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 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. 

Bitter Lake Reservoir Park Yesterday and Froula Park Today

Dear Diary,

Yesterday and today I hiked mostly for another set of pages I hope to write in you this month, but yesterday I also took the opportunity to visit a couple of isolated parks with plumbing, and both days I visited parks that are on reservoir grounds but, mysteriously, don't have plumbing of their own.

I told you, dear Diary, that I didn't expect the remainder of the hikes to paint as rosy a baseline picture as the first hike, through most of the NW parks, had.  I just hadn't expected things to go downhill quite so fast.  In the two parks I visited yesterday, I found two closed restrooms and one missing water fountain.  However, one water fountain I hadn't found working in the past is now working.  Still, it's a problem that isolated parks in northernmost Seattle offer even fewer restrooms than the tiny numbers the City of Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation has put there in the past.

Bitter Lake Playfield

Unlike Ballard Playground and Loyal Heights Playfield, whose restrooms are built into the Community Centers those parks contain, at Bitter Lake Playfield, there's a separate restroom building.  I've been told in the past that these restrooms were open 24 hours, presumably because they're so far from other parks with restrooms, and thus inconvenient to service.  (What I've seen with my own eyes is that they stayed open quite late, but I've yet to incorporate this park into any of my "all night long" hikes to really verify.)  However, in the past, they weren't open all year.

Last year, I visited those restrooms in early March, and they weren't open yet.  I complained because there was supposed to be a project to replace those restrooms (though not in such a way that the new ones could stay open all year), and it hadn't happened yet.

So of course this year I visited just about ready to explode, and I'm complaining because the project isn't done yet, and I had to use the "sanican"s instead.

To be fair, because the water fountain was running, I was able to use the soap from the hand-washing machine and the water from the water fountain to wash my hands, in much the same way as I'd described in "Hygiene Is a Luxury I Can't Afford", also about this park, nearly four years ago, but with far fewer mishaps this time.  Yes, in the ideal world the hand-washing machine would also provide water, but one can't have everything.

In any event, the parks department currently says "SPR anticipates the restroom and remainder of electrical work for the tennis court lights to be completed by mid-July", but, well, that didn't happen:

So I wondered if the department were simply running out the clock until the restrooms would have to close anyway.  Again in the ideal world, since we were told that the parks department was making a financial plan to enable all its restrooms to be open year-round, the delay could be while the contractor tries to figure out a way to fit heat into whatever space is available.  But in this real world, I doubt that's actually what's going on.

In any event, there's a water fountain missing.  It used to be roughly here:

adjacent to the then-playground area.  Maybe I missed it - the new playground area was in use the whole time, and I didn't want to intrude.  There are several photographs of it at the Google Drive folder, which also includes all the above photos; it has a round bowl, unlike the square-bowled double fountain that's definitely still there and that helped me wash my hands.

Carkeek Park

I was much less desperate when I visited Carkeek Park, which is fortunate because it's much further from the street grid than Bitter Lake Playfield is.  I found all its water fountains running.  Even the archaic stone-clad one at the Environmental Learning Center, which I've never found running before, now gives super-abundant water:

I didn't try to use that arching stream, but did fill my bottle from both of the others.  The one in the playground area gave fairly brownish-tinted water, which I threw away and replaced with water from the fountain in the Eddie McAbee entrance area, which was still mildly tinted but proved drinkable.

So that's the good news.  The bad news is that when Carkeek Park was planned, it was planned for two restroom pairs, but for one of those two to have doors that opened indoors.  As happens to all park buildings given enough time, the buildings those restrooms were in have closed to the public, and so Carkeek Park is left with only one restroom pair.  Last winter I celebrated because a building had re-opened to the public, but it turns out to have been a temporary expedient while a building in a different park was being renovated.

 "No Public Restroom".  They know what they're doing is wrong, and this is their response?

Dear Diary, does any of your readers think I'm blowing smoke?  The freaking map provided to visitors to Carkeek Park specifically displays a symbol it clearly identifies with restrooms, and displays it in connection with these buildings.

The good news, I suppose, is that they aren't adding insult to injury any more.  In the past there was a "sanican" in that area, but it was locked, because it was being used to store science projects for the school using the buildings.  It's no longer there.  It's pleasant to think that someone got a severe talking-to about the proper use of equipment the City of Seattle pays rent for.

Bitter Lake Reservoir Park

This is a weird park.  It's fundamentally a creation of Seattle Public Utilities, and I've actually spent a fair amount of time trying and failing to find the actual boundary between public and non-public areas there.  So I don't have a clue how big it is, and that's weird.  (For example, I know that Carkeek Park is very much the biggest one-restroom park in north Seattle.)  Also, it has fitness equipment I've never seen used, and a playground I haven't seen much used - quite unlike old or new at Bitter Lake Playfield.

