Seattle Parks Is Trying to Tell the Truth. Will I Survive the Shock?

Dear Diary,

I have a notion that being an inveterate liar is kind of like other moral failings, and so although lying has never been an important sin to me, I can figure out what it's like by analogy.  I think there are two ways to try to stop sinning in general, and so lying in particular.  One is the folk wisdom that a sinner has to "hit bottom", get to where confessing and giving up the sin is the only way forward.  But the other is to work on one's personality and one's reality until giving up the sin won't hurt so much.  In this particular case, until lying is no longer needed.  That path, which is if anything harder than hitting bottom and making other people responsible for dealing with it, is the path it seems to me the City of Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation has chosen.

I pointed out a number of ludicrous details in the department's new "dashboard" (a word I kind of wish had died of COVID-19 toward the end of the pandemic, but still, that's what it's called).  It said Cowen Park's restrooms, which had been damaged by early opening in March 2022 and hadn't re-opened since, were open.  It said Ravenna Park's lower pair of restrooms, which have been perennial targets of vandals, and where the men's room hadn't opened at all in 2022, were both open.  And to top this series of obvious whoppers off, it said University Playground's restrooms, which hadn't been opened by parks department employees at any time since before the pandemic started, were both open.

I recently learnt that I wasn't quite as poor as I thought I was, because my bank hadn't charged a fee I'd expected them to charge.  So today I splurged on a newspaper and went hiking, prepared to mock yet another parks department lying map afterward.

I found both of Cowen Park's restrooms open today.

I found all four of Ravenna Park's restrooms open today.

I didn't find either of University Playground's restrooms open today, but a small group of homeless people there told me that was because they'd been locked half an hour earlier.  Considering that it was 5:41 P.M. when I was told this, that's testimony to way too early closing, but still, sadly, believable.  Supporting this preposterous turn of events actually having happened, the restroom doors both had new handles (dear Diary, your readers can, if they wish, compare the handle shown here to those in previous photos via the tags at the bottom of the page, or directly here if reading on cell phones, which didn't offer those tags the last time I looked.)

Notice, dear Diary, that these handles are set into circular supports; the previous handles, which were blocky rather than delicate themselves, weren't set into anything like that.  I think the evidence is good that University Playground's restrooms have finally re-opened.

So the parks department has done the hard work to justify its claims regarding all the restrooms I visited today.  Including those at Burke-Gilman Playground Park.  Now, this is where Google Maps lied to me today; it claims the whole park is temporarily closed.  

 

But actually, well, let's see if I can do this:

(I was trying to just paste a print-screen from OpenStreetMap into the page.  No, I couldn't.  Darn.)  Only part of the park is closed, the northeastern part.  The parks department also tells the truth about this:

And someone carefully removed the sign adjacent to the Burke-Gilman Trail there pointing the way to the restrooms.

 

Yes, dear Diary, they're building new restrooms there.  I hope this time they're winter-proof, but I sure hope, if I become homeless again before winter and there's another pandemic, they finish quickly.

I remembered from long ago that the neatest thing I thought Burke-Gilman Playground Park had to offer was a play fortress thingy sort of at the northwestern corner of the northeastern part of the park.  So I looked in its direction from the street, but couldn't tell whether it'd been protected or not.  (I'm more pessimistic that the actually neater sundial, also mentioned in that page, could've stayed in situ and been safe, so I hope it was moved.)  The building all that landscape destruction is in aid of is still standing, but perhaps so far all they've had time to do is pull the plumbing out.  (In the photo I uploaded to Google Drive, at full size a viewer can see the holes where the water fountain was attached.)

Anyway, my point is, that this morning when I checked the dashboard again hoping they'd have stopped, as I thought, lying and I could do other stuff today, they showed a bunch of restrooms as closed due to "Capital Project"s, and this was one of them.

Their water fountain map is still way too optimistic, I suspect; it's now up to 5 off, 206 on.  I found three off today, but one isn't theirs; it's the one where University Methodist Temple used to be, the stone edifice of the water fountain (not the church) still standing, but with no plumbing left inside.  I've reported the "lower" Ravenna Park fountain using "Find It - Fix It", which is how they say they want updates to those maps.  I haven't reported yet the weird stone water fountain pretty far southwest in Laurelhurst Playfield.  I guess I'll see what happens to the water fountain map tomorrow, when I plan to hide from the rain, having already lost my umbrella this year.

