A Requiem for Seventy-Seven Bus Stops, part VII: The Route 28 north of NW 97th Street; also, beaches and buses

Dear Diary,

No, I didn't sleep enough.  How about you?

Anyway, though, this is the last big heave of this page.  I want to talk not only about the sad collection of stops closing in the far northwest, but also about beaches, and bus service thereto.

I visited most of these stops on Saturday morning, then went back Monday afternoon, having found that Open Street Map maps three stops I'd ignored.  One of those, however, turned out not to be closing, because it's also a stop on the route D.  I also had doubts that two other stops (which I hadn't ignored) were really closing, but that was because I was applying the wrong standard of evidence to the new schedule; I should've been using preponderance of the evidence, not beyond a reasonable doubt.

See, the map shows a transfer point, no less, at NW 100th Place and 7th Avenue NW.

However, the schedule clarifies:  northbound trips end at that stop, stop #28680, where people can indeed transfer (to the route D).  But southbound trips, having turned at 3rd Ave NW and then at Holman Road NW, can't reach the stops across the street from the transfer point, and so they start instead at NW 97th Street:

This is apparently the way the route has worked ever since the extension north became a commuter-only route, which may be all the way back to when it started, for all I know.  (This extension is on the 1973 transit map but not the 1970 one.  The 28 reached NW 105th Street by the time of the 1965 map, but not further north.)  For some reason, none of my copies of the schedule map the Holman-route turn-around used by the non-commuter runs.  Now that every single run uses that turn-around, though, there's no excuse for not showing it.

As before, the links in the lists of stops go to my Google Drive, to folders there containing at least one photo of each stop listed.

Anyway.  The stops:

3rd Avenue NW

Northbound, three stops:

• Stop #28890, north of NW 143rd Street.
• Stop #28880, north of NW 140th Street.
• Stop #28870, north of NW 137th Street.

Southbound, three stops:

• Stop #27790, south of NW 145th Street.
• Stop #27810, just south of NW 140th Street.  A photo of a bus stop with none of the amenities I'm following:
  
  
  
  
• Stop #27820, just south of NW 137th Street.
   

NW 132nd Street

Northbound, one stop:

• Stop #28850, halfway between 4th Avenue NW and 3rd Avenue NW.
  

Southbound, one stop:

• Stop #27840, just west of 3rd Avenue NW.  This is one of the two closing stops on this route that I missed on Saturday.
  

8th Avenue NW

Northbound, two stops:

• Stop #28830, south of NW 132nd Street.
• Stop #28810, just north of NW 127th Street.
  

Southbound, two stops:

• Stop #27860, further south of NW 132nd Street.
• Stop #27880, south of NW 127th Street.
  

NW 125th Street

Northbound, two stops:

• Stop #28800, just east of 8th Avenue NW.
• Stop #28780, just east of Eldorado Lane NW.  This is the other stop that's actually closing that I missed on Saturday, probably because my attention was on a chat with a resident across the street.  While I was photographing it on Monday evening, the 28 bus actually pulled up and stopped.  I saw plenty of 20 buses while walking that route; few 73 buses Saturday evening, but several yesterday; but that was the only commuter bus I saw.  I wasn't on the 322's route at the right times, either Sunday or yesterday.
  

Southbound, one stop:

• Stop #27890, east of 8th Avenue NW.  At this stop, someone had recently installed a new cement pavement.  (Most, but not all, of the stops north of this one are unpaved, like stop #27810 above.)  Who paid for that apron, the home-owner, Metro, or someone else?  What will become of it now?  Does the home-owner get to use it for a grill, or for outdoor parties?
  

3rd Avenue NW

Northbound, five stops:

• Stop #28760, north of NW 120th Street.  This is the first, in this part, of four stops, both northbound and southbound, that have a rather bizarre appurtenance - I can't bring myself to call it an amenity.  Each of these stops has some fencing, of the same kind at each, clearly related to the stop, not the nearby residences.  I have no idea what it's for; it's hard to imagine crowd control ever being called for at the stops in question.
  
• Stop #28750, north of NW 117th Street.  117th is the northernmost route into Carkeek Park along public streets (as opposed to private back yards).
  