They're aware that that playground isn't popular, and they're planning to renovate it, with a major stage to be reached in, of course, mid-July past, oops.

And yet the park as a whole is so popular that probably the single park photo I've most wanted to show you, dear Diary, but have been unable to, is the photo of its grand entrance from above, because every time I've been there, someone has always been in the frame.  At the moment that viewpoint is even grander, because the rowan trees framing it are in fruit, and while rowan berries are poisonous, they sure are pretty.  Alas, my phone has trouble photographing red, so their beauty is wasted in this substitute photo.

Froula Park

It has come to my attention that I've been misnaming this park.  I like to give parks the best name I can give them.  Most notably, the park the parks department calls "Ross Playground" is "Ross Playfield" on its scoreboard, and "Ross Park" on its park sign.  So I call it Ross Park.  Well, um, on the park sign of the park the parks department calls "Froula Playground", this is what we find:

My apologies.

I've also neglected this park more than I should have.  This time I saw a sign that I didn't remember, and certainly didn't tell you about, dear Diary.

Apparently Roosevelt Reservoir has hidden depths, if you'll pardon the pun, dear Diary.  Why did they feel the need to post that sign, and when did they do so?  Was that restroom ever open?  To whom?

It's hard to imagine Froula anything having mysteries, but it clearly does.

It also has swings.  I found years ago, long before your birth, dear Diary, that I actually still enjoy swinging.  But I got few opportunities to do it at University Playground, then near where I slept, because I was rarely OK with leaving my stuff unattended in order to use the swings, given the kinds of people I usually saw at that park.  Froula Park's swings are all too high off the ground for me to climb into easily, so they aren't really a solution, but I'll keep looking.

All for now, dear Diary.  I hope tomorrow to start writing in you the other series I've been hiking for, but we'll see.  Happy days and nights until we meet again.

My March Hikes

Dear Diary,

This page concerns four hikes I made in March.  The first two started pretty late, so didn't cover many parks.  The fourth was too late to observe the parks in winter, and anyway had to be cut short because I had to make it to an appointment for work.  (Three of my four Wednesdays "off" in the last month of tax season ended up with appointments anyway.)  So only the third was a really useful hike, but I have things to tell you from the others as well.

March 5th

On this day, having started late, I only made it to Jackson Park, Northacres Park and Playfield, Bitter Lake Playfield, and Sandel Playground; the links are to the folders at Google Drive with most of the photos.  I already talked about Sandel.  All the others deserve attention here.

Jackson Park

As usual, this park's water fountains were on:

Northacres Park and Playfield

As usual, this park's specially winter-adapted water fountains:

had been shut down for the winter:

My best guess is that the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation didn't deliberately set out to waste this special quality of these fountains.  Rather, I'm thinking they attached them to a restroom building that at that time was heated, but whose heating since broke down and wasn't fixed.  On the other hand, the recently installed set of similar fountains (without explicit labels) at Cal Anderson Park have been shut down every winter since they appeared, so maybe the parks department actually does buy winter-proof fountains without any intention of using their winter-proof qualities.  I don't know.

Bitter Lake Playfield

There's nothing unusual about Bitter Lake's restrooms as well as water fountains being shut down in winter.

Except that that building wasn't supposed to look like that any more:

Maybe there wasn't a plan to heat the building, but at least the restrooms were going to be de-gendered.  (And presumably lose their urinals.)  What happened?

Several projects have been rescheduled, of course, not just this one.  What confuses me is the question whether there are limits to this rescheduling.  Later in this page I'm showing you some torn-down restroom buildings, dear Diary.  Will those projects be rescheduled before the replacements are put up?

March 12th

That day I had a lot to do other than hike, so the only park I made it to was Salmon Bay Park, for the second time, an hour earlier than the first, as discussed in the first page about this set of hikes.

March 19th

I only reached five parks on my last Sunday off during tax season, but two are kind of large:  Gas Works Park, Wallingford Playfield, Meridian Playground, Woodland Park and Green Lake Park.  Also the street fountain on 45th, which wasn't running.

Gas Works Park

The main decorative motif in the core area of Gas Works Park where the actual gas works are, as well as the restrooms, water fountains, playground and so forth, is currently fences.  The parks department claims that this is because construction on the long-planned renovations in that area has begun:

But it seems to me all that's happened so far is, um, destruction:

So this is one of the projects I'm worried about.

To be fair, the parks department has deployed lots of "sanican"s to the parking lot, as well as at least one hand-washing station.

