I didn't, on this occasion, heed my mother's advice.

Well, everything went fine until about mile fifty of the hundred-mile trek, that is, about mile 2 out of 3 or so, somewhere on NW 117th St, I started to experience this.  At extraordinary length.  When I started you, dear Diary, I can remember isolated brief episodes of that really shocking me, one actually in one of Laurelhurst Community Center's restrooms, another at Northeast branch Library waiting for a call from Anna Patrick.

The problem is an extremely common one in older men.  Sometime around 2016, my first doctor on Medicaid, whom I was already starting to dislike, correctly diagnosed me with this, and prescribed this.  That was in response to an isolated example of this, which also got me kicked out of Scarecrow Video's doorway.  Now, the thing is, that drug is supposed to make it easier to do Number One, which I figured then was the last thing I needed.  But by 2021, things had gotten enough worse that I really wanted my second Medicaid doctor to revive the prescription.

Unfortunately, the new prescription had an expiration date, which even more unfortunately came a few months after I was kicked off Medicaid for making too much money.  Soon after that, the money went away too.  All this in 2025.

So while what happened on the way to Carkeek Park was a shock, it shouldn't have been.  I'd really messed up.

Anyway, when I finally got to Carkeek Park's restrooms, I discovered that I'd effectively filled my clothes as if they were this, and, worse, that I actually retained sensory memories of that kind of clothing.  This is not as shocking as it would be for most people, thanks to a long-lasting (until age 7) primary case of this, but it still made a bad situation worse.

So, Carkeek's Shelter 2, the immense WPA one, being available, I went and vegetated until I was sick of the company of my own thoughts.  The deal with Carkeek Park's restrooms being 24 hours, as our frenemy Rachel Schulkin eventually figured out, is that the parks maintenance guys at the ends of their shifts were supposed to close the gate across the only road into Carkeek.  Theoretically they should first have closed the restrooms, but they didn't see any point.

Well, so I figured if the gate was already closed, I'd know the restrooms were still 24 hours.  But the gate didn't close, and didn't close, and finally around 11 pm, on my third hike out there, I saw a car from PanAmerican Security enter the park.  So I squelched back, much slower than the car, and it turns out this is what the doors to Carkeek Park's restrooms look like at night now:

So there I was, half done, and of course the doors to Bitter Lake Playfield's three single-user stalls were locked when I arrived.  I'd only heard about those being 24 hours, mostly from homeless peers, but it was still a disappointment.

And, as it turned out, a mildly pressing disappointment; my this, itself fairly shocked by recent events, was nevertheless starting to make noises again.  Obviously I'd have to walk home - I was far too smelly to take a bus.  So I'd stop at one of the official 24-hour restrooms.

But why not take these lemons and make lemonade?  By no means is View Ridge Playfield anywhere near my way home, but if I could get there the same night, it would be a clean sweep.  All three of the 24-hour restrooms in North Seattle of which I'd learnt unofficially.

Now, at that point I wasn't thinking very rationally.  But I expected View Ridge's restrooms to be closed too.  I figured at some level the parks maintenance guys had been insubordinate in both cases.  (My best guess, based on how they talked about View Ridge, was that they took great pride in being able to keep it open without any vandalism.)  Maybe the parks department had sort of militarised, and there was no room left for anyone not a team player.

But no!  I still can't show you, dear Diary, photos of View Ridge Playfield's restrooms closed.  Maybe my e-mail to Christina Hirsch the next day was the first they'd heard that those restrooms were still 24 hours, maybe another security service contract was executed, and maybe they're closed right now.

But also, maybe not.  The easy answer, and the most seductive to me at first, was classism.  Carkeek Park is in a richer neighbourhood.

But there are other plausible answers.  I'd witnessed Carkeek Park's restrooms being open, true, but I'd also witnessed loud, late-night parties at Carkeek Park.  Maybe the neighbours were complaining.  I've never witnessed a more plausible basis for complaint about results of 24-hour restrooms at View Ridge - well, more plausible than me.

Maybe, far from militarising, the park maintenance guys didn't mind handing over the late-night Carkeek work, but weren't going to tolerate anyone messing with their pride and joy, View Ridge. 

The one thing I know is that it didn't result from high-level thought about where 24-hour restrooms would do the most good.  Because such high-level thought couldn't possibly miss the suitability of Bitter Lake Playfield for the job, one block from Aurora as it is.

Part II a week from now, I hope, dear Diary.  In which one of the questions is about the backward and (View Ridge) incomplete way Parks advertises its 24-hour restrooms. 

Good night, dear Diary.