Another running street fountain

Dear Diary,

Today I went to Cowen Park (whose restrooms are still closed, and whose water fountains, last to be turned on last year, I didn't bother to check today) and to Cal Anderson Park (whose restrooms, such as they are, are still open, and whose main water fountain I drank from at length twice).

I actually e-mailed Rachel Schulkin, communications manager for the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation, about Cowen Park.  I remembered that although they had no shame about telling people there were restrooms where there were only "sanican"s, when I was checking this map last winter they did care when the map's fine print was wrong about restrooms being open, which is the case for Cowen Park.  So I e-mailed her, for the first time since I told you, dear Diary, "How to Lie to the Homeless", but she was out of the office today.

Anyway, after bringing some boxes to my storage and filling several, I walked away with almost the last of my pans (the saucepans, so now I can cook!  After only three months here!  Yay!).  Cal Anderson Park was after that; I took a brief look at the former site of Everyday Music between the two drinks.

And then I walked north on Broadway and found this:

That's the street water fountain on Broadway E just north of E Olive Way.

The one that was turned off last summer at about the same time as the fancy new water fountain was installed at Cal Anderson Park, as if Capitol Hill didn't deserve additional water, just relocated water.  The one some nameless person begged:  "Make it work".  Well, that person finally got their wish.

When will it be North Seattle's turn?  This year, or next?

I promised to do a bunch of stuff in the Google Drive folders today, and am running out of time to do it, so good night, dear Diary.

A Visit to Everyday Music

Dear Diary,

I don't actually know what other left-of-center blogs around Seattle - do you ever talk with them, dear Diary? - are saying about Everyday Music, whose Seattle store closed last weekend, but I doubt it's very complimentary.  The store's owner made it very plain, in words published in news stories and also in the way the store looked to its end, that he vehemently disapproved of the occupation of Cal Anderson Park.

But it's where I acquired most of the albums I've bought in Seattle, and it's where I was hoping to re-build my classical music collection in the years ahead, after most of that collection got sold out from under me where I'd stored it in Milwaukee.

I grew up in Milwaukee, as I think I've told you before, dear Diary, and spent my whole life there until moving to Chicago in 1988, except for two school years in Chicago for college (in the second of which, as I'm sure I've told you, I played ultimate frisbee on the Midway).  In Chicago I built a classical music collection of about 200 albums that had been sold in estate sales to a guy I met who ran a stall in a giant non-charity thrift shop; he sold these LPs for $2 until he made his money back, then the rest for $1.50, and I bought hundreds of those $1.50 albums, mostly classical but also, for example, all my Bonnie Koloc and Jane Olivor albums (so that I still confuse these very different singers), and probably some actual rock (not that much of that was getting into estate sales in the mid-1990s, but those weren't this guy's only source).

Chicago is where I was first homeless, though not on the streets but couch-surfing, and is where I first lived in an SRO.  I left that SRO in 1998 to return to Milwaukee.

I fit in there no more than I ever had (and even moved to Madison for a while, which became the first place I actually did live on the streets), and there were hard feelings over how things following my mother's death were handled, so in 2006 I left Milwaukee for Seattle to take database classes.  I left all my furniture, most of my classical LPs (now augmented by inheriting most of my mother's collection), and a lot of other stuff in a storage unit.

Here I've been poor most of the time; the money from the GoFundMe is the most I've had at once since I came here.  So I didn't actually get to take the classes I'd come here for until getting into an argument with a boss who needed me gave me leverage, and then while I was taking them the Great Recession struck, closing both the employers I'd relied on, leaving me on unemployment until that ran out, and then homeless.  Three and a half years after that, in March 2016, my Milwaukee storage unit was sold, for a bit more than the price of three of those LPs.  I usually refer to this event as a theft.