Woodland Park

The list of restrooms to be open this winter posted by Christina Hirsch in November includes three entries in this park:  "Woodland Park 50th", which is near some of the picnic shelters; "Woodland Park Pink Palace", which is near the rest of the picnic shelters - both in the western part of the non-zoo part of the park (and both of which I did indeed find open).  And "Woodland Park Rio".  That refers to the restrooms whose doors open to the outside in the Citywide Athletics Building, toward the southern end of the park's easternmost part, the athletic fields.  These restrooms:

I'm not clear on why, this past winter, there were restrooms for the people hiking on the west side of the block, but none for the much greater number doing athletic stuff on the east side.  Last time I went these rounds, the restrooms at the centre of the baseball cloverleaf were opened, daylight hours more or less, to substitute for "Rio"'s closure.  This time, I found the building's attached water fountain running, which certainly suggests it has some kind of heat.  But on March 19th, 2023, I didn't find the cloverleaf restrooms open, in full daylight at 3:18 P.M.

As with the restrooms in lower Ravenna Park, these "Rio" rooms have been closed for well over a year now.  The list I'm checking was actively revised; why did the reviser not know about these two closures?

Green Lake Park

Another revision in that list concerned Green Lake Park.  Customarily, the "Bathhouse" restrooms, that is, those with doors opening to the outside at the Bathhouse Theatre building where the Public Theatre presents shows, have been open in winter.  This winter's list omitted them, but in fact they were, as usual, open, at least on March 19th:

Flipside, the list of open restrooms for last winter did include the "Green Lake Shellhouse".  But...

I'm not sure, but I think the building with the restrooms was still standing when I visited.  To be fair, the row of "sanican"s nearby has two hand-washing stations.

Now, Green Lake Park has its own mini-rescheduling situation.  The Community Center was supposed to be renovated.  This resulted in a truly horrifying story I've already told you, dear Diary, or anyway a truly horrifying part of an even more horrifying story, in which I found out the water wasn't running in the men's room only after using the toilet there.  During an atmospheric river.  Let's just say the Community Center's renovations matter to me.  So now, having already inflicted damage preparing for those renovations, they're not doing them after all.  All this I already knew.

But imagine my surprise to find that instead a different set of restrooms at Green Lake Park is fenced away, to be torn down and replaced.  Green Lake Park just can't win for losing, can it?

March 22nd

Before I took any photos that day, I saw a man come out of the restroom in Greenwood Park.  Which is just like the restroom in Little Brook Park, essentially a wooden box, certainly not heated.  So this was proof that the parks department had pivoted back to its regular roster of restrooms to open.

Obstinately, I kept hiking anyway.  Again, I made it to five parks:  Sandel Playground, Greenwood Park, Licton Springs Park, Maple Leaf Reservoir Park, and Waldo J. Dahl Playfield.

Of course, I found four of these parks had open restrooms.  That's what happens outside winter, right?  (Well, except in Ravenna Park, and Gas Works Park, and ...)

And except in Licton Springs Park:

Notice, dear Diary, that this sign doesn't make any promises as to when the actual construction part will happen.

All for now, dear Diary.  What remains for this set of pages is to do some mapping and see if there's anything worth saying about that.  Probably Sunday or Monday.

But I'm currently, as the placeholder with which I started this page indicated, focusing on other areas of my life.  Longer term, I am promised at least eight weeks off work this summer, and intend to spend at least one of them doing something I haven't yet done for you at all, a summer hike of North Seattle.  I also hope to visit a few counties I may write about the rest of this year.

So probably one page early next week, and then maybe none for a while.  Happy days and nights as spring continues, dear Diary!

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.

Bitter Lake Playfield and Licton Springs Park Today - and Tonight

Dear Diary,

Today I had to go to Home Depot to deal with some problems left (I hope) by a departing housemate (the topic of the public good has been on my mind a whole lot lately), and decided to extend the trip to include Bitter Lake Playfield, which isn't especially close to Home Depot, but also isn't especially close to anywhere else I go either, so why not?  While there I tried to talk myself into going to all three of the Greenwood parks with plumbing, but finally settled for going only to the one some of whose plumbing was closed earlier this year.  So that's why those two parks today.

I took the scenic route to Aurora, meaning I went through Woodland Park.  Still no sweep, still no sweep announcements.  I don't get it, but maybe some official drove up to a sign I saw there:

and actually paid attention.  (Maybe the photo isn't as clear as I intended:  someone has added to the base sign "IN THE NAME OF LOVE".)  Or maybe they're waiting for the rain to return, to make the sweep even more cruel.  I don't know.