• Stop #28740, north of NW 115th Street.
• Stop #28720, north of NW 110th Street.  110th is the middle route into Carkeek Park along public streets.
  
• Stop #28700, north of NW 105th Street, and across the street from Viewlands Elementary School.  Also has fencing, not arranged in any plausible manner for student crowd control; just two panels, one leaning on the other.  This is the southernmost northbound stop closing.
  

Southbound, six stops:

• Stop #27910, some way south of NW 125th Street.  This is the northernmost of three southbound stops along this route that have benches.  While I was photographing this stop, a gentleman came out of the adjacent house and started discussing the closures with me.  He pointed out that it's fine for people on 3rd Avenue to walk over to Greenwood Avenue N, as the rider alert signs suggest, but that 8th Avenue NW is downhill from 3rd.  Were bus riders there supposed to walk five additional blocks uphill?  He said he'd written a letter.  I tend to think of commuter buses, buses that go only one direction in the morning, and only the opposite direction at night, as second-class bus service for a neighbourhood, but evidently there's a wide gulf between second-class and nothing at all, and people who live along commuter bus only streets are well aware of that gulf.
• Stop #27930, just north of NW 120th Street.
• Stop #27940, south of NW 117th Street.  Again, access (though difficult) to Carkeek Park.
• Stop #27950, just south of the line of NW 115th Street.  Has fencing.
  
• Stop #27970, just north of NW 110th Street.  Has a bench.  Again, difficult access to Carkeek Park.
• Stop #27990, just north of NW 105th Street.  Adjacent to Viewlands school.

NW 103rd Street

Southbound, one stop:

• Stop #28000, some ways west of 3rd Avenue NW.  Has both a bench and fencing:
  
  
  

NW 100th Place

Southbound, two stops:

• Stop #28010, just northeast of 7th Avenue NW.  On Saturday I was stunned and more than a little displeased to find that what I'd thought would be the first working stop is instead slated for closure.  Only when I reached 97th Street did I learn that the 28 is only hourly on weekends anyway.  I ended up walking all the way to NW 85th Street, going to a rummage sale along the way, and still made it just as the 28 did.  This stop is the nearest to the street access (6th Avenue NW) to the Eddie McAbee Entrance to Carkeek Park, which involves a whole lot more dirt trail than the NW 110th and 117th streets entrances mentioned above.  The stop across the street from this, which is not closing, is the remaining shred of an excuse Metro has for claiming that the 28 reaches Carkeek Park.  See not far below.
  
• Stop #28020, west and a little north of the intersection of 8th Avenue NW and NW 100th Street.
  

Beaches and buses

Two days before I started you, dear Diary, and a month after the March 13, 2020 lockdowns, Cliff Mass wrote a blog post arguing that outdoor air was safer than indoor air, and, essentially, that it was classist and ableist to close the parks, as was happening in many parts of the US, including (for large parks) Seattle.  It's probable that that post contributed to my decision to start you.

On July 1, 2020, I wrote in you, dear Diary, about Golden Gardens and Carkeek Parks for the first time.  I cited Cliff Mass's post, and then wrote:

"It's piffle anyway.  Seattle is a progressive city, no more capable of classism or ableism than of racism.  Next thing you know, someone will claim the President behaved badly."

Nota bene, at the time the United States President was the esteemed Donald Trump, not the current incumbent.  Anyway, I went on to suggest that if the powers that be really wanted to put a spike in Prof. Mass's argument, they should put a bus up Seaview Avenue NW.

I then wrote to Prof. Mass, saying I'd disagreed with him, and giving him the URL.  Some time later, I discovered he'd killfiled me:  I could no longer either e-mail him or comment on his blog posts.

Whatever that says about his sense of humour (well, there's a reason I stopped writing you all that satirically, dear Diary), I think this is a good occasion to say it straight:

Yes, there actually should be a bus up Seaview Ave NW, and into Golden Gardens Park, as there was from 1977 through September 2012, although toward the end of that time Metro had so completely lost the plot that the route 46 was, guess what? a commuter bus, Mondays through Fridays only.