When I was interviewed last year by the Seattle Times, I described three projects that were keeping me busy during the lockdowns:  one involving music, one involving books, and you, dear Diary.  I ran out of money to continue the book project not long after.  In February, at the motel paid for by the GoFundMe, the second one, I undertook another massive project - studying math again so I could complete my degree - and made the music project much more complicated by trying to integrate classical music into it.  In March, once housed, I started trying to empty my storage unit here, which had nearly doubled its price in the years I'd been in it, and was going for substantially more than twice as much as a different unit of the same size would cost now.

I'm well aware, dear Diary, that you're the reason I'm now housed, but all these projects have been at a standstill for weeks now while I've poured pages into you.  I managed to get my LPs out, and thus for the first time catalogued the damage to my collection.  So with Everyday Music closing, I hoped at least to buy what I could before it was too late.  But I had too many posts to write, too much evidence that I needed to switch directions ...  And so I finally got there only one week ago, last Saturday, to buy four more classical releases as LPs, and about ten popular ones I'd also left in Milwaukee, this time as CDs.  I couldn't justify spending still longer on the classical section on their next-to-last day, and there was a line waiting to get in when I finally left.

So.  I will go to the last twenty parks for the current assessment of the Durkan Drought.  Here are a couple of reasons I have to, photos taken at Cal Anderson Park as I walked from Everyday Music back to the light rail:

Why is Cal Anderson Park deserving of running drinking water when hardly any park in North Seattle is?  As part of trying to answer that question, I will also finish a project for which I need to stay up all night three times.  And then I'll go back to touring city properties at my leisure, at most one region, of the eight that remain, per week.  I'm not trying to make you feel guilty, dear Diary, but more I cannot do, not unless I want to go back to being homeless.

The bus pass I've been using mostly for you, dear Diary, was meant to help me empty my storage unit.  I will have to buy another next month, and pay another month of the highway robbery rent on the unit, to empty it now.   And I'll also need to start job-hunting next month, instead of this one...

So I'm going to have to cross a line I'd hoped never to cross in you, dear Diary, and ask for money.  No, not from you.  But if any of the few people who read you, dear Diary, want these things done, it would help greatly if they would pay the $192 storage rent and $54 bus pass for next month.  Not, thank you, more.  The address is linked above.  I'm sorry.

Tomorrow I hike again.

A Visit to Cal Anderson Park

Dear Diary,

Surprise!  I had to go to my storage unit today, and on leaving my route passed through Cal Anderson Park.  The park was pretty crowded, so although I rather needed to do Number One, I confined myself to investigating the usual stuff.

Miraculously, though, water is running through the park's water fountains!

 

The first photo is of the fancy new triple fountain, the second of the old one next to the old water tower.  I wonder what Capitol Hill did to deserve water, that North Seattle didn't do.

The park's restrooms are in better shape than they were.  They didn't seem to be lockable, these single user stalls, but no doubt that's to prevent campers from coming back, attracted by the availability of free water.  Or maybe I just didn't grasp the locking mechanism in the time I spent.  I see that I photographed the doors of only two of the three stalls; sorry, dear Diary.  This one is like the one I skipped:

both of those being open (I'm guessing that lock is just stored there to be available when the restrooms are locked), although the one I skipped is red like the one next, which is the third, and isn't open:

There's even water running in a sink next to the black door, in the building's back:

Unfortunately, there were lots of spots on the floor of the room in back that I couldn't convince myself weren't tracks of Number Two:

although more likely they were dirt and grass from someone's shoes.  The one in front, with the red door, also had those, but ...

had, as well, much more disturbing stuff under the changing table.

I looked more closely at the room in back.  It has a dryer, which the men's room in the old restrooms never did:

and whereas the men's room, by the time I became homeless, had long lost its soap dispenser, this stall has two:

So it seems to me there are two possibilities.  One, some homeless person comes back regularly for the sole purpose of messing up the restrooms to which he no longer has regular access.  Or two, messiness in restrooms can actually be caused by housed people.  Supporting this latter theory, I remember the old restrooms consistently being nasty, nasty places, even though homeless people weren't prominent in the park in the relevant years (2012-2014).  Perhaps even if homelessness ended in Seattle, for any reason ranging from everyone getting housed to everyone getting shot, there would still be litter here.