Anyway, the other two parks present very different (though, underneath, related) pictures, so I should probably separate them, but before I do:  Most of the photos of Bitter Lake, and one of the photos of Licton Springs, are at the Google Drive folders (Bitter Lake, Licton Springs), so are securely dated.

Bitter Lake Playfield

Last time I was at this park, I found a running water fountain near the playground that I hadn't previously noticed.  This was during the second year's part of what I've called the Durkan Drought; near as I can figure, that fountain was replacing fountains at Northacres Park that had been running during the first year's part, but not the second.

I also found what looked like metal thieves' work on one of the two bowls of the water fountain I'd already known about, and concluded that neither bowl was likely to run soon, because I assumed their plumbing must be so linked that one running while the other lacked a spout and piping would produce flooding.

Well, turns out the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation has standardised on a smarter design of water fountain than that.  Look, dear Diary:

This is a good thing, too, because both the non-running bowl of this fountain, and the fountain near the playground, have clogged drains, so their bowls are full.  (The lower of the above shots got my newspaper section wet.)  Here's the playground fountain:

I also found the restrooms open.  Now, they'd been open in spring, so this wasn't a great surprise, but there are some issues about those restrooms.  First, last autumn they weren't open because of construction delays, and I found one of the "sanican" substitutes burnt (or maybe that was winter?), just as I found such a "sanican" substitute burnt at University Playground yesterday.  Second, ever since last summer I've suspected these restrooms of being open 24 hours, on two grounds:  people there at the time said they were, and they were open far too late on that visit to be locked by parks department personnel.  (But locking them could still be left for hired security guys, as at Green Lake Park last winter.)

So I went back to Bitter Lake Playfield tonight.  I wasn't there noticeably later than on my first visit over a year ago, so this still isn't conclusive, but I found them open later than 9 P.M. again.

And yes, I realise those photos don't prove anything here, but they're both at the Google Drive folder, where their times survive uploading.

Anyway, that brings me to the third issue about Bitter Lake Playfield's restrooms.  They'll probably be under construction again next year.  It looks like designs are being finalised for a complete rebuild of the playground and restroom building (that's what the large sign on the women's room gate is about).  The existing building was closed last winter, though for "historic low usage" rather than unreadiness for Seattle's winters, so will probably be closed this winter, and then under construction until that's done.  Which means the next time I can afford to visit the park at 2 A.M. or some other such decisive time is probably going to be too late.

The reason the "sanican" was burnt last autumn or winter, I assume, has to do with the reason "historic low usage" was such a stupid criterion then:  There's been a huge and famous homeless camp at that Playfield throughout the pandemic.  Except that when the parks department began to flex some muscle to get them to move, many moved to the school property next door; and when sweeps of other parks really got going, still more did.  A sweep of Bitter Lake has been long postponed because our wonderful mayor declared that encampments on school property were the exclusive business of the Seattle Public Schools, which neither have staff to deal with this kind of thing at all, nor want to be demonised for sweeps.  Another issue, though, was that the border between the Playfield and the School seems not to have been clear.  That, at least, someone has decided is settled:

And today, for the first time in my experience, all the tents were on the School side of that fence.

But they had left some parting gifts behind on the Playfield side:

This is clearly homeless-encampment trash - it includes several mattress-like items - and it struck me as, on top of the burnt "sanican", more than a little mean-spirited.  The people who will have to clean it up are not the people who make decisions the campers object to, and the decision-makers are unlikely even to notice the .1% increase in parks trash costs that results.

Anyway, Bitter Lake for today represents a very different scenario from Licton Springs, though both sets of restrooms would normally close in November (and for the same reason).

Licton Springs Park

Most of the photos I took of Licton Springs aren't at the Google Drive folder, and that doesn't matter, because my news here is old and, apparently, to everyone but me, unimportant.

The Seattle Fire Department announced on September 4th, on Twitter, a fire under control at Licton Springs Park, in a "cinder block type structure".  Near as I can tell, nobody else, not even some neighbourhood blog, has reported on this fire.

The Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation already knows how to deal with this kind of thing, from years of practice at Magnuson Park:

Unfortunately, here the water fountains, which ran during both phases of the Durkan Drought, are attached to the restroom building, so are inside the fence.

One commenter on Twitter wondered if the fire was started by a "vagrant's campfire".  This would not be an unreasonable thing to wonder, in the abstract, but having seen the results even two months later, I doubt it.  This fire burned hot, and it created a whole lot of ash, which has drifted all over the place.  I think at some level this fire was arson, whether in complaint against the closure of the restrooms, or as a way of preventing future homeless camps there like the slobs whose obnoxiously messy occupation in 2020 (largely on top of federally protected wetlands) was what led the parks department to close the restrooms this spring in the first place.  Arson is traditionally for profit, and I don't see that here, but this fire has in common with arson that - at least in my uninformed opinion - it was planned.

