Bryant Playground and View Ridge Playfield Tonight

Dear Diary,

Three weeks ago I walked to the Seattle Public Library's Northeast branch to borrow some Korean TV dramas, and tonight I walked back to return them.  Helpfully, the library was closed tonight when I got there - no, I don't memorise all these hours I tell you about, dear Diary, any more than anyone else does.  Last time I tried to find the parks nearby, but got confused, and by the time I'd vaguely remembered where they were, I was too tired to visit them.  Tonight, though, with no distractions in the library, it was earlier, and I had the sense to consult a map.

So.

Bryant Playground's water fountain is running.  A man was playing basketball with, I assume, his daughter when I got there, which led me to entertain speculations about social distancing, but they were on the far end of the court by the time I made it down the hill to the fountain.  The water tasted slightly off.

View Ridge Playfield's water fountain that was removed, in the words of one of its visitors, "to not spread germs", has not been returned.

Its other water fountain, which is down a grassy slope, is running, and tastes more than slightly off.

View Ridge Playfield's restrooms were, I was told when you were a few months old and parks employees were speaking with me fairly often, open 24 hours for years without any publicity.  I was worried that by giving them publicity through you, dear Diary, I would give the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation an excuse to start closing them.  But at least tonight at 8:04 P.M. they were open:

So that's good.

I've emphasised the downhills for a reason.  Unless the Dahl Playfield water fountain, out of order so long the parks department page for that park doesn't list it as an amenity, has been fixed, the only park in that general area with a street-level water fountain working is Ravenna-Eckstein, way at the southwest corner of a pretty large stretch of land.  View Ridge's removed water fountain was street level, relatively accessible to people with mobility difficulties; the one currently working, surrounded by grass, isn't accessible at all, and the one at Bryant, down and then up a steep hill, isn't well accessible.  What does the parks department have against providing water to people with mobility difficulties in the middle of northeast Seattle?

(I assume some fountains are currently working in Magnuson Park, but none of Magnuson Park is street-level to much of anywhere other than Sand Point Way.  Maybe I should count Burke-Gilman Playground Park, though, in which case the objection is similar to that against Ravenna-Eckstein:  it's way far south.)

The Seattle Times reports tonight that what has been described as the last major encampment in a Seattle park, at Woodland Park, has been cleared.  What with the things I do to deal with their paywalls, I haven't read the article yet, but I suspect that however pretty a face the city puts on this, there will be woe and sorrow for some of my former peers tonight.  But you know, dear Diary, if homeless people aren't miserable, mayors can't sleep well.  So we'll see what our new mayor, supposedly sympathetic to the homeless people he grew up alongside, comes up with next to spread doom and gloom among the poor, now that clearing the parks is at least temporarily off his agenda.

All the photos are at the Google Drive folders, View Ridge and Bryant.

Good night, dear Diary.  I'm still focused on things Korean, but today wrote about a private library, and hope to finish with those sometime within the next week or two.  I'll actually probably be writing more about parks sooner than that.  Until then, happy nights and happy days.

All Night Long, Holiday Edition

Dear Diary,

Happy Thanksgiving!

Last night I was itching to go hiking, and the weather forecasters were claiming that there wouldn't be that much rain.  Also, Boeing Field has started to record temperatures of 32° F, but only just barely.  So I thought of parks whose restrooms seemed likely to be open 24 hours and which I hadn't yet visited in that capacity, and got started.

And there's something to be thankful for!  The restrooms were indeed open at all three parks I visited - Bitter Lake Playfield (where they'll probably be closed soon, though not because of the temperature), Gas Works Park (where they should stay open all winter), and one to be named soon (that link to the Google Drive folder with the photos won't work until then; those restrooms not only close each winter, but have to).

On a less delightful note, I found the shelter at Gas Works Park empty for only the second time since I first found it, probably not too long after 2014.  Maybe it was swept in mid-September.  Unfortunately, that huge, dry shelter is right next to the playground, which makes its semi-permanent occupation more problematic.  I was surprised, of course, to find the shelter empty, whether or not it had been swept, and wondered whether the campers - who all had tents, even though they didn't really need them there - had moved to other parts of the park; but I hiked around for a while without finding a single tent.  Anyway, I was too disheartened by that, and by the realisation that I actually lacked the strength to end the night by walking Woodland and Green Lake Parks, to take any photos of the newly revealed shelter.

Still, this is not a story of the parks working normally.  It is commonly claimed that Seattle has only six 24-hour public restrooms.  I've encountered this meme being attributed to at least two sources; one isn't online, but the other, Review of Navigation Team:  2018 Quarter 2 Report (PDF), by David G. Jones, City Auditor, has all the bits of the meme familiar to me on the report's pages 21 and 22, and on page 23 lists the alleged six.  I can't help thinking Jones must not have looked very hard.  His list turns out to be four "sanican"s, and the "wading pool" and "65th St" restrooms at Green Lake Park.  But "sanican"s were far more numerous in the parks than that already in 2018.  Perhaps he was misled by the parks' official hours; it's true that Green Lake is one of the few parks officially open 24 hours, but I don't think the average person experiencing late-night need is going to care, and at least I have never been challenged for late-night visits to parks.  Perhaps he never encountered the park workers' gossip through which I first heard that View Ridge Playfield's restrooms have been 24 hours for "many years".  And maybe park workers used to be much more on the ball, and got the restrooms locked diligently at out-of-the-way places like Bitter Lake Playfield and Carkeek Park.  But in any event, last night, there were probably four pairs of restrooms open at Woodland and Green Lake Parks, and four more open north (Bitter Lake), south (Gas Works), east (View Ridge) and west (Carkeek) of those.  Not even counting the "Portland Loo" at Ballard Commons, which also existed in 2018.  That's eight, or maybe nine, sites just in about a third of the city.  Some - Woodland, perhaps Bitter Lake - are likely to start closing once the famous homeless encampments there are swept, and Gas Works was opened specifically in response to the pandemic.  And Bitter Lake is needlessly seasonal (which, from its geographical position, it oughtn't be).  But nothing requires the city to go back to its old ways of doing things, and even those included more 24-hour real restrooms, to say nothing of the thousands of "sanican"s, than Jones found.