Another thing.  Those ping pong tables that quite unfairly got the brunt of criticism when the park officially re-opened?  Never let it be said that the city doesn't listen.

Only one is there now.

Good night, dear Diary.  I'm not sure when I'll hike again, but happy times until then.

The Wounded Land

Dear Diary,

Yesterday I went to my storage, and had some time left on my transfer, so I went to see what had happened in Cal Anderson Park.  What I found was a more complete victory for the city, as I called one side in the recent disputes, than I'd anticipated.  In particular, I didn't see a single tent.

Yet I'm pretty sure the city would agree that the land they retook is wounded.  They would point to the muddy slope near the entrance at 11th Ave and E Olive St - never in good shape, but rarely in as bad shape as I saw it - at the two still closed restroom stalls, at the graffiti they erase daily.

The side I chose, whom I called the kids, would probably point to the lives disrupted, the arrests about which I'm ashamed to have heard so little, and such details as the still vindictively, wastefully shut off winterised water fountain.

Most people's sense that something isn't right seems to be focused on two perfectly inoffensive ping-pong tables:

Against this, playing devil's advocate, I'll note that the city has managed one thing I'd have expected the kids to be able to handle, but they never did:

They've also done amazingly fast carpentry.  This shelterhouse is done with its days as shelter:

I chose, however, to focus on the same two things I focused on before the climax, signage and plumbing.

I saw one thing I can just about convince myself I'd forgotten seeing before:

But elsewhere, even in a concession to the kids' sentiments, the style is completely different - even here, where it's pointless, the city wants its emblems to look mass reproducible:

Oh, stupid me - that's a banner, isn't it, dear Diary, not paint at all, and certainly mass produced.  Oh dear.

Anyway, let's re-start at the beginning:

Having struggled for months with how to communicate a long, pointless official park closure without a fence, the city now feels the need to shout even though nobody else is raising a voice.

It also feels the need to plead for support, as if its victory were rickety, though it looks solid to me.  It makes offerings to us homeless, the ostensible focus of the recent fight:

and to the solid citizens whose support for the city both sides assumed:

but it can't escape the style it knows, the resource list, the community comment line.  I have no idea whether the people who craft these can even imagine a heart singing.

And, of course, it earnestly wants everyone to dare to believe that Cal Anderson Park is and will remain a park, again and for always.  No more arbitrary closures, no more dangerously silly fortifications, and above all no more of my kind.  So it's mass-produced Cal Anderson Park-specific signs stating standard park don'ts:

and do's:

Well, one thing all these signs help with is distraction from the plumbing, which seems harder than carpentry.

Here's the one success story:

The Post-Its warn that the lock is broken, so would-be entrants should sing out, as at Little Brook and Greenwood Parks.  I chose not to enter.

It turns out there are two other stalls, not one as I'd thought and based my previous photography on; sorry, dear Diary.  This one has no door handle:

and this one I found locked:

I'm afraid, dear Diary, I've already shown you what I thought the restroom building's best side, its back where the BLM banner hangs, the above door beneath.

Now we come to the water fountain.  Seattle south of the canal is a much bigger place than North Seattle, with about three times as many parks; there must be more of these winterised fountains than at Northacres and Cal Anderson Parks, but there can hardly be many.  Of course private companies have long since mastered ways to keep water fountains running through Seattle winters, as witness Jackson Park, the street fountains if one can find any running, in memory or reality, and for that matter University Village, whence most of my water since the shutdown of Burke-Gilman Playground Park's fountain in June.  But the city parks seem to need the reassurance of a winterised fountain to keep one on through the winter, and this one is off.

No video this time.  Instead observe the dry ground under the fountain.  It wouldn't be that dry if the thing were on.

My investigations of the plumbing got the attention of two young men, apparently employees of Parks and Recreation.  I'd heard that the park would be staffed by social service personnel; maybe they were at lunch.  These guys were abject failures as Homeless Repulsion Systems.  One informed me solemnly that the water fountain was shut off to stop COVID, but it turned out he didn't believe it himself, and had asked his bosses to fix the thing.  We communed a little over this.  But then a conversation spilled over about Miller Park, where, apparently, they had gone, they with their tents whom all good citizens loathe.  Maybe these guys were better homeless repellents than they seemed; at any rate, I turned to go.

Construction had blocked the sidewalks both on Nagle Place and on the east side of Broadway, and I grumbled, but both the destinations I was considering were on the west side of Broadway anyhow.  I ignored Dick's to go first to the street water fountain on Broadway E just north of Olive Way.

The recent discussions in Washington of stimulus payments have of course reminded me of the bread and circuses with which Roman rulers pacified their citizens.  But the Romans also understood true necessity; our word "salary" comes from theirs for "salt".  And they built acqueducts and fountains to get water to their people.

I did not go back to Dick's.  I did not spend any of my stimulus payment in my old neighbourhood, on Capitol Hill.  Instead I shook the dust of that place from off my feet, again, and went to the train, where, of course, my transfer had expired.

Good night, dear Diary.

Before the Ruling at Cal Anderson Park

Dear Diary,

Well, they tell me it's all over, and thankfully no Rachel Corrie today.  So now I can show you the photos I took yesterday.

These fall into three groups.  I'll start with the messages.  When Cal Anderson Park first became a flashpoint, in the days of CHOP and CHAZ, the original Black Lives Matter protestors complained that white activists arriving were diluting the focus to things like saving the whales, say.  Well, probably some of the people there yesterday were some of the people those complaints were about, but this time their focus was strict.  And ...

This time the focus was on my kind.  On me.  These people had not come to the park on behalf of whales, or of the transgendered, or of COVID-19 vaccines for poorer countries, worthy though all of those causes are.  They had taken the risk of coming to the park, and temporarily unhousing themselves, on behalf of me.  How could my heart not sing?

Of course my excuse for being there, if questioned by agents of the city (didn't happen) or by protestors (did), was that I was press.  So my next group of photos is of amenities, the things I've been writing about in you all along, dear Diary.  This took some doing because most of these were within the barricades, but one thing wasn't:

Despite the traumatic events going on, Cal Anderson remained about as messy as a very messy park, rather than the hellhole I'd documented some months ago.  Score one for the kids.

Several photos below depict what I found when I first tried to follow the directions I'd been given for a way through the barricades.  But after taking the photo just above, I decided to make one last try.  And it turned out the entrances were guarded, by strapping young men able to move substantial obstacles, and I just hadn't found a guard.  The one I found at that point apparently decided I was too obviously homeless to be a spy, and shifted a pallet, thus creating a passage this ageing and fattening man barely squeezed through.

The park's older water fountain, of course turned off in mid-December:

The newer, winterised, one:

This was also shut off, but since winterised water fountains in Seattle work by requiring the user to hold the button down for some seconds, no mere photo could depict its being shut off.  So I took a video, which, since I've recently been unable to embed videos, can be watched at YouTube.

I trust I don't have to explain these next shots:

However, I do have to mention that I'm not just ignoring the "sanican"s and hand-washing stations out of my usual snobbery.  I was puzzled by my inability to find them, but it turns out they'd been removed, so determined was the city to make life miserable for people in that place.

To my mind this calls into question the city's claim that it acted only in response to threats against park workers.  Granted those shouldn't happen, but to respond first by removing sanitation, contra CDC guidance, and then removing the campers, ditto - well, that seems much too planned out to have been a knee-jerk response to one incident.

Cal Anderson Park has a category of building I haven't said much to you about, dear Diary, for the sensible reason that they're usually locked, and not just during pandemics.  Ironically, they're called "shelterhouses".  That day, the one at Cal Anderson Park actually was sheltering people, but I trust this photo gets across the essentials.

Presumably once it's repaired it'll go back to being rented out at an astonishingly low $10/hour - see, it's the fees that keep it out of reach for the likes of me.