More photos trying, and probably failing, to back these claims up:

At any rate, now I see that University Playground's restrooms still have at least one step to go before demolition:  a fence.

I would not be optimistic about any specific fenced-in restroom, however.  The tower building at Magnuson Park has, after all, been fenced in for five years, and is considerably more urgent, from any sensible parks perspective, to fix, than either Licton Springs's or University's restrooms.  The boarded-up doors at Woodland Park's "Rio" (Citywide Athletic Building) men's room and one of the single-user stalls at Matthews Park probably represent smaller versions of the same 'We might get to it someday, if funds allow' situation.

Some meta notes

I've been finding that photo-heavy Blogspot pages - specifically, yours, dear Diary, and Cliff Mass's weather blog's - are essentially impossible for me to load with all their photos at the same time, at the moment.  This appears not to represent my house's Wi-Fi choking (I get similar results on my phone without Wi-Fi), so I suspect Blogspot itself is unable, at present, to deal properly with blogs like this one.  My apologies to anyone else affected by this.  I still prefer to show you the photos, dear Diary, because I don't have much storage on the phone with which I take them - which has now taken to reminding me, with most shots, that it's taking time to store them - and because I assume sooner or later Blogspot will take care of the problem.

Anyway, I spent so much time today in North Seattle that I can't even finish the other page(s) meant to back up my claims about throwing amenities away, let alone the pages actually explaining those claims, before the election.  At some level, this is right:  your remit, after all, dear Diary, is North Seattle parks, and that other page isn't even about North Seattle.  But I can't actually keep spending entire weekends on you anyway, and you should learn the value of solidarity, so I hope you'll bear with me that this is the second-last "today" post for some time to come.  Until the last, good night and good days, dear Diary.

Anyone who wants references to the events discussed above in the parks mentioned, and is reading on a phone, should please ask his or her browser to behave like a desktop one, and then re-load this page.  Desktop readers get access to "labels", what everyone else in the world calls tags, which enable pulling up other pages with related topics.  I don't have time tonight to do all the links I did with last night's post (for which I'd hoped for far more readers than it looks like it'll get).

On the off chance that anyone reads this page who cares how I plan to vote:  for the big four races that have led The Seattle Times to wax apocalyptic, and have led to so much advertising advocacy, a straight left ticket - I want to see whether the progressive project can succeed under even optimum conditions, before changing my basic allegiance, and also at least two of the progressives' opponents have openly broken laws recently - even though all the opponents, but none of the progressives, have sent me mail; but the remaining races, I now have very little time to decide about.  

Anyway, dear Diary, don't expect such late posts in future:  the troublesome housemate who left was my next door and only real neighbour in this house, but his room won't stay empty forever, and one major reason I'm typing so late is that I also had to do laundry almost so late (it finished before this page!), after that second visit today to Bitter Lake, and might as well violate quiet time some more, circumstances I'll try not to let happen again.  So again, good night.

Yesterday's Hike in More Detail

Dear Diary,

As I told you last night, I visited thirteen parks yesterday, hiking from about 8:30 A.M. to about 7:30 P.M. to do it.  I can't do that every day, if only because then I'd never be able to tell you about it at all.  So today I'm writing in you instead of hiking.

This hike covered everything left west of I-5 except for five NW sites:  Ballard Commons, Ballard Community Center and Playground, Loyal Heights Community Center and Playfield, Salmon Bay Park, and Webster Park.  I also tidied up a loose end between I-5 and Lake City Way NE.  There may be a similar loose end west of I-5 among the parks I visited yesterday, but otherwise most of what's left is the entire set of parks east of both I-5 and Lake City Way NE, fifteen parks, including such convenient, easily visited ones as Cedar Park and Magnuson Park.  Oh, well.

I hope to visit all twenty remaining parks - specifically, all restrooms and water fountains in them - before the month is over, but we'll see.  Meanwhile, yesterday, first by function, then by park.

Most of the photos, as for the previous hike, are in a public folder at my Google Drive account, URL:

<https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1cfrNdJI9NVY3ux7OoGI7B8Vg3Klq3liT?usp=sharing>

Most photos in this page aren't in that folder, however.

Restrooms - Closed at Licton Springs Park.  I speculate that this is to discourage the unbelievably messy campers who were there last year from returning.  However, it's also possible that whoever opened restrooms yesterday morning just forgot this park, so I suppose I should go back a couple of times, as I did with Maple Leaf Reservoir Park, which I finally found open yesterday morning.  Otherwise, open; this includes Northacres Park (two pairs of restrooms, which I identify as park and playfield), Bitter Lake Playfield, Carkeek Park, Greenwood Park (only one restroom, and my photo happened to catch a wide beam of light coming in through one of the peepholes), Sandel Playground, Soundview Playfield, and Golden Gardens Park (two pairs of restrooms, which I identify as upper and lower).