The Seattle Times, whose weather forecaster likes to go to extremes, is currently predicting lows for the weekend of 33º Friday night, 32º Saturday night, and 34º Sunday night.  Usually the parks department has been able to shrug off October freezes, but if the Times's extremism comes true (as it does depressingly often), that may be a too long-lasting example for the same reaction.   No official word yet, but my point, dear Diary, is that as usual, I've left it too late to get every park visited before it all changes.  The questions is whether it matters.  Is the parks department really turning over a new leaf?  Will it, for example, admit what's happening when it closes the majority of its restrooms for the winter?  Or is this just another episode in a longer battle?

One reason I've been paying so much attention to libraries lately, dear Diary, is to have another string to your bow as well as my own.  I think the last thing I expected was to have the parks department remove your raison d'être, but if it happens, it happens.  I will admit, I found myself getting both reminiscent and bored today as I took all these photos; I really didn't want, in particular, to get the only newspaper I can probably afford soon wet by photographing water fountains.  (And Jenny Durkan is no longer in office, so need I really worry about another Durkan Drought?  Well, only if there's another pandemic...)

Anyway, photos other than the above (most of those above are actually not at these links):

Cowen Park

Ravenna Park

Burke-Gilman Trail, 30th Ave fountain

Burke-Gilman Playground Park (including none of the photos above, only the photo that sort of shows where the water fountain was)

Laurelhurst Community Center (restrooms) and Playfield (water fountains)

Burke-Gilman Trail, 47th St fountain

Former University Methodist Church, former street fountain

Christie Park

University Playground (including the photo above)

Time marches on, dear Diary; there's a reason I ditched "months" in the titles of the library pages.  I'm working on three fronts:

For part VI of public library hours, I've finished work on Wahkiakum County and started on revising the actual page and on San Juan County.  Cowlitz County, however, is nearly three times as big a job as those two put together, and Skagit County nearly four times.  So we'll see.

For part II of institutional libraries, I now have my list and just need to get through it; as I said in part I, it's a long list.

And I'm also dipping my toes into part I of academic libraries.

Whatever, though, you should hear from me again reasonably soon, dear Diary.  Happy nights and days until then.

Six Hikes in Brooklyn, part I: Northwest

Dear Diary,

I have to thank the University Heights building's current owners for making me aware of Brooklyn, King County, Washington, a place much less documented than such contemporary villages I've previously mentioned as Ross and Latona.  Apparently the building was originally the school for Brooklyn village, which became part of Seattle in 1891 (not the 1881 the linked page claims).  However, according to Baist's Real Estate Atlas of Surveys of 1905, specifically plate 17, University Heights was an actual neighbourhood north of Brooklyn.  So I've decided to treat everything south of 45th St as Brooklyn, and everything north of it as University Heights.  None of this has anything to do with the place in Pacific County now known as Brooklyn.

The UW Libraries hosts a colourful, but not always comprehensible, account of the early years of the area.  In fact, much of the area thus defined as Brooklyn is now owned, and a somewhat different much of it is now used, by the University of Washington, but in the area this particular part covers, from I-5 to Roosevelt Way NE and from NE 42nd to 45th streets, there are only a few such buildings (two owned and used:  UW Medical Center Roosevelt; one not owned but not used:  Jack Straw Cultural Center; edit November 4th).  There are just as many open, more or less park-like, spaces, that is, three.  A map you'll see six times before we're done, dear Diary, this time coded for this part:

The six hikes were December 22nd, 2020, and five this month:  October 8th, 16th, 23rd, 25th and 29th.  Of those six, this part features photos from October 8th, 16th and 23rd.

A note on the buildings

As I've mentioned already today, the maps I've been using in talking about the parks between I-5 and 25th Ave NE, and between the water and NE 65th St, show university buildings as open to the public (bright blue) if it's literally possible for a random person to walk from the street into them.  For the buildings in this area, this criterion isn't misleading:  it's not only possible but acceptable to walk into the UWMC Roosevelt buildings (but NB state law still requires masks there), and it isn't possible, most of the time, to walk into Jack Straw, though I gather events sometimes change that.  (EDIT November 4th:  It isn't possible unless one pushes the button marked "Press button for entry".  Then it depends on who's there.)   That said, anyone looking for a public restroom in that neighbourhood should try the northern UWMC building, not the southern.

Or ideally wait.  I don't understand at all the idea, quite prevalent in the U-District, that public restrooms should be found in medical buildings, of all places.  Seems to me public restrooms are by definition dirty, and medical buildings by aspiration clean, and never the twain ought meet.  And it isn't that far from this area to public restrooms in less fraught places.  But someone who's really desperate in northwestern "Brooklyn" should probably head to that northern UWMC building.

Christie Park (A on map)

On October 8, I went here and took three photos meant to show that two water fountain bowls both worked, and one photo of the grassy area in the middle of the park, no longer fenced off:

On October 14, the water fountain was still running, and since drinking water hasn't been my problem on subsequent hikes of this area, I haven't been back.