Finally, we come to the defences.  As I circled these fruitlessly, I began to think that the protestors had read my complaint, in "Cal Anderson Park Is Not a Park", that if the city had really meant to close it they would have fenced it, and had decided to do the job themselves.  My first photo, showing the restrooms and main water fountain as close as I expected to get, actually shows a pre-existing fence, of which there are many in the south.

This next one, though, shows the kids' work:

And as noted above, I took several at what seemed the likeliest entrance.  I can't say I'm happy with what they show.

Oddly, from a distance, the barricades became much less noticeable:

And now they're gone.  Good day, dear Diary.

Cal Anderson Park before the Ruling

Dear Diary,

I spent this morning on Capitol Hill, much of it in Cal Anderson Park.  One clueless graffito calls it "The Peoples Republic of Cal Anderson".  Now, on September 6, dear Diary, I told you of my belief that "Cal Anderson Park Is Not a Park".  There I called it a battlefield.  Today it held a specific kind of battlefield:  a fortress preparing for siege.

It will be overrun.  I don't know whether a sweep has already begun, but if not, there will plainly be one soon.  It will face defences, but these, though enough to stymie me for a while, will not hold back an organised force.  The sweep will succeed in such limited objects as destroying a lot of personal property and decreasing the number of people sleeping in the park for at least one night.  It almost certainly won't end the contention in Cal Anderson Park between the parties I called, in "Trash in Cal Anderson Park" on October 4, "the city" and "the kids".

The planned sweep has already rid Cal Anderson Park, at least for now, of most of the third party, the actual homeless whose tents provide the framework for everyone's understanding of the battle.  I spoke with one man, maybe my age or a little older, who had a packed shopping cart beside him, and wasn't waiting for the ruling.  The city likes to claim that all the people who've been a thorn in its side for months have suddenly become shiny happy shelter dwellers; while such claims offered in past sweeps have generally been inflated, the city usually doesn't emit this kind of smoke without some actual fire.

In particular, the city claimed to have one tiny house to offer, and it apparently will go to by far the squeakiest wheel, the woman who sued.  And this brings me, dear Diary, to why you aren't seeing my photos today.  My heart lifted when I heard about that suit.  When I saw the slogans the kids presented, the ones they were preparing to fight under, when I read the complaint the woman's lawyer filed, my heart sang.

The kids were concerned that I not take any photos featuring identifiable faces.  But I find that I need to go farther.  I am not going to aid the city, in the coming battle, by showing you, dear Diary, and anyone who reads you, any part of the kids' defences.  The judge's ruling showed the lawyer's complaint to be slapdash, but it still bought time for my peers' escape.  The coming battle will surely be pointless and one-sided, but I will honour those fighting it in my name, and provide no help to their opponents.

The fortress is much smaller than Cal Anderson Park as a whole; indeed, a bunch of tents remain outside the lines, though I have no idea whether they're still occupied.  Also well outside the lines is a really impressive tree:

Good night, dear Diary.  Should you, or anyone reading you, want more information, I recommend the coverage in The Seattle Times and in Capitol Hill Seattle, which latter in particular provided a link to the complaint, and direct access to the ruling.

A Quick Cal Anderson Park Update

Dear Diary,

Three days ago, I went to Capitol Hill to change sleeping bags and otherwise prepare for the changed weather.  I had several errands to run that didn't happen, which left time for a quick visit to Cal Anderson Park.  Most of the trash I photographed on my last visit was gone; although it remained unusually messy for a Seattle park

it was no longer exponentially the worst I'd seen.

That said, it remains true that Cal Anderson Park is not a park.  I still have not heard an explanation for the closure (of which I saw no sign of enforcement, as usual), and the actual closures of restrooms and water fountain, except the original one of "cleaning and repairs".  I can't believe people on Capitol Hill aren't up in arms about this.  Four months of "cleaning and repairs" do not produce this:

So the supposed closure still is not for its supposed reason, and presumably will never end.  Which wouldn't matter, I suppose, except that it continues to deny running water to those outdoors on Capitol Hill.