For most of the men's or all-gender rooms, I took notes of how many of each major item it had, and tested the sinks and dryers by starting the water running, waving my hand around trying to get the water to splash me, and then drying my hand off (if there was a dryer).  By default, for each park for which I list items, the sink did not splash me, and the dryer, if any, worked.  I note exceptions.

Water fountains - Running at Bitter Lake Playfield (fountain near the playground, which I hadn't noticed before), Licton Springs Park, Greenwood Park, and Crown Hill Park.  Present (including the southern Golden Gardens Park water fountain, which I hadn't seen either in October or in January, and fountains I observed for the first time at Carkeek and Green Lake Parks) but not running at the rest, except for Baker Park on Crown Hill, where I finally found people other than me who attested the absence of the water fountain.

By park:

Maple Leaf Reservoir Park

As noted above, the third try was the charm.  This is the second series of hikes on which I've had trouble with this park's restrooms not being open; so I'm guessing this isn't coincidence, but a park whose restrooms are often forgotten, or opened last and closed first, by door openers.  This park has a free-standing double water fountain, and one of those is one of the fountains for which my photo doesn't include my finger pressing the button.  The men's room has one toilet with a stall door, one urinal, one sink, one dryer, and one soap dispenser.

It appears currently to be illegal to walk 1st Ave NE from 95th St to 103rd St owing to construction on both sides of the street having closed both the sidewalk on one side and the shoulder on the other.  Luckily, no police were around when I did so.

Northacres Park

I started with the playfield side, which one approaches via 3rd Ave NE.  The water fountain there is unusually full of stuff that is unlikely to allow it to function well in whatever far-off day water fountains are allowed to run in North Seattle again:

The playfield side men's room has two toilets without stall doors, a wide urinal that without social distancing would easily fit two men and with difficulty three, one sink with a really wide counter, one dryer and one soap dispenser.  This men's room sink has delivered water under such high pressure that most of it ends up on the user's clothes ever since I first visited this park last May.

The parks department probably refers to the other set of restrooms as "playground" or "pg" (I can't be sure because the map I hiked last January to check still doesn't admit that these are open), but since Northacres's signage refers to "Northacres Park and Playfield", I figure the non-playfield part is simply the "park".  Anyway, these rooms are single-user stalls, and in Seattle parks in general, that means what it means here:  one toilet, one sink, one dryer, one soap dispenser, and no urinals.  I forgot to check the sinks and dryers at this location.

The water fountains here are designed to run all winter, but were shut off last winter.  I've complained about this before, attributing my knowledge to an employee of Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation whom I met at this location last spring.  However, it turns out I had another source of information:

I was told last winter that the department's plumber averred that the department owns no winter-proof water fountains.  So is this water fountain an interloper owned by some nefarious third party, or was he wrong?  Or is he simply helping cover up the extent of the current city government's reluctance to provide water?

From Northacres it's a pretty easy and quick hike across, um, Aurora to the next park.

Bitter Lake Playfield

It seems Bitter Lake Playfield is soon to be blest with its own lack of urinals.  Right now the men's room there has one toilet with a stall door, one urinal, one sink, one dryer and one soap dispenser.  I used the urinal, being unsure what some spots on the toilet's seat were.  However:

Plans are afoot to renovate these restrooms, about a year from now, and turn them into single-user all-gender stalls.  This conversion, seems to me, normally has two effects:  it reduces the total number of stalls available; and it gets rid of urinals.

Perhaps the sight of a urinal is traumatic to some women and/or transgender people.  But the sight of yellow spots on a toilet seat is irksome to a whole lot more women, and some of pretty much every other category of human.  The usual response to this argument seems to be that men should be better than we, in fact, are; in other words, it's wishful thinking, or perhaps punitive thinking - until men are perfect, it's better that everyone suffer.  I have the impression that over the longer term, this conversion is likely to come to many parks, so people in Seattle in general, and in the area around Bitter Lake right now, should assess whether they're OK with this probable result, and if not, speak up.

As for reduction:  Why on Earth, having lived through the current pandemic, would anyone think fewer park restroom stalls is a good idea?  Why hasn't this experience driven a stake through the unbeating heart of this process?  Inquiring minds want to know.

In the meantime, in a photo that is at the Google Drive folder, someone seems, this past winter, to have expressed displeasure at the "sanican"s that alone were available:

PubliCola has just reported on the evil deeds of the terrorist pedophiliac Satanists who camp in this park, which include starting both the COVID-19 epidemic and World War II, and now we can add illegal fires to the long list of their crimes.

I dawdled on the way to the next park to wait for an advertised garage sale to open.  I bought a book there.

Carkeek Park

A few feet to the side of the Environmental Learning Center's "sanican", the one that's now locked each night against intruders (but nobody was keeping watch by day to enforce its notional restriction to certain users) - anyway, a few feet to the side, sits one of the oldest water fountains in North Seattle:

It's similar to one in Woodland Park, the one adjacent to the N 50th St restrooms, and not to anything else in North Seattle.  It looks like it could have been made by the same people who made the shut-down water fountain in Freeway Park that's obviously over a century old.

I'm ashamed that I allowed my aversion to "sanican"s to blind me to this fountain's existence for so long.  To be a little more precise:  I've explored the ELC on, I think, each visit, and can easily imagine that I'd seen the fountain before but not recognised it for what it is.  But in general, once I knew there were no restrooms with doors opening outside in the ELC, it fell off my priority list, and I'm pretty sure at least one or two explorations were by night.  Oops.

Oh, and by the way.  Carkeek Park is by far big enough to have two or even three or four pairs of restrooms.  I presume the reason it doesn't is that the ELC has restrooms.  However, the parks department's web page listing ELCs currently says:  "Though the Environmental Learning Center at Carkeek Park is available for rentals, we regret that because of budget reductions, it is no longer open to the public."  Oops.  Carkeek Park should get more restrooms of its own.

Of course, it does already have restrooms of its own, a mile or so from the ELC.  These are amazingly large, as if quantity could make up for distance.  The men's room has three toilets with doors, an oversized urinal as at Northacres playfield, two sinks, one soap dispenser, and no dryers.  The sinks do not splash clothes.

In order to check the water fountain at the Eddie McAbee Entrance, as well as to go south, I left the park by the Piper's Creek trail, the same one described in "Escaping Carkeek Park".  This is the trail by which I entered it for the second time last spring, and at that time I described, in "The Ballard Seacoast" part II, 

| many deteriorating posts advertising 

| a "story trail" whose text can be found various places, 

| including online.  They date to 2004 and aren't online any 

| more, not even at the Internet Archive.  Maybe a physical 

| copy survives.

Unfortunately, I didn't take, or at least didn't show you, dear Diary, a photo of these posts, and now they're gone; I thought so in January and now am sure.  I did find a couple of signs branded "Salmon Stories", but they aren't new and I saw only two.

However, many posts seem to have held signs of about that size in the past, but to have had them removed, presumably by vandals.  So maybe "Salmon Stories" was some sort of successor to "Story Trail", but it isn't any more, and now "Story Trail" itself has been not only forgotten, but also erased.  Not only does this mean I can't now show you a picture of the posts, dear Diary - and a quick Google Image Search turns up none as well - but I also doubt I still have the URL they used to be at, which was on those posts.

As your next page will make clear, dear Diary, I care about stories, and I care about cultural loss, so this bothers me more than it may bother other people.  Maybe I should go on to the next park, but anyway, I want to register my unhappiness with this decision.  [EDIT 5/23:  No, the next page didn't make that clear; I was in a hurry, and forgot.]

Licton Springs Park

As I said, the trash is gone:

But I assume the restrooms' closure is a lingering effect of that trash and the reprehensible homeless people who left it.  The water fountains are running; I'd set out with two full bottles of water that morning, so as not to have to turn aside to buy water, but by this point in the afternoon had drunk more than one.  So I filled the empty bottle there, and if the water didn't taste great, it was certainly good enough, and I drank most of it before getting home.

Greenwood Park

Restroom open, water fountain running.

Sandel Playground

Restrooms open, water fountain off.

Baker Park on Crown Hill

Last October, I visited this park, unlike most parks without water fountains, because the parks department's web page claims it has one.  I also asked people who were there - young parents - if they knew anything, but they all said they hadn't been visiting the park long enough to be aware of any water fountains.

Well, I tried that again this time, but got the same results.

Finally I plucked up my courage and approached the party in one corner of the park.  They appeared to be a group who knew each other from some combination of school and/or work, probably all in their twenties but probably not early twenties.  Their first reaction was to offer me alcohol (like the mayor!), then they found some fizzy water and offered me that, but several of them were quite definite that they remembered the park's re-opening from renovations last year, and did not remember a water fountain being present then or since.

So it isn't just my imagination.  There really isn't a water fountain at this park, and I'm wondering how long the parks department is going to go on advertising its presence without actually installing the thing.

I stumbled on something odd in the pavement that might be, but probably isn't, the intended hookup; this picture is at the Google Drive folder, being all there was to photograph of the supposed Baker Park on Crown Hill water fountain:

Oh, darn, it isn't even in the pavement.

Crown Hill Park

This park is adjacent to a playground that used to belong to a school.  Now the building in question is a landlord to non-profits, and the playground was inherited by some sort of child care center, which promised to keep the playground open to the public on a similar basis to what the school had offered.  This promise is still not being kept, nearly a year after my first visit:

There were girls' games going on in the ballfields at both this park and Soundview Playfield, but here they had a working water fountain, while there they had restrooms.

Soundview Playfield

Soundview Playfield's restrooms distinctively have no signage at all.  No "men's" or "women's" or even "all-gender".  Just nothing.  The photos at the Google Drive folder, dear Diary, make this clear, since the single-user stalls here are hard to prop open, so I just shot the fact that I could open them enough to stick my newspaper in.

Perhaps the absence of the "all-gender" label is how they get away with having a different suite of features from those at, say, Laurelhurst Community Center, or Northacres Park park-side:  Each stall has one toilet, one urinal, one sink, one or two dryers (the old one in the south-facing stall doesn't work), and one soap dispenser.  It's easy to imagine that this old-looking building was originally meant for male athletes only, and that's why the stalls both have urinals.  But anyway, they show that it's at least physically, if not culturally, possible to put urinals into single-user stalls.  The girls I saw dealing with the south-facing stall did in fact get grossed out, but by a spider, not by the urinal.

The south-facing stall's sink has, as I previously reported, a sink whose water pressure is so strong that way too much of it lands on clothing.  In this case I didn't dodge fast enough, and since I had my vaccination card in my shirt pocket, this was a sub-optimal result; but the card seemed undamaged in the end.  The east-facing stall's sink is just fine.

The water fountain is not on.  Rachel Schulkin, communications manager for the parks department, told me last October that all the water fountains that could be turned on had been.  I hope in general that this isn't true - all those fountains with busted controls - but in this particular case I think it's realistic to hope it isn't true, because the water fountain is near a water play area that isn't on, so it's plausible that they can't turn the one on without the other.

Golden Gardens Park

Was crowded, as usual.  Both pairs of restrooms were open, and I have to revise my previous statement that the beach pair is extra-capacious.  The upper pair, usually referred to in relation to the off-leash area for dogs' people nearby, has a men's room with two toilets that lack stall doors, a wide urinal as at Carkeek and Northacres Parks, a sink, a soap dispenser, and no dryer.  The lower men's room has one toilet with a stall door, two urinals (as opposed to the just-described wide urinals), one sink, one soap dispenser, and one dryer.  There were two men in safety fluorescent vests, parks department employees, in the doorway of the lower women's room when I went to photograph it; one walked away, the other told me yes, they were there to close it, but while I photographed the open doorway he walked away, and I'm not sure when they did get around to actually closing the restrooms.  I saw them later directing traffic; they seemed assigned to the park for the day.

[The above paragraph edited later the same day.  The upper restrooms' toilets don't have stall doors; I'd mis-read my notes.]

The last two times I visited Golden Gardens Park I didn't find the south water fountain.  It is now clear to me that this is because I didn't go far enough south.  More precisely, in October I left via the Burke-Gilman Trail.  The south water fountain is so far south that it's essentially adjacent to the Eddie Vine Boat Ramp; the trail is some distance from it.  And in January I didn't even try; my whole visit to this park was while I waited for a friend to bring a replacement cart, so I rushed.

Like other water fountains I saw on this hike, it's weird.  But that photo (which is at Google Drive) is timed 6:51 P.M.  I noted the time as I passed the open doorways of the upper restrooms:  7:09 P.M.  So I didn't go on to Loyal Heights Playfield.

Green Lake Park

Later that evening I passed a park water fountain where I didn't at all expect one, though many people walk past it every day.  It's at the intersection of East Green Lake Way N and NE 72nd St.  I showed you, dear Diary, a picture of it in the previous page, and my other picture of it (with newspaper) is at Google Drive, so there's no point in reproducing either photo here, but the entire control is gone.  There is something metallic just inside there, seeming loose.  I think it's extremely unlikely that metal thieves came and restrained themselves to only taking the controls, because taking that next piece would just be greedy, so this only strengthens my belief that control damage is usually not done by conscious evildoers, but by parks employees, for reasons I'll discuss in a page a week or two away.

Anyway, that's what I saw in and around Seattle parks yesterday, dear Diary.  I hope still to write one more page in you tonight, and after that we'll see what happens.  Happy hours, or perhaps days...