And there should be, not just a bus that gets a rider within a mile or two of hiking to Carkeek Park's beach, but one that actually goes up NW Carkeek Park Road.  The beach itself is only reachable by stairs, but they're planning to build a new beach access soon, and dollars to doughnuts that'll have an accessible path too.  But instead Metro is getting rid of the risibly poor substitute they provided, that never got within a mile of Carkeek Park Road.

And there should be a bus that goes not just all the way down NE 65th Street, but then up Lake Shore Drive NE in Magnuson Park, all the way to the beach.  Just as if Magnuson Park existed in the same physical reality as the rest of North Seattle.

The lack of beach access by bus, all across North Seattle, isn't precisely ableist:  as far as I know, disabled people can use Metro's Access vans to reach beaches.  (Except, so far and probably for a few more years, Carkeek Park's beach.)  But it is ageist and it is classist.  And it contributes to parking problems well documented in signage all along Seaview, and about which I wrote in "Escaping Carkeek Park".

I don't get it.  This is the agency that invented Trailhead Direct.  So they can work with parks.  What do they have against beaches?  Is it illegal fires?  Who's more likely to start illegal fires at Golden Gardens - arrogant young people who drove there in cars that can carry wood or coal and kindling, or impoverished old people grateful to get to go there at all by bus?  Is it the near-nudity?  We'll get back to that in the last part of this page, but I'd hope not.

It would be stupid of me to expect my words, your pages, dear Diary, to have any direct impact, but all we can do is keep trying.  In any event, we're almost done.  28 stops on the route 20; 14 stops on the route 73 on 15th Avenue NE; 29 stops on the route 28 - that's 71.  There are six stops left, three of which are only route 322 stops, three of which are also route 73 stops as route 73 is (for a few more days) currently configured.  Soon.  Happy minutes or hours until then.

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 February Hikes

Dear Diary,

To start with, I planned to tackle all the parks with restrooms in one region of North Seattle, that is, NE, N and NW, in one day off each.  In reality, on February 19th I visited the majority of NE parks; on February 26, the majority of NW (adding one on the 28th); on March 5 a few in NE and N; on March 12 only Salmon Bay Park; and on March 19 most of N.  (In each region I started in the north, to keep myself from focusing as usual on the closer-together parks further south.)  On March 22 (my day off had switched), I visited the parks of Greenwood and east of there, which were most of what was left, but it was already too late to evaluate their restrooms' winter availability.

In your previous page, dear Diary, I focused on the lists of park restrooms open in winter posted by Christina Hirsch in 2019 and in 2022.  In particular, I noted that of four restrooms or restroom pairs added to the 2022 list in North Seattle, three appeared to be outright lies (University Playground's restroom doors welded shut; Little Brook Park's restroom posted as seasonally closed; Salmon Bay Park's restrooms locked on two visits) and one, at best, a conflict between Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation management and the parks maintenance workers who actually open, clean, do minor repairs on, and close the restrooms, that is, Sandel Playground's restrooms, which now in two winters (2020-2021 and 2022-2023) have been advertised as open but have instead been closed.

However, I found other interesting things on these hikes, including but not limited to more lies, and so plan two other pages to tell you about them, dear Diary.  This is the first, and covers NE and NW.

February 19th

I've now uploaded most of the photos to Google Drive.  For this hike, that means Magnuson Park, Matthews Beach, Little Brook Park, all visited between 1 and 4 pm; then University Playground, Cowen Park, Ravenna Park, Burke-Gilman Playground Park and View Ridge Playfield, between 4 P.M. and 9 P.M.  (The restrooms at Burke-Gilman Playground Park, which I reached at 7:20 P.M., both had visible seasonal closure notices still up; those at View Ridge Playfield, which I reached at 8:04 P.M., stay open all the time, 24/7.  For which I was very grateful by that time, because all the other open restrooms - Magnuson Park's beach restrooms and Matthews Beach's - had been early in the hike.)

I found the street-style fountain near the intersection of the Burke-Gilman Trail and 30th Ave NE not running.  I didn't check the park-style fountain further south.