So, being as generous to Jones as I can manage, let's give thanks that in this regard, at least, things have changed for the better, and let's resolve to try hard to keep them changed.  Park restrooms are too inconvenient to be a real solution, but if we can't even keep what we've got now, we'll never get the restrooms we really need.  Thanks!

Speaking of the restrooms we really need, I expect to finish surveying the downtown parks this long weekend.  Until then, dear Diary, a happy holiday, and happy days.

Hikes 12 and 14: All Night Long, Redux

Dear Diary,

We're entering a new era.  This is the second page, not the first, about hikes I've taken since getting housed - more specifically, hikes I've taken without my cart.  But this is also more or less the first page since December not mainly concerned with the lies put forward by the city government in the form of a map purporting to show restrooms open this past winter.  The map's still there, mind, and I'll check its summer edition starting soon, but for now we're free of it.

In hike 12, I re-visited most of the park restrooms in North Seattle that I thought might be open all night; that hike extended from March 25 to March 26.  In hike 14, I followed up things I thought I'd seen in Woodland Park that night, going there in the evening but with light still in the sky, April 4.  So "All Night Long" really applies mostly to hike 12, but I did pay that topic a bit of attention in hike 14, and it made no sense to split the two hikes up.  Anyway, here goes.

Hike 12 - March 25 to 26

I took only a few photos on this very long hike at night.

Woodland Park

The "Cloverleaf" restrooms were closed at 9:25 P.M.; the sign saying they were only open dawn to dusk was still up at the men's room but gone at the women's room.  The Curative COVID testing site that had been east of those restrooms, and had had "sanican"s nearby, was no longer there, but the "sanican"s were.  The "Rio" restrooms were closed at 9:31 P.M., and again there was still a sign at the men's but not at the women's.  This struck me as such an odd pattern (usually signs last longer at women's rooms) that this time I took photos, the only ones I took that night at Woodland or Green Lake Parks:

The "50th St" restrooms were open at 9:47 P.M., the "Pink Palace" ones at 10:03, and the "lawn bowling" ones were closed at 10:08 P.M.

I got the distinct impression that far fewer tents were visible in the areas of Woodland Park I visited that night than I'd have expected to see based on prior night visits.  Also, when I went downhill from the "Pink Palace" to Green Lake Park, I noticed no extension cords crossing that road, where there had formerly been three; but there was one I hadn't noticed before, crossing the path from the "Pink Palace" to the "lawn bowling" restrooms.  Someone on the west side of that path (away from the shelters) had used to run a loud generator quite often, but it was silent that night.  Essentially these were the topics that brought me back to Woodland Park ten nights later.

Green Lake Park

The "Shellhouse" restrooms were closed at 10:21 P.M.  The "65th St" ones were open at 10:34.  The Community Center ones were closed at around 10:50, and there was caution tape across the entrance to the stairs to the women's room, but not the men's.  (See what I mean, dear Diary?)  The "wading pool" rooms were open at 11:00, and the "Bathhouse" pair were closed at 11:14.

I bought a newspaper on my way to the next park.  I'd been buying them, mindful of the Seattle Times's role in my becoming housed, but I also wanted to use this one as a prop; I had the fantasy that I'd tell you, dear Diary, about this hike before the next newspaper came out.  Um, sure.  Anyway, here's its front page, so people who read you can identify it in the upcoming photos:

Hey, speaking of which, I got vaccinated today, with the Johnson & Johnson single-shot vaccine.  I can hardly wait.  Within a year I might even be able to forget about masks, and wear glasses in public again.

Carkeek Park

I found the restrooms open at 1:04 A.M.:

I found a dramatic change at one of the "sanican"s, the one at the Environmental Learning Center which had been full of experimental gear and papers.  Observe:

That sign in more detail:

Ooh, I'd forgotten that lock.  Let's see - has the map I'd been checking noticed that lock yet?  No, it has not:

It sees three "restrooms" at Carkeek Park, which means the entire restroom building as one plus two "sanican"s.  But only one of the "sanican"s was available that night, and I bet that's still true.  Since I've been calling the authors of the map liars pretty much every time I write in you, dear Diary, I haven't been e-mailing corrections to them, but I hope they notice this one before the century, or anyway the mayoral term, ends.

View Ridge Playfield

Its restrooms were open at 4:35 A.M.:

So that's every park restroom I believed to be open 24 hours this past winter in North Seattle, except those at Gas Works Park, which had been officially announced so were, I figured, very unlikely to be closed.  Sooner or later, I'll also check on the claim from last year (denied then by Rachel Schulkin of the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation) that the restrooms at Bitter Lake Playfield are open 24 hours.  But in the meantime...

Hike 14 - April 4

Woodland Park

My goals for this hike were to observe by day the changes in number of tents, and access to electricity, that I thought I'd seen the night of March 25.  But one of the easiest ways to judge access to electricity is to be around when the sun has recently set, so I went pretty late.  I found the "Pink Palace" restrooms open and the "lawn bowling" restrooms closed at around 7:30 P.M., the "50th St" ones open at 7:45.