East of I-5, area 8 (B on map)

The land east of I-5, south of the 45th St exit, and north of 42nd St, is all fenced off.  I think in some cases it's people's back yards, but only at the dead ends of 43rd St and of Pasadena Place can a passerby really look at any of it.  I took this photo October 16th at 43rd:

East of I-5, area 9 (C on map)

This is much like area 4 in University Heights:  south of a major road between an exit and the freeway, accessible thanks to tampering with the fence, but little inhabited, and mostly full of overgrown grass.  There are two major differences.  This time, instead of just opening a gate, a substantial part of the fence is torn down.  And this time, there's construction work of some kind going on at the north end of the area, visibly in an area where homeless people had been, with a different kind of fence around it.

More grassy, uneven land with occasional trees:

The fence:

(The orange netting visible in that photo is the fence around the construction area.)

Where the fence has been torn down:

The end the fence used to have, some feet back from the "Pedestrians prohibited" sign; I took care each time I visited to climb between the fence end and that sign.  This is the only photo in this part from October 23.

A note on other buildings

Between 42nd (further north than in the area this part is mostly about) and 45th, and between Roosevelt and 15th Ave, UW has, by one way of counting, thirteen buildings.  Maybe that unlucky number is why only one offers public restrooms, the UW Book Store.

All for now, dear Diary.  One more part is entirely about land the UW doesn't own; two are about a mix of UW- and non-UW-owned parks; and two are entirely about UW-owned parks.  I probably won't be writing any more parts tonight, so a happy night or nights, and however many days, until we meet again.

Introduction to my hikes of the U-District and Ravenna

Dear Diary,

Whoopee!  I'm almost ready to tell you about my hikes of one week ago.  Within a few days I hope to be completely ready; as things stand, I'm ready for the first three parts, anyway.

I liked the scale of the maps I made for downtown so much that I decided to standardise on that scale.  It's proving useful for North Seattle as well, but inconveniently, I don't yet know enough to make maps on that scale as large enough as I want them.

So these hikes are going to be narrated with more than one map per page.  Here's an overview:

"Three Hikes in Ravenna" will be illustrated by maps A, B and D.  I intend to begin writing the three parts of this page I plan tonight.

"Three Hikes in University Heights" will be illustrated by maps A and C.  I intend to begin writing the one part of this page I plan tomorrow.

"Four [or more] Hikes in Brooklyn" will be illustrated by map E.  I hope to begin writing it on Tuesday, October 18.

And whenever I can, which will probably be months from now, "Many Hikes on Campus" will be illustrated by maps E, F and G.

Spoiler:  There's very little news.  The water fountain in "lower" Ravenna Park has completely stopped working, possibly because of vandalism; however, its water is running non-stop, so it's as wasteful as it can reasonably be.  Otherwise, the park water fountains in this area - "upper" Ravenna Park, Cowen Park, University Playground and Christie Park - all work fine.  The shell of the street fountain that used to be in front of the University Temple is still behind the fence of that vacant lot.  The restrooms in "upper" Ravenna Park and the women's room in "lower" Ravenna Park are all open; the men's room in "lower" Ravenna Park and both restrooms at each of Cowen Park and University Playground are not open.  (Come winter, the only open park restroom in this area will be the women's room in "lower" Ravenna, if that.)  Oh, and most of North Passage Point is fenced off because concrete chips are falling from the bottom of the I-5 bridge.

There is, however, one very little bit of big news, which I hope to tell you about in detail before months from now, dear Diary.  The University of Washington's Seattle campus, to quote someone to whom I described you yesterday, "is becoming a locked campus".  So for the time being, while I can't photograph any of the popular parks on campus because they're thronged all day long, I'm visiting the buildings instead, and observing their hours.  Just in the few days I've been doing this, I've seen several hours changes, but in broad outline, the quote is true.  Concretely, I spent my days at the UW mostly in five buildings, at least fourteen hours inside per day.  If I become homeless again in the near future, one of those buildings will be closed to me, and the other four's hours have been cut very much.  I've already found a few examples of other buildings becoming more accessible, but none in ways that would actually make a difference.  So I'd certainly have to spend holidays outside, and weekends during breaks outside, and probably could spend no more than twelve hours per day inside during regular quarters, and no more than eight in summer quarter and breaks.