Other notes:

Magnuson Park

As the previous page noted, without going out of my way re water fountains, I found four that were running, of which three were attached to heated buildings.  The fourth was in Magnuson Park.  It was running strongly:

I was concerned enough about this - cold weather was then forecast - to write to Rachel Schulkin, PR at the parks department.  But I thought there was a real chance that someone in charge at Magnuson Park was doing a controlled experiment, comparing an attached fountain with a free-standing one.  So I told her the fountains should be turned off unless they represented such an experiment.

I think I was worrying too much.  I've told you before, dear Diary, that while homeless I began tracking low temperatures in spreadsheets - a succession of these as the electronic gadgets where I kept them broke or were stolen.  (And as my standards changed.  I originally just listed temperature readings from signs I passed on my way to campus.)  The surviving version goes back to 2019, and I still go to some trouble to keep that spreadsheet up.

Now, 2022 was distinctive compared to the other years I still have, and as best I remember going further back.  I track three thermometers:  one at the roof of the UW's Atmospheric Sciences building, measured every minute by UW personnel; one at Boeing Field, measured every five minutes by the National Weather Service; and one at NOAA's building on the UW campus, a couple blocks south of the Atmospheric Sciences building and much closer to the water, measured every hour also by the National Weather Service.  Historically, my comments on the spreadsheet concerned almost only missed readings at one or another of these.  UW was usually the highest, NOAA often the lowest.  But in 2022, NOAA's readings started going haywire, very often dropping by 8º Fahrenheit for a single reading, sometimes two or three times in 24 hours.  I noted these but only recorded more believable lows.  My complaints about NOAA's readings got ever more baroque as these "swoops" became more frequent and more extreme (for a time they were consistently 11º F in extent).  Finally October 1st to 6th, neither NOAA nor UW gave credible readings; readings at both ranged 11º to 15º F throughout those days.  From October 7th to November 23rd, NOAA was credible, the UW not; but on November 24th, NOAA swooped eight times, and this pattern of frequent swoops making it un-useable as a data source has been its pattern basically ever since, except for a few weeks around New Year's.  On November 28th, the UW came back, and has been steady ever since.  I've since learnt, from my work on the counties, that actually the Weather Service has multiple stations whose temperature readings regularly swoop; I suspect the main brand of thermometer NWS relies on is maybe not up to being used outside for years on end.

Anyway, though, this melange of sources reported a bunch of temperatures in the 20s before February 19 of this year.  November 9th, 2022:  NOAA 29º (Boeing 30º).  November 18th through 20th (both NOAA and Boeing).  December 1st and 2nd, also the 15th and 16th (all Boeing; UW higher).  December 21st through 24th (both UW and Boeing, and going down to 16º).  January 30th, 2023 (both UW, at 29º, and Boeing, at 21º).  So when I found that fountain running on February 19th, one of two things had to be true:  Either it was equal to 16º temperatures, or it was being closely supervised by someone able and willing to turn it off when such temperatures threatened.

So I shouldn't have worried so much.  It looks like Seattle parks could have a lot more running water fountains in typical Seattle winters, although if the explanation is close supervision, that probably doesn't scale up too well.

I didn't find the showers at either Magnuson or Matthews beaches running.

Ravenna Park

Both the 2019 list and the 2022 list said Ravenna Park's lower restrooms were open.  I know from when you began, dear Diary, that the 2019 list was telling the truth.  The 2022 list was not, and I can't imagine why a list that had clearly been actively compiled included the long-term-closed restrooms at Ravenna Park.

February 26th

Again, most of the photos are now at Google Drive, including Carkeek Park, Golden Gardens Park, Soundview Playfield, Loyal Heights Community Center, Salmon Bay Park, Ballard Community Center, Ballard Commons, and also the street water fountain at Greenwood Ave and 85th St, which was near a place where I changed buses, and which I found running very strongly:

Carkeek Park

Carkeek Park is distinctive among the parks of North Seattle with regard to its restrooms:  It's the largest park with only one restroom location.  Jackson Park, the next largest, has only one location for restrooms whose doors open to the outside, and all its restrooms are in one small part of the park, but most of the park is a golf course, which apparently makes that OK.  Otherwise, the next smaller park with only one set of restrooms is Maple Leaf Reservoir Park, one-seventh the size of Carkeek Park.

The reason Carkeek Park can get away with having so few restrooms is partly that most of what's interesting in that park is near those restrooms - the beach, the playground, the picnic shelters.  It's also partly that, like Jackson Park, it used to have park restrooms whose doors open indoors.  But then the Environmental Learning Center at Carkeek Park, which is way off at the other end of the park, much closer to city streets, closed to the public, leaving Carkeek with only one set of restrooms.

So what's new is that one of the ELC buildings has re-opened to the public:

In 2010 it was open Tuesdays through Saturdays, but 10 A.M. to 4 P.M.  So the current schedule is nearly as many hours, though, as in many libraries, it's managed this largely by expanding morning hours.

The front of this building has a lot of glass:

Through this I could see the doors of the restrooms, and could also see a couple of people working.  But they weren't formally open, and I didn't want to bother them (partly because, after all, I hoped to finish NW that day).

Golden Gardens Park

I vaguely remember that the showers here were running, unlike those at Matthews Beach and Magnuson Park.  But my photos don't document this, and it could be a false memory.

February 28th

Gilman Playground

As with Burke-Gilman Playground Park, I got here outside my usual hours limits (6:06 P.M.), but it was OK because there were still closure signs on the doors.  At Google Drive see here.

All for now, dear Diary.  I'll write up the March hikes in the coming days as my schedule allows.  Until then, happy nights and days.

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...

Running water fountains FOUND in N, and northern NW

Dear Diary,

Today I went to thirteen parks.  I only crossed Ravenna Boulevard, but the other twelve all have, or are supposed to have, water fountains, and some have restrooms.

The big news is that I found water fountains actually running at Bitter Lake Playfield, Licton Springs Park, and Greenwood Park, the three last parks in the part of the city between NE and NW that I had to visit.   I also found that the double fountain in Crown Hill Park was running.

Also significant:  Licton Springs Park's restrooms are still closed.  All the trash left by the incredibly messy encampment that was there last year has been removed, but I guess the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation isn't taking any chances on them returning, so isn't going to both turn on water fountains and open restrooms until there's reason to doubt that could happen.

Also significant:  I found additional water fountains at Bitter Lake Playfield and at Carkeek Park, or anyway its Environmental Learning Center; also, at Green Lake Park.  I'm sure these were there all the time; I just hadn't explored either northern park thoroughly, and since I hate walking on gravel, hadn't found Green Lake's non-trail fountain.  (I probably don't have enough years left to live to explore Carkeek thoroughly anyway.)  The additional one at Bitter Lake is near the playground, and is the one that's running at that park.  I did not, however, find the water fountain the parks department's web page for Baker Park on Crown Hill still claims is there.  Moreover, at that park I found a party of youngish people who admitted to remembering the park back to its re-opening from renovations last year, and none of them remembered ever seeing a water fountain there.

I've uploaded all relevant photos, and even a video (to show that Northacres Park's freeze-resistant water fountains are still not on), to the Google Drive folder I pointed to last time.  Here's the URL again:

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

I got a little sloppy this time; I had to settle for a photo of the Carkeek Park women's room door with no newspaper in it, and for some water fountain a photo that didn't show my finger pushing the button.

Anyway, I have other things to do with my loud laptop before quiet time, so will tell you all about it tomorrow, dear Diary.  But briefly, here are the parks.  Their restrooms were open except at Licton Springs (and I didn't re-check Green Lake); their water fountains were not running except at the parks named above (but again, I didn't re-check Green Lake).

• Ravenna Boulevard (neither fountains nor restrooms)
  
• Maple Leaf Reservoir Park (both)
  
• Northacres Park (both)
  
• Bitter Lake Playfield (both)
  
• Carkeek Park and Environmental Learning Center, Piper's Creek Natural Area, and Eddie McAbee Entrance (both)
  
• Licton Springs Park (both)
  
• Greenwood Park (both)
  
• Sandel Playground (both)
  
• Baker Park on Crown Hill (neither)
  
• Crown Hill Park (just water fountains)
  
• Soundview Playfield (both)
  
• Golden Gardens Park, where I was when 7 P.M. came (both)
  
• Green Lake Park (both, but I only photographed one fountain)
  

Good night, dear Diary.  Sweet dreams until tomorrow.

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.