There were indeed no electrical cords crossing the road from the tennis courts up to the "Pink Palace" and nearby shelters, as had been there in the past.  One, which I don't think was one of the former three, was present, but not going anywhere:

For something to do while I waited for the sun to set more fully, I wandered around exploring.  This helped me get a clearer picture of the largely unmapped park, but also brought me within view of various "sanican"s, which reminded me of the Curative site.

They'd put up a sign:

Where all the "sanican"s in Woodland Park had been across the path from the testing site, now they were scattered hither and yon, so only one stands behind that sign.  An ADA one had moved to the testing site's new location, near the Citywide Athletics Building and the closed "Rio" restrooms.  This photo is pretty dark, but the testing site is the blue and white box on the left, the ADA "sanican" the green box on the far right:

What looks like another ADA one had moved to the opposite end of the path through the cloverleaf (Leo Lassen) baseball fields, to face the north tennis courts:

When I went back uphill, I found darkness prevalent not only around shelters 1, 2, 3 and 7, whose campers had never had electricity, but also around shelter 4, which had had access to it.  Shelter 6, which I suspect may be the only source, was really the only brightly lit thing around, other than the restrooms; what tents remained near it (they'd be to its right in this photo) were in darkness:

I took that photo at 8:23 P.M.; this visit didn't take all that long.  Soon after, I ran into a Real Change worker calling himself Merlin.  He and a companion with whom I didn't talk much had both spent a lot more years homeless than I had.  He said the park's population hadn't changed, but more campers were hiding.  However, he estimated the population at 50 or 60, and I was pretty sure I'd seen more tents than that in October.  He speculated that maybe the generator I hadn't heard (again) had stopped working.

PubliCola reported today that the sweep of Gilman Playground has been scheduled and that of University Playground has already happened.  Here we see that even the favoured campers at Woodland Park are losing the gifts they'd been receiving.  It's important to remember, while COVID-19 continues to stalk the land, that our city government is already in a post-COVID world, in which it can indulge its love of cruelty to the homeless after too long an abstention, without risking public health by doing so.  Must be nice.  I wonder; if I worked for the city, could I already be forgetting masks and wearing glasses again?

But if the city is really in a post-COVID world, why aren't the community centers, pools, and libraries re-opening?

Maybe the city just considers mistreating the homeless a greater public good than following CDC recommendations or re-opening libraries.  Beats me.  But camping in parks is looking to be a riskier and riskier strategy, and I expect to find even Woodland Park becoming less welcoming - and less populous - as the days go on.

Partly because of my vaccination, I've planned to spend the next couple of days housebound, dear Diary, among other things doing some behind the scenes work on you that having a laptop makes possible.  The Gilman sweep is apparently scheduled for Friday, and I have an errand in Ballard sometime soon, so we'll see.  I also have errands soon that should enable me to see what's happened at University Playground.  But I probably can't stay housed and also be much of a real reporter with my ear to the ground for you, dear Diary; and at some point, my long expectation that I'd be done writing you may well come true.

Hikes 8D, 9A and 10: Green Lake and Woodland Parks

Dear Diary,

On the evening of January 19 I went from Ballard back to Woodland and Green Lake Parks to try to figure out their restroom schedules.  This turned out to be my last attempt in January, although I not only went back to these parks on January 21, but spent the day there.  I should warn you up front that I took no photos.  The previous relevant page on March 27, "Hikes 0 to 7", has pointers to maps, one of which is also below.  As usual, I'm ignoring Woodland Park Zoo, which has the only restrooms on its block, and confining my attention to the block the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation somewhat inaccurately calls "Lower Woodland Park".

Each park has five pairs of restrooms.  I started (hike 8D) at the southeast corner of (in this case actually lower) Woodland Park, with the restrooms in the Citywide Athletic Building that open to the outdoors.  These, whose nickname at the parks department is "Rio", had been closed due to vandalism, and on January 19 at 6:50 P.M. I found them still so closed, and didn't return that night.

North of there are restrooms in the building at the middle of the four "cloverleaf" (Leo Lassen) baseball fields.  These restrooms aren't normally open in winter, and their hours were indicated as "dawn to dusk", as at Jackson Park.  Sure enough, they were closed at 6:58 P.M.  (Remember, this was January.)  Again, I didn't come back that night.

I then went uphill to the restroom building at the main entrance to the northwest of (so-called lower) Woodland Park.  This building is painted pink, and is nicknamed the "Pink Palace".  Its restrooms were open at 7:13 P.M.; I found the men's room out of soap.

North of there are lawn bowling greens, with the "lawn bowling" restrooms amid them.  (The map I was checking has changed the nickname to "bowling green", but I don't think that had happened by January.)  These restrooms also normally aren't open in winter, and I suspected they were closed at dusk, like the "cloverleaf" pair.  At any rate I found them closed at 7:18 P.M.

Then I went back to the "Pink Palace" and well south from it, to the (rather lower) southeast of the block, and the "50th St" restrooms.  These were open at 7:35 P.M.

Returning to the "Pink Palace" again, I went downhill to Green Lake Park's southernmost restrooms, in one of the buildings of the Small Craft Center there, nicknamed "Shellhouse".  These I found open at 7:56 P.M.

I then walked in the currently approved counter-clockwise direction to the restrooms near N 64th St, nicknamed "65th St".  These were open at 8:09 P.M.

The Green Lake Community Center's outdoor-facing restrooms were open at 8:22 P.M.  Unlike my nightmare experience of January 11, this time the cold water was running.

The park's northernmost restrooms, near the Wallingford Ave N exit, are nicknamed "wading pool".  They were open at 8:39 P.M.

I got to the last pair, the outdoor-facing restrooms of the Bathhouse Theater, just in time to see the Phoenix Patrol guy lock the men's room's door at 8:44 P.M.  I talked with him for a little while, then he locked the women's room at 8:51 P.M.

What he'd told me was that they'd been hired to lock the Green Lake Park restrooms that were getting locked, which were, according to him, the "Bath House", "Community Center", and "Shellhouse" pairs.

However, it wasn't quite that simple.  I'm not sure what I actually did between 9 P.M. and 3:45 A.M. - probably found someplace to sleep and slept, which is why from here it's hike 9A - but at 3:55 A.M. I returned to the "wading pool" pair and found the men's room audibly occupied, but locked.  The women's room was open.

Rebelliously, I went clockwise from there.  The "Community Center" and "Shellhouse" pairs were indeed locked, at 4:13 and 4:54 A.M. respectively, the "65th St" pair open at 4:36 A.M.  In Woodland Park I found everything the same:  "Pink Palace" and "50th St" open at 5:06 and 5:23 A.M., "lawn bowling" closed at 5:11 A.M.

As far as I was concerned, everything was settled except the question of when the "lawn bowling" restrooms were locked.  So my mission on January 21 (hike 10), after verifying that all the restrooms were open that day, was to settle that question, but in order to have something to do while I waited for sunset, I tackled an unrelated question that had been on my mind since an unsuccessful attempt to escape Green Lake Park had destroyed my previous shopping cart.  The standard map of that park - ah, heck, I should at least try to post one photo from my laptop, so here goes:

Well, it shows the park bristling with exits.  Not just because of the cart's death, but because of my subsequent troubles in a torrential rain (relevant previous pages:  February 7 and 16, "Escaping Green Lake Park"), I strongly doubted this.  So I decided to investigate.  More specifically, I wanted to find all the exits from the paved trail around the lake (hereafter "circum-lake trail"), especially paved ones.  This time I went counter-clockwise.

I started with the exit I was supposed to take the previous time, which is paved, and leads to Aurora Ave N and N 68th St.

After this there's a paved exit to West Green Lake Way N, and then at least seven exits - it's pretty much all paved and usable as exits - around the Small Craft Center, also leading to West Green Lake Way.  By this point we're far south, south of N 60th St.  Now, naively, I would think this cluster of exits suggests that not only pedestrians, but people with wheels, can safely leave the park via West Green Lake Way, but I'd found that to be untrue.

Anyway, from there it's another long hike to the exit that leads to East Green Lake Way N and N 64th St.  There's no paved path from the circum-lake trail.

The next exit starts from at least three places along the trail, but only one is paved; they all lead to Sunnyside Ave N and East Green Lake Way N.  Note that here we're about as far north as 68th again.

Past the baseball fields, the next exit, paved, leads to the intersection of NE 71st St, NE Ravenna Boulevard, and East Green Lake, which changes at that intersection from a Way N to a Drive N.

Past the basketball courts and the Community Center, there are hundreds of paved paths going hither and yon, but all those safe for non-drivers exit the park either to Ravenna Boulevard and 71st, or to Latona Ave NE and East Green Lake Drive N, which is about as far north as NE 73rd St.

There are several inconspicuous and probably unofficial trails leading from the circum-lake trail to Sunnyside Ave N and East Green Lake Drive N.

After the building at 7701 East Green Lake Drive N, there's a paved path from the trail to the first of two exits that go to East Green Lake Drive N and N 77th St.  This one goes to 77th eastbound.

Four paths, two paved, lead from the circum-lake trail to Wallingford Ave N and East Green Lake Drive N.  This is the exit counter-clockwise to the "wading pool" restrooms.

A paved path leads to an exit at East Green Lake Drive N and N 77th St westbound, near Winona Ave N.

Several paths, one paved, lead to an exit on West Green Lake Drive N between N 76th St and Stone Ave N.

A paved path opposite the Bathhouse Theater leads to a parking lot whose exits are on either side of Stone Ave N at West Green Lake Drive N.  A path I described in my notes as "mostly paved" exits a few feet further west.

And there's an unpaved path from the trail to Aurora Ave N and West Green Lake Drive N, not far from N 72nd St.

As you might have guessed, dear Diary, this took me quite a while.  Sunset that day was officially at 6:10 P.M., and I did get back to the "lawn bowling" restrooms by 6:08, but they were already locked.

I took one more observation of restrooms in these parks in January.  On January 26 I tried to check into the Travelodge at N 85th St and Aurora Ave N again, only to be refused because I'd left the room, on my previous stay there, so smelly it had needed a week's airing.  If you ever get any homeless readers, dear Diary, they should know that this can be an issue.  Anyway, on my way back to campus, I checked the "50th St" restrooms, which had usually been open all night, and found them both locked sometime around 10 P.M.

The next part of the story is my return to Ballard, and I think I'll have to tell yiou about that tomorrow, dear Diary.  Good night!

Hikes 0 to 7: All Night Long

Dear Diary,

This page's title isn't entirely true.  I didn't reach View Ridge Playfield on hike 1, although I'd tried.  I made no attempt to visit any park I suspected of having 24-hour restrooms on hike 6.  But all the rest, yes.  To a first approximation, my life in mid-January revolved around learning the hours of the restrooms in Green Lake and Woodland Parks, in particular.

Hike 0, January 1

View Ridge Playfield's restrooms were open around midnight.  Photos in "Hike 2A" January 8.

Hike 2, January 6

I visited View Ridge Playfield by day.  Lots of photos in the page already mentioned.

Hike 3, January 9

I spent much of the day in Woodland and Green Lake Parks, as detailed January 24 in "Hike 3A" and January 25 in "3B" respectively.  Then I visited the Greenwood parks (Hike 3C, January 25) before going up to Bitter Lake Playfield (whose restrooms were reputedly 24 hours last summer; hike 3D, March 14).  Then headed back to Green Lake Park, in a hurry to find an open restroom.  I meant to visit all that park's and Woodland Park's restrooms that night but got too sleepy.

It may be helpful in reading this page to refer to these maps.  Green Lake Park:

"Shellhouse" is the Small Craft Center.  "65th St" is near that bend in the shore most of the way from the Small Craft Center to the Community Center.  "Wading pool" is at the north end; "Community Center" and "Bathhouse" are as mapped.

For Woodland Park, I can't find maps showing the lower, eastern, restrooms, which are "Rio" in the Citywide Athletics building near N 52nd St, and "Cloverleaf" north of there in the middle of the four Leo Lassen Fields, the cloverleaf, near N Clogston Way.  For the western part of Lower Woodland Park, see this PDF map for "50th St".  For "Pink Palace" see this other PDF map; that map unaccountably omits the "lawn bowling" restrooms, but they're where all the other lawn bowling stuff is.

Hike 4, January 10

I woke up around 4:30 A.M. and toured the restrooms between 5 and 7 A.M.  The earlier results, for Green Lake Park, probably represent actual night status, but the Woodland Park results got closer and closer to regular opening times.  Anyway, the "wading pool" and "Bathhouse" restrooms in Green Lake Park were closed, as were the "lawn bowling" ones in Woodland Park.  The "Shellhouse" and "65th St" restrooms in Green Lake Park, and "Pink Palace" and "50th St" (last check, practically at 7 A.M.) in Woodland Park, were open.  The doors of the Green Lake Community Center's restrooms were flung open too.  I didn't check "Rio" or "Cloverleaf".

My paper notes on this and the next are retrospective because it was raining.  After that, they're contemporary, from my phone.

I'd told Rachel Schulkin of the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation that I'd be there around then, and the theatrically open doors at the Community Center gave me the suspicion, probably made more plausible by my lack of sleep, that all the open doors I'd seen were a show for my benefit.  This is one reason I visited those two parks repeatedly.

Another is that I didn't believe the schedules offered by the map I was checking.  One pair of restrooms in Green Lake Park was supposed to be 24 hours; three were supposed to close at 7 P.M.; and one, the "wading pool" ones, was supposed to close at 8:30 P.M.  At Woodland Park, "Rio" and "lawn bowling" were supposed to be closed, "Pink Palace" and "50th St" to close at 7 P.M., and "Cloverleaf" to close at dusk.  So whoever closed each park would have to visit twice.  This made no sense to me.

But it was morning, too late to work on these things for hours to come, so I set off on the hikes recounted in "Escaping Green Lake Park", part I, February 7, "Hike 4B" February 8, and "Escaping Carkeek Park" and "Hike 5A" February 13.  Note that the night I spent in Carkeek Park January 10-11, between hikes 4 and 5, gave me the idea that Carkeek Park's restrooms were 24 hours.

Hike 5, January 11

I already told you the story of this night, dear Diary, February 16 in "Escaping Green Lake Park", part II.  Remember that the Community Center's restrooms, with those invitingly wide-open doors, turned out not to have running water that night.

Elsewhere, between roughly 10 P.M. and midnight, "65th St", "lawn bowling", and "50th St" were open, "Cloverleaf", "Bathhouse" and "Shellhouse" were closed, and "Pink Palace" had one restroom each open and closed.  I didn't find the "wading pool" restrooms and didn't try to visit "Rio".

After this came the motel stay ("Fear of Rain" February 17 and "How to Lie to the Homeless", part I, February 18) and hike 6 ("Hikes 3C and 6A", January 25, and "Hikes 3D and 6B" and "Hike 6C", both March 14).

Hike 7, January 17

I arrived in Woodland Park around 5 P.M. and stayed over six hours.

"Rio", which had been posted as closed due to vandalism, was indeed closed at 5:05 P.M.  "Cloverleaf" restrooms were closed at 5:10.  Remember that those were (still are) presented as open dawn to dusk; sunset that day was at 4:48 P.M.  In Green Lake Park, "Shellhouse" restrooms were open at 5:22, "65th St" at 5:38, Community Center, with cold water running, at 5:49, "wading pool" at 6:03.  I didn't note my arrival at the "Bathhouse" restrooms, but meant to stay until they were closed, because they were the only ones in that park I was confident would be closed.

This turned into a three hour wait.  Finally at 9 P.M. drove up, not a parks department staffer, but a man from the private security firm Phoenix Patrol.  I'd only encountered this company in one place before, also a park; each of the few times I slept at Laurelhurst Playfield, a Phoenix Patrol staffer had driven up in the wee hours, unlocked both the single-user stalls, verified they were unoccupied, sometimes used one, locked them again, and drove off.  This exercise in security theatre hadn't much impressed me, but at Green Lake apparently they'd graduated from checking on the maintenance workers to replacing them.

I waited over half an hour more to give the guy time to finish, then went back through Green Lake Park, and on to upper Lower Woodland Park.  The "wading pool" restrooms were open at 10:00 P.M., "Community Center" closed at 10:18, "65th St" open at 10:31.  Then I got worried about having my phone visible.  The "Shellhouse" rooms were closed, sometime before 10:56.  "Pink Palace" was open close to 11 P.M., "lawn bowling" closed at 11:06, and "50th St" open at around 11:15.

From there I went "home" at least as far as the UW campus, maybe even to my formerly usual Laurelhurst doorway.  I think this page has already gotten long enough, dear Diary, and I'll have to tell you the rest of the story in later pages.  Good night!

Escaping Carkeek Park

Dear Diary,

As I told you in the last page, I was pushing a brand-new cart to Carkeek Park in the late afternoon of January 10, hoping to wait out several days of forecast rain at that park's shelter 2.

There are several ways to approach Carkeek Park.  For example, the trail I mentioned, in "The Ballard Seacoast", part II, July 1, from which I'd hoped to see where the beach ends, well, that trail itself ends in what seems to be someone's back yard.  But there are three more reasonable ways to get there, which can be summarised as NW 117th St, NW 110th St, and the Eddie McAbee Entrance, which starts from NW 100th Place.  That day, I took 110th.  Now, I should explain that 110th St, which turns into Carkeek Park Drive along the way, has a shoulder on its sometimes southern side.  This shoulder normally is separated from the street by a bump, and is normally enough inches wide that a small person like me could walk safely on it if a) it weren't sloped and covered in wet leaves, and b) that small person weren't pushing a wheeled cart.  So I walked in the street.

117th St, by the way, as I found Wednesday (February 10) when I went to take this page's photos, offers much wider shoulders, usually over a foot wide, which however are usually grassy, making them nearly as useless for anyone with a baby carriage, wheelchair or cart.  Walkers without wheels should certainly prefer it.

(There are buses that go to "Carkeek Park".  This turns out to mean that the 28 goes to the Eddie McAbee Entrance, more or less, while the 5 goes to Greenwood Ave N at N 110th or 117th Streets.  No buses actually reach the park's main entrance, let alone enter.)

They say the position of women in early Islam was much, much better than in Arab societies prior to Muhammad.  Similarly, the position of pedestrians in Carkeek Park is much better than our position in the surrounding neighbourhood, and similarly, that's damning with faint praise.

I've referred to Carkeek Park, besides "The Ballard Seacoast", November 2 in "Blue Ridge, Land of Mystery", and November 24 in "Standing Room Only", part V, which in particular introduced shelter 2.  But I don't think I've explained about its roads before.  Carkeek Park Drive continues into the park a ways, and then splits.  The westbound northern lane goes up a hill and down again to reach the part of the park with the restrooms, shelters, water fountain, playground, and stairway to the beach.  Then there's a turnaround, and it loops back, passing north of the vast greenswards I've mentioned and finally turning into the eastbound southern lane.

Anyway, up to the split, Carkeek Park cares enough about pedestrians to offer a real sidewalk:

Even after the split, there's a gravel path, south of the westbound lane just as the sidewalk is south of the combined road:

This gravel path ends within sight of shelter 2, crossing north of the westbound lane and acquiring pavement in the process.  Now, you understand, dear Diary, that on the evening of January 10 I didn't actually push my cart along the gravel path, but in the road.  I don't remember whether I took the direct, paved, route or stuck to the road until things were clearer.

Anyway, I spent the night there in shelter 2, safe from the rain, using the lantern I'd recently been given (as mentioned two pages ago in "Escaping Green Lake Park", part I) to read until bedtime.  Comfortingly, the restrooms were open all night, just as they had been in October when I'd last visited.  

You may remember, dear Diary, that the official explanation for such unannounced 24-hour restrooms is that when a road is closed, it's both difficult and unnecessary to lock and unlock the restrooms it leads to.  I think Carkeek Park Drive was still closed January 10, but it definitely wasn't on Wednesday, so maybe those restrooms are no longer 24 hours.

Well, in the morning I ran low on food and water.  Conveniently, a break came in the rain; inconveniently, that brought company.  A couple, rather older than me, came in and sat at another of the shelter's picnic tables.  The man used this rest to unmask and smoke, except that he spent most of the time coughing rather than smoking.  This made staying even less appetizing, so after they left, I packed up and did the same.

The paved path past the shelter runs past shelter 1, part of the playground, and the restrooms, and becomes a sidewalk.  It's paved right up to the path to the beach stairs, on the other side of which it turns into gravel again:

So there's a paved sidewalk south of the combined road, a gravel path south of the westbound lane, a paved sidewalk west of the turnaround, and now a gravel path south of the eastbound lane.  Makes perfect sense, right?  For some reason, though, I actually decided to take that gravel path instead of sticking to the street as I normally would.

Then I reached the first greensward:

Yes, that's right, the path separates from the street.  That enables a long series of small parking lots to be strung along between the eastbound lane and the greenswards.  Necessarily, then, given the blockish way this park is designed, the path has to go all the way south of the greenswards, on the opposite side from the parking lots and the road:

Somewhere along here, the rain resumed.  And that's when I made the critical decision, the decision that shaped the next few days of my life but also that showed me thinking like a housed, rather than a homeless, person:  I kept going.  I needed water (that I could've gotten from the restroom sink) and food (was I really that low?).

This was a cruel thing to do to brand-new cart wheels, although I should clarify that the path I was on was really more a dirt path stiffened by fine gravel than the kind of thing one thinks of as a gravel path:

Those wheels would get revenge soon enough.

My decision became firmer when I looked up and to the right at a spectacularly bad time:

I'd had no idea I'd been so deep in a valley, and resolved not to return to it.

At the time I was in no position to appreciate the excellent views of Piper's Creek on offer:

Toward the end of the trip, I saw something astonishing, that my month-later photo probably hasn't well captured, an illustration of why I wrote of Blue Ridge that it's "not actually vertical":

And you've probably now figured it out, dear Diary, as had I.  Yes, I'd taken the Eddie McAbee Exit.

Once I realised that this story was worth telling, I also concluded that this whole mess is designed to get pedestrians to leave via 100th, regardless of our wishes in the matter.  This is not quite fair.  Once one is on the pseudo-sidewalk / Eddie McAbee whatever, one gets at least three opportunities to return to Carkeek Park Drive.  One just has to know the park well enough to recognise them.  (And, yes, get over the foolish tendency to trust sidewalks.)

There's one real consolation:  Sooner than later, there'll be a do-over.  Much of Carkeek Park Drive, within the park, is in terrible shape:

If people who think parks should not require visitors to arrive in cars are awake when Carkeek Park Drive needs resurfacing, perhaps something will improve.

Good night, dear Diary.

Hike 2A: Mid-Northeast, part II

Dear Diary,

The Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation home page at the very hour I started this page lead off with "Space Available in School Aged Childcare Program".  Clicking on that leads in turn to a page that says "Wedgwood School Aged Care 2020-2021" happens at "Ravenna-Eckstein Cmty Ctr".

So on Wednesday morning, without even stopping to buy groceries and draw water, north I went again to

Ravenna-Eckstein Community Center and Park

Another version of the postcard shot:

Notice the dark windows.  No, dear Diary, that isn't some weird photographic effect.  At 8:47 A.M. on a Wednesday, this ostensible child care site was a closed building.

I thought I should rule out the possibility that the kids were outside, so I went around back to the park.  Now, this was the day after I'd told you, dear Diary, in "What's in a Name?", that I ought to pay more attention to parks' sporting aspects.  So when I saw this:

well, I just had to tell you about it.  See, I don't know anything about dimensions, but I do know that that's a proper set of lines for a basketball court.

Anyway, weirdly, considering the hour, not only were there no child care classes at the playgrounds, there were no kids at all:

It turns out that one more click leads to the information that the Ravenna-Eckstein Community Center's child care is actually offered at "Wedgwood Elemenarty School".  So kids whose schools are closed due to COVID-19 are instead attending child care - at school?

I forgot to do the introduction thing in the previous page.  Although, according to my notes, I mentioned Ravenna-Eckstein Park in "Go North, Aging Man!" May 6, it wasn't until October 3, in "Water Fountains - An Interim Report", part II, that I said anything much.  The previous page and this still don't add up to what I think of as "doing justice" to this small but surprisingly complex space, and I'll have to think about that.

View Ridge Playfield

One reason I had to put these parks early in the hikes is that I'd already started with this one.  Late on New Year's Day my stomach got a bit queasy, no, not that, but suggesting I might not get much warning of Number Two, so I decided not to take chances, and to head for the 24 hour restroom.  To my great relief it came through:

As this story suggests, I've paid considerably more attention to View Ridge Playfield than to the other two parks these pages concern.  Still more so because these are the nearest park restrooms to the Seattle Public Library's Northeast branch, where I usually went for Wi-Fi - among other things, to write you, dear Diary - in the months I lacked University Wi-Fi.

So this is another park introduced May 6 in "Go North, Aging Man!" without photos, but already June 4 in "Home Dry Home" I included a landscape shot, and then June 12 "A Night View of View Ridge Playfield, and a Name".  After that, October 2 "A Thank You", October 3 "Water Fountains - An Interim Report", part II, and November 23 "Standing Room Only", part III.

But none of these really conveyed all that much about the place - the night view basically showed what I can also attest from later experience, that at night in that park one can't see much.  On Wednesday, fired up with my newfound zeal for parks' athletic sides, I vowed to Do Better.

But first things first:

All as expected.  That is the best side of this building, by the way, not because of anything visible now, but because of the chalk art the kids will put onto the pavement in front come summer.  Last summer I spent perhaps an hour total watching the slow decay of the beauty of one exceptional drawing.

Next I looked at my notes from "What's in a Name?"  Apparently View Ridge claims baseball, soccer and basketball.  Baseball:

This is pretty much the norm in the grass baseball fields:  sand infields, grass outfields, and way off at the opposite corner another diamond.  I don't remember whether we did these things that way in Milwaukee in the 1970s.  The infields have a degree of sameishness that strongly suggests common origins, possibly thanks to the local Little League.  Notice also, dear Diary, the partly sheltered benches in the dugouts.

As for soccer?  That usually means a pair of white, very sameish, ahem, movable goalposts:

But View Ridge is a little different here:

Basketball means a half court:

I was fortunate in the arrival, before I could take that shot, of the parks employee mentioned several times in "My Book of Hours".  He pointed out that thanks to the cancellation of team sports, the fields hadn't been re-seeded or groomed, and none of "the soccer things" were out.  He also said View Ridge's field was one of the best, because it had its original soil, not the sandy stuff Parks puts down elsewhere.  Finally, he told me View Ridge's restrooms had actually been 24 hours for years.

Anyway, as for non-athletic signs of uniqueness?  The view hill across the street isn't really part of the park.  I remembered liking the trees one sees from there, but not so much by day.  But that gave me a hint.  I don't know whether it's just familiarity at work, or something real, but I do like the arrangement of the trees in the southern, non-field, side of the park.

Well, I doubt that shot makes my point, dear Diary, but in any event such bucolic things must now pause, because the next three pages concern Magnuson Park.

Standing Room Only, Part IV: Woodland Park

Dear Diary,

Well, that turned out to be more than a few hours, didn't it?  Sigh.  Anyway.  This page is about the seven rentable picnic shelters of Woodland Park, which are in the western half of the eastern block of that park, the block called by the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation Lower Woodland Park.

These shelters are in woodlands, rolling in the north, flatter in the south, and those hills, plains and valleys were, when I visited in early October, crowded with tents.  You may remember, dear Diary, that in the two pages titled "South of North Once More", a geological age or so ago, I expressed surprise that pretty well all the homeless people I'd seen in Green Lake Park, both tent campers and shocked-looking men I interpreted as newly homeless, in early June, were gone in early October.  What I didn't say then was that the homeless population in Woodland Park, specifically the west and especially the northwest of Lower Woodland, had grown exponentially.  I have good reason to believe that the main attraction is electricity, piped by a vast network of extension cords from the shelters that have it.  Shelter sink water may matter, too, not so much as a bonus, but making up for Woodland Park's desperate shortage of working water fountains.

This changed my approach to photography.  Surely you remember, dear Diary, that I prefer to show you only pictures that include no other people, and also no homeless people's tents.  I couldn't photograph most of these shelters without breaking both of these rules.  What I eventually settled on was that I could break them only from a distance.  You'll see what that means.

I'll cover these shelters from north to south.  I found basically three models for these shelters.  Some appear to be inhabited.  Some appear to be kept clear of residents, instead shared as a sort of kitchen among those living in nearby tents.  And I found one, with neither sink nor electrical outlet, empty.

Shelter 6

This is a very large shelter way up at the park's north end, and the department's price to rent it reflects that, $310 per day.  It's closest to the northernmost restrooms, and the lawn bowling greens those restrooms serve.  My understanding is that those restrooms are seasonal, and may by now have closed; however, the restrooms of the Small Craft Center in Green Lake Park aren't far.  The only working water fountain in the upper, western half of Lower Woodland Park is right outside this shelter's door, but of course I don't know whether it's still running.

It was, on October 7, much the most homelike of the shelters.  It was crowded with furniture and fabric, most of its unwalled sides blocked, but all in a reasonably consistent and uncluttered way.  I was totally unsurprised that the person who greeted me was a woman.  I certainly didn't ask her whether she hogged the shelter's amenities, whatever they were, or supervised their sharing among the nearby residents, but those struck me as the possibilities.

In this photo, the shelter is not the white structure at mid-right, but the brown one, obscured by trees, just above the picture's centre.  (The white structure, roofless, is useless as shelter.)

I observed signs of trash piling up along the way to this shelter, and I was surprised.  This is also the area where I specifically remember seeing messy tents such as I imagine refugees from Licton Springs would have.  They were, in early October, a small minority.

Shelter 5

I'm pretty sure this was, at that time, a shared kitchen; on the evening of October 7 I chatted a bit with people using it until an exceptionally territorial dog came after me, but don't remember getting to any of my questions.  It's the most obvious shelter from the main entrance to the area where shelters 4-7 are, what I've called the "hilltop".  Which means, of course, that the closest restrooms are those I've called by that name, and they're year-round.  (In last year's list of such restrooms, they were called "Pink Palace".)  They were also, like Carkeek Park's restrooms, open 24 hours while the driveway gates were shut.  The department rents this shelter for $160 per day in normal years.

Shelter 4

I didn't find this shelter, or any further south, in the gathering dark October 7, and didn't encounter any residents October 8, also true the rest of the way.  This one appeared to be another shared kitchen.  Again, the closest restrooms are the "Pink Palace" hilltop ones; as for water, we're far enough south now that I'm not sure which of the Small Craft Center, shelter 6, or the cloverleaf baseball fields downhill, would be the best choice.  The rent here is just $135 per day.

This is where I photographed something I'd observed also at shelter 6:  piled up trash.  I had then recently posted lots of photos of trash neglected at Cal Anderson Park.  In the coming days I'd see more examples at Licton Springs Park and at Bitter Lake Playfield, the latter corroborated by a resident.  It's a relief to know that our wise and forethoughtful mayor has asked that the relevant program's budget increase next year.

Shelter 7

This is the empty and amenity-free shelter.  It's the furthest from the road of these four, and has much more seating than shelters 4 or 5; that seems to be a criterion for price, which here is $185 per day.  So in the extremely improbable case that a homeless person looking for a place to sit by day were somewhere near this shelter, it might be a reasonable place to try.  Of course, in the intervening month and a half, it could have passed into some sort of use.

These four shelters are those of northwest Lower Woodland Park, and are easiest reached from West Green Lake Way.  A gravel path connects the area with that where shelters 1-3 are, but the usual entrance for those southwestern shelters is off 50th St onto a loop called Woodland Ave.  Shelters 2 and 3 are on the more obvious branch of that loop, from which I didn't see shelter 1 at all; shelter 1's branch of the loop is east of there.

The parks department rents each of the three out, in normal years, for $135 per day.  All three are nearest the southwestern restrooms, year-round ("50th St" in last year's list) and 24-hour this past summer while the gates were closed.

Shelter 2

My first reaction to this shelter's layout was that it was clearly one person's place, but now I'm not so sure; judge for yourself.

(Note the absence of bed and bedding, in particular; also the desk is too bare to bother setting up unless it were to be shared, maybe.)

Shelter 1

This time I wasn't any more sure then than I am now.

My guess was, shared; but I didn't rule out a single occupant, and am not now sure it wasn't vacant.  This is the most isolated of the southwestern shelters, as 7 is of the northwestern.

Shelter 3

I found this, um, shared, but not the way shelters 4 and 5 are.

In case you can't see the photo clearly, two tents occupy most of the shelter's area.

Which is a selfishly dispiriting end to this tour, isn't it, dear Diary?  I'm sorry.  For what it's worth, near as I can tell, none of the remaining shelters of North Seattle, covered in the next and final page of this set, were inhabited, when I visited, by people either communal-minded or selfish.