Between this, the park restrooms' closures, and the closure of the Urban Rest Stop's U-District branch, it's become immensely harder to be homeless in the U-District lately.  No doubt if I were to ask anyone who made the relevant decisions about this, they'd say it was all a coincidence.  They'd mention COVID-19, the difficulty of hiring anyone (people are so hard to find right now that I've managed to stay unemployed for seven months!), and budget tightness.  But, well, to whatever extent I'm a journalist at all, I'm not the kind of journalist who asks people like that questions like that.  I'm just going to document what I can of the facts I observe, and leave your readers to decide what they mean.

This problem is much bigger than the libraries, but I hope anyway to tell you, dear Diary, about the public university libraries - meaning the major state schools, mainly UW but also Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington State University in Vancouver, Evergreen State College (which now offers some masters' degrees, so I'm counting it as a university), and also the campuses without libraries of Central Washington University and Western Washington University in Everett and Eastern Washington University in Sammamish.  Tuesday, October 18.

As a reminder, here's the key I'm using:

To unpack:

Open land (without concern for how easy it is to walk through) is green if it's represented by the City of Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation.  It's blue if it's owned by any other governmental unit.  And it's black if it's privately owned.

Open land is also olive green if it's owned by the Seattle parks department, if it's closed to the public in some way (usually a fence, for open land).  Similarly, it's whatever that different bluish colour is called if it's owned by some other governmental unit, and dark gray if it's privately owned.

Buildings are the same colours but only in outline.  (Usually, closed buildings are just locked.)

Restrooms are shown as small rectangular outlines.  There are four cases:  Are they on open land, or somewhere else?  And are they open to the public (at least some of the time) or are they closed?  In practise, I needn't have worried quite so much.  Essentially all buildings open to the public have working restrooms, though not all such buildings have public working restrooms.  A restroom that isn't working or isn't public is red.  (The careful reader will notice that this is a change from the key.  Sorry, but I'd rather spend time writing up the results of the hikes than updating that key.)  A public restroom that is working is the colour of the owner, or if it's on open or closed land (which is usually the case), it's white.

Water fountains are shown as small round outlines.  They have the same colour pattern as restrooms.

All for now, dear Diary.  Let me try to get at least part of "Three Hikes in Ravenna" written up tonight.  But if not, have a good night, and I should manage to write the first part by tomorrow morning.

Today's Hike: Many water fountains turned on in areas around the University

Dear Diary,

I have very little time left to tell you much about today's hike, so will summarise.

I went to Christie Park, University Playground, Cowen Park, Ravenna Park, the Burke-Gilman Trail (specifically, its eastern water fountain), Burke-Gilman Playground Park, and Laurelhurst Playfield and Community Center.  Also University Heights Plaza, which still has "sanican"s and an SPU sink, and Ravenna Boulevard, which still has no plumbing.

Restrooms - All open except, still, Cowen Park and University Playground.

Water fountains - All running except, still, Christie Park.  The double water fountain in the northeast of Laurelhurst Playfield is probably un-useable, however:  the lower bowl gives so little water I doubt it can be drunk, let alone fill a bottle, while the upper one overshoots its bowl so spectacularly, the same doubts hold.  The single water fountain in the same playfield's southwest was much cooler than the last time I tried it, last year, so evidently is just affected by the temperature in general, rather than specifically heated.

I found that I do still, after months of filtered tap water, like the water from Burke-Gilman Playground Park's water fountain.

I then went to another suburban library for another Korean drama (which I'd actually hoped to get from the first one last week), and found the water fountains still shut off, but the men's room was fine.

On returning downtown I looked for three of the street fountains listed on the pseudo-map that I hadn't known about.

The one at 298 James St, actually a little north of James on the west side of 3rd Ave, is running despite both kinds of damage I'd found in other running fountains:  its control-and-spout mechanism is wobbly, as at 5th & Olive Way, and its push button is uncapped, as at 1st & Pike.

I couldn't find one within a block of 200 Columbia St.

I did find one at 898 3rd Ave, that is, on the east side of 3rd Ave just south of Marion, but from the ingrained dirt in the bowl, I doubt it's run any time this past year, and it certainly wasn't running tonight.

The fountains at 2nd & Madison and at 3rd & Union were running, but I found I liked the taste of neither.

So things are looking up in North Seattle, but Seattle Public Utilities lied at least a little.  I'll take what I can get.  Good night, dear Diary.

Details of southern NE Seattle, part II

Dear Diary,

This page is for the rest of yesterday's hike.  As in previous pages, photos of open or closed restroom doors (actually, open for the remaining parks), and running or inert water fountains (actually, inert for the remaining parks), are in a public folder at my Google Drive, URL:

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

Also, as in all the hikes with these boring page titles, I tried to remember to test each restroom I could legitimately enter by drawing water in the sink and trying to make it splash me, then trying to use any dryer available to dry off.  I only mention these tests when I forgot them, or when either sink, dryer or both behaved badly.

Christie Park

Last year, this expanded park opened with a running water fountain.  This year it's more ordinary.

It's quite a long way to the next park - Christie Park is at 9th Ave NE and NE 43rd St, Laurelhurst Playfield at 45th to 48th Avenues NE and NE 41st to 45th Streets.  So I digressed quite a bit along the way.

First I went to

University Temple

This building, besides being a church, hosted an amazing number of non-profits, including the Roots shelter for young homeless people.  Since Roots offered showers, eventually it also hosted the University District location of the Urban Rest Stop.  It's a gorgeous old building, and I'm kind of amazed it didn't get landmarked as a way to stop its demolition, but while photographs of it are fairly numerous online, photos of the board on NE 43rd St that listed all the non-profits, which I found almost as inspiring as the soaring steeple, don't seem to be online.  I'll put one here if I'm still able.

Anyway, it's been fenced in, though it's not yet the pile of rubble I predicted in April it would take for certain parties to admit that it's gone.

Here's the Urban Rest Stop's doorway, still standing but no longer accessible for the four shower rooms and one additional restroom still offered by the charity's website (though at least they no longer pretend that this location has a meaningful calendar, as they did until recently; unfortunately, the Internet Archive doesn't preserve the calendar, and I wasn't mean enough to take a screenshot) - um, right, and also still offered by the lying map I spent January hiking to check.  As I said, here's that doorway:

And here's the water fountain I treated as a street fountain, but which is obviously on private property, and probably a private fountain offered by this very long generous church.  The fountain lacked a drainpipe all last year, but still ran until winter.

The University of Washington Campus

This is where I spent most of my days, and many of my nights (awake) from September 2014 to February 2020, mostly indoors during the days and evenings.  I also spent most of my days and quite a few of my nights (awake and asleep) here from April 2020 to January 2021, when not hiking for you, dear Diary, or for my own survival, mostly outdoors at all times.  I looked at both the benches on which I spent most of the latter months, but was much more interested in the five buildings through which I could spend 365 days per year inside.  None of those buildings is yet admitting the general public.  Two are clearly open to random undergrads - Suzzallo Library and the Husky Union Building.  The latter is also open to invited members of the general public, and perhaps to customers (with appointments) of the few open businesses.  One of the buildings I haven't publicly named is open to students who have specific business there, through faculty members' intervention.  The other two (Savery Hall and the other I haven't named) are officially not open at all, which means they're open to those who have offices in them.

I'm going to steal a punchline from what I'd intended to be one of your last pages, dear Diary, because in the present situation it's morally unconscionable to continue to keep this to myself.  The UW campus's outdoors is largely a cascade of parks, interrupted mostly by buildings and parking lots, but despite the huge area covered when one adds all these parks up, it's like all other private parks known to me in North Seattle.  It offers no restrooms with doors that open to the outside, and no outdoor water fountains.  It should be ashamed of itself, what with the vast amount of construction it's been doing during this pandemic, that it has done nothing to change that.  I'm told that bags full of human Number Two can often be found in an underground parking area as a result.

I have to qualify this punch line a slight bit.  East of Sakuma Viewpoint, at Brooklyn Ave NE and NE Boat St, which the University claims as a park and the City claims as a street end, is a restaurant called Agua Verde Cafe.  Back behind this restaurant are its restrooms, which have doors that open to the outside.  They also have locks, which are the push-button kind.  Employees reputedly have to escort people to those restrooms, and when I first went there, the restaurant was closed for the holidays.

The doors were definitely locked on December 22, when I took those photos.  I haven't gone there since, not even yesterday, although since it's possible that they prop the doors open while the restaurant is open (unlikely though that seems), I should get back there and find out.

Also on campus, northeast of there, is a golf driving range, which doesn't have a website.  It's near the intersection of Canal Road and Clark Road.  When this is open, it is open to the public (unlike most of the UW's athletic facilities), and that includes its restrooms, whose doors open to the inside.  It was open last summer, much of which I spent near it on the East Campus, although I never actually used those restrooms.  However, it was closed all last winter, which is when I mainly hiked the campus, and this month it's open only four days per week, Thursday through Sunday.  It also keeps approximately business hours.  I have no photos yet.

I've found nothing else on the UW campus.

Laurelhurst Community Center and Playfield

None of the three water fountains in the Playfield were running yesterday.

The restrooms in the Community Center, with doors that open to the outside, each have one toilet, one sink, one dryer, one soap dispenser, and no urinal.  The doors can only be locked through the push buttons in the door knobs; the apparent bolts above those do nothing.  (Yes, I used these.  I hadn't, after all, been near an open restroom I could acceptably enter since lunch.)

The Laurelhurst Community Center's doorway signage hasn't yet changed since last year:

I'd remembered complaining to you, dear Diary, sometime last year, that I could never get from Magnuson Park to University Playground and all the rest of the parks then local to me (including this one, actually closest to where I then slept) in one day, that is, within the restroom open hours.  I can't find that line now, and did find that I'd done exactly that April 24, as reported in "Magnuson Park: Things We've Lost, part I" and "Our Main Characters".  With my cart, that time.  But I didn't remember that then, and I was feeling pretty proud of myself for having finished the day's task early (5:30 P.M.) despite all the digressions.  I'd been wondering if I could finish the four parks of the 60s and 70s as well, thus making the last hike almost a formality, and decided "Yes, I can!"

So I hightailed it north to, um,

SUN Park

The name of this park is an acronym for a twee slogan; that's why it's capitalised.  Last year it was a private park which I used to introduce the two "Ballard Seacoast" pages, but according to the City of Seattle's 2021 Real Property Report (PDF) it's now an official Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation park, although it doesn't have any official signage yet.  It fits somewhat awkwardly among the official parks of North Seattle, because it's mostly a demonstration garden, like the Center for Urban Horticulture at the UW (about a mile from this park), or parts of the Woodland Park Rose Garden - one not a Seattle park, the other under private management.  But it does already have one parkish amenity:

Unsheltered benches!  (OK, I'm not sure the log in the middle photo is meant as a bench, but the other two certainly are.)  Maybe officialness will bring others - a trash can?  A water fountain?  Naah, that's way too much to hope for.

Anyway, after that brief break, I really did hurry north to

Bryant Playground

Let me shorten this a bit:  I've still never seen any water fountain at any of these four parks, the only four parks with water fountains in a fairly wide area, produce water, and that includes last night.

View Ridge Playfield

This one's restrooms are unofficially, but for years now, open 24 hours, so I wasn't surprised to find them open.  I was surprised I was able to find where the main water fountain used to be (this photo is at the Google Drive folder):

It was between the restrooms and the water area of the playground.  It was removed, according to one of the mothers I spoke with at the playground last May, when the removal was recent, "to not spread germs".

This, and the rush I was in, distracted me from my usual check of the men's room.  However, I spent a fair amount of time at this park last year between July (when my phone was stolen) and November (when I got UW Wi-Fi for my new phone), getting Wi-Fi by day at the Northeast branch of the Seattle Public Library, using the men's room here, and sleeping at one or the other.  From that, I'm pretty certain this park's men's room has one toilet without a stall door, one urinal with its own stall (not sure about how wide it is), one sink, one dryer, one soap dispenser; the sink doesn't usually splash my clothing and the dryer worked last time I used it.

Anyway, onward I trudged.  One big difference the cart makes is that hills are much easier to take, such as the hill along 30th Ave NE.

Dahl Playfield

The men's room here has a profound privacy problem, and when it's hosed down, the water pools around the sink to several inches' depth.  The rest of the park is a playfield, and I've had to work pretty hard to find anything to like about it.

But that's because I hadn't bothered to look at the playground yet.  There's a genuinely cool stone garden of sorts near it.

Anyone who happens to be around 25th Ave NE and NE 77th St should definitely take a look at it.

The Dahl Playfield men's room, which was still open a few minutes before 7 P.M., has one toilet without a stall door, one urinal, one sink, one soap dispenser, and no dryer.

Ravenna-Eckstein Community Center and Park

The Ravenna-Eckstein Community Center has the same excuse for not informing anyone of anything that the Green Lake and Magnuson ones do - construction - but here, as at Magnuson, they chose otherwise.

However, none of these signs yet address the possibility of re-opening.

All for now, dear Diary.  I think it's probably already too late to go to the remaining three parks, and tomorrow it's supposed to be pouring rain, so we'll see when I can get to those.  Until then, happy days and good nights.

Canalwards, Foolish Mortal

Dear Diary,

I spent several days in December making short hikes, as I told you some time ago I intended.  These hikes took me to arguably seven parks owned or managed by Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation, all south of 43rd St in the University District and Laurelhurst.  And in most of them I found problems with what I've told you, dear Diary, before:  some outright errors of fact, some weasel wording to avoid other errors, and plenty of omissions.  So this page is my attempt to do better by these parks.

None, unfortunately, have restrooms, and only one (the only one this page isn't apologising to) has a water fountain, which I found not running today.

I discovered the hard way in writing this that it's really dumb to copy a modern web page into a Blogspot page as one writes the latter.  (Because Android and/or Chrome wouldn't let me copy just the paragraph I wanted.)  I think the ill effects are confined to me writing this, but I trust, dear Diary, that if anyone reading you sees, in particular, an annoying blue horizontal bar, they'll complain in the comments.  (EDIT 1/1:  Actually, I think I've fixed it.  Let me know if not.)

December 22

Fritz Hedges Waterway Park

This park is on Boat St, west of Brooklyn Ave.  Introduced May 13 in "Down by the Canal", then given full treatment October 20 in "Fritz Hedges Waterway Park".  In the latter page, I wrote:

"Unfortunately, as in the expanded Christie Park, all the furniture is metal."

Nope.

See those discolourations in the long concrete benches?  There are four total; in that shot, one is hidden by the shade.  Let's take a closer look at that one.

I was wrong.  (Heck, I was technically wrong just because of the concrete benches, even without their wooden inserts.)

North Passage Point

This park is between Northlake Way and the water under I-5.  Introduced in "Down by the Canal", and I seem not to have mentioned it to you since, dear Diary.  In that page, I noted that other people being around had cramped my photography.  I also made a big deal out of this park having land, unlike, for example, the next one, so downplayed this park's water views.

Well, on December 22 none of that was an issue.  Here's a landscape:

Now, the builders of I-5 of course chose a narrow point in the water to cross, specifically the strait between Portage Bay and Lake Union.  This means that from this park, one can look at either of those water bodies, or in between, at South Passage Point across the water.

Portage Bay, seen through the University Bridge:

South Passage Point:

Lake Union:

Northlake Park

This is basically a viewpoint on Northlake, a block east of North Passage Point.  I introduced it rather badly in "Down by the Canal", then never mentioned it again.

One of the things I did wrong was spoil my photo of the view with a finger in the shot.  That's what I focused on fixing this time.

Peace Park

This is between 9th and Eastlake Avenues on 40th St, which puts it right next to the University Bridge.  Introduced in "Down by the Canal" with the following wording to avoid saying what I just did:

"This isn't on the canal, but is essentially built into one of the bridges over the canal, the University Bridge."

I did so because the parks department page propounds the cockamamie notion that the park is actually at the intersection of 40th and Pacific Streets, and I refused to believe the evidence of my own eyes, and the street signs there.  In my lists of parks, that's the address I use.  So I went there December 22 to establish the real address.

(To be fair to the department, they may simply mean that the park is on both 40th and Pacific, and indeed I showed you, dear Diary, a photo of the boring Pacific Street side.  It's still an inadequate and misleading address.)

December 23

Fritz Hedges Waterway Park

Yes, it's wooden.

December 29

Union Bay Boglands No. 1 and No. 2

This park, so to speak, is on Surber Drive from 41st St to a little south of 38th St.  Introduced rather confusedly and perfunctorily May 13 in "Back East, Where the Gardens Are Pretty".

What I know now that I didn't know then is that from 1926 to 1966 the city had a landfill there, where about half of the university's east campus is today.  My guess now is that when the city conveyed most of the land to the university, they held back the Surber Drive edge in hopes people would build more mansions with pretty gardens, hopes that were not to be fulfilled.

My further guess is that the two parcels exist because a Seattle Public Utilities pumping station is between them.  At any rate, No. 1's address is "Surber Drive NE & 41st NE", while No. 2 is at "3905 NE Surber Drive".

When I first went there this time, my eyes immediately flew to a green space north of 41st.  A bunch of people had parked there, but it turned out not to be part of the huge Talaris property next door.  Oops:  it's actually an unimproved block of 38th Ave.

(Those photos are actually from December 28.)

The best clue came from the university's own map, which stops short at 38th.  And if you go into the area, differences emerge between the university's Yesler Swamp and the city's Union Bay Boglands.  One is that the swamp's famous boardwalk seems never to come too close to the eastern edge.  Another is that in the city side, but not the university side, there's lots of that welcome green in winter, conifers:

(Yes, I know the green up front is ivy.  Look behind it.)

January 1

And happy new year, dear Diary!  Did you ever expect to get so old?  I certainly didn't expect it of you.

Christie Park

This park is on the southwest corner of 9th Ave and 43rd St.  Introduced May 6 in "Go North, Aging Man!" and then corrected the same day in the first "Foolish Mortal" page; lavishly depicted October 4 in "Christie Park, Expanded, at Sunset".  It's the furthest north of these parks, and the only one I don't (as far as I know) owe an apology to, which, yes, means it's also the one with a water fountain.

In this case, as of today I still can't find any furniture that isn't metal.

Peace Park

I continued south on 9th, which means I reached here.  I decided to see whether Sadako of the Thousand Cranes had been given Christmas candies, but to my surprise found a few actual (and rather bedraggled) cranes, so took a picture.

Northlake Park

This was my main destination today.  One main reason I introduced it badly is that I wanted to complain about the parks department page more than I actually wanted to introduce the park.  The page's text indeed is gibberish to the uninitiated (such as me when I wrote "Down by the Canal"), and focused on things of no interest to most:

"The 7th Avenue NE Street End is not on 7th Avenue or a street end. The property is part waterway, part street right-of-way for NE Northlake Way. The site is located on the southwest edge of the University District, between I-5 and the University bridge, at the intersection of Lake Union Waterway 14 and NE Northlake Way, and across the street from the terminus of 7th Avenue NE. The upland portion of the waterway is owned by the Washington State Department of Natural Resources and the remainder of the property is street right-of-way owned by Seattle Department of Transportation. The property was included as part of the 2000 Pro Parks Levy to “Develop park at 7th Ave NE street end at Lake Union.” "

I wanted to complain that Northlake Park is not on the official lists of either street ends or waterways.  The writer's cute opening sentence shows that he (I'd bet this paragraph was a man's mistake) anticipated that.  Most of the park is textbook 7th Ave NE Street End, but since 7th wasn't on the list the city adopted, that doesn't matter.  (Now I'm probably speaking gibberish to the uninitiated.  See, please, "North Seattle Street Ends:  Introduction", December 20.)

As for waterways?  With ashen face I discover that the map of Lake Union which, in "Lake Union's North Shore:  Waterways and Street Ends" (October 8) I recommended as listing all the waterways, omits five of them:  7, 10, 12, 13 and 14.  Oops.

So.  I think this is the "upland" part that could have been a very steep waterway (i.e., place to put boats into the water or take them out):

That's on the left as one faces the water.

Thinking as I went there that it really was a street end, I took my standard three photos.  But the street that ends is no beauty, and the land the city claims (though not under the street end law) doesn't look like much in my photos.  So that leaves only the park's main point, its view.  My third try:

Good night, dear Diary.

Christie Park, Expanded, at Sunset

Dear Diary,

As I mentioned two pages ago, I've finally gotten in to Christie Park.  This is because, a few days after I speculated that the park's re-opening was delayed until our excellent mayor could preside over a big ceremony, it was re-opened, presumably without any such thing.  In other words, no, I didn't pull any strings.  Actually, Rachel Schulkin, communications manager for the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation, has had me on her e-mail list at least since August, but she didn't send the official announcement, someone else did.  So I was as surprised to find it open on October 1, three weeks after that announcement, as you, dear Diary, no doubt were to read about its water fountain yesterday.

ANYWAY, as long as I was there, I figured I should take some pictures.  So here they are.

There is a ping-pong table, obviously; the orange thing in the background behind it is a fancy fitness machine.

And yes, that's a fence around the central lawn.  Probably to protect recently planted grass.

Most of the planting is, as here, spare, rather than the lush crowding usual in parks' planted areas.  Between this and the ping-pong, it's easy to imagine an Oriental connection, and a structure at the entrance thanks the government of Taiwan.  However, most of the people who got in the way of my photos were white.

Little did I know, when on my last visit I speculated that the park was still waiting for wooden benches, that in fact all the furniture would be metal.

Between this and the fence, I get the distinct sense that this park is the exact opposite of Ballard Commons, is a park designed to repel homeless people, an impression a 2014 UW Daily article seems to support.  We'll see.

The boats, said to be modelled on those used by a Taiwanese native culture, are by Paul Sorey.  I thought the lines under them were survivals from the pre-expansion park, but apparently not, so maybe they're by Sorey too.  I know nothing about the decorations on the concrete walls, which I think unlikely to be the same artist's work.

Probably the park's biggest attraction for homeless people is something I only noticed because I saw students already using it.  It's lit at night by six fixtures such as the one shown above.  Each of those fixtures has near its base an outlet, possibly suitable (depending on the shape of your charger's transformer) for cell phone charging.  And the use I saw was before the fixture lit, so yes, those outlets have power by day.

The fixtures light up at night one by one, at unpredictable intervals, a bit of art with time.

Water Fountains - an Interim Report, Part III

 Dear Diary,

You probably remember that the last two pages I wrote in you concerned two trips to many water fountains that found a geographical pattern in their status as on or not.  This page concerns two more trips.

September 30

On this day I showered, changed clothes, and got my mail.  These errands put me close to Cal Anderson Park and to some previously mentioned street water fountains.  The addresses below lack direction markers and are not in "NE".

Freestanding street water fountain in front of the Bartell Drugs store at 5th Ave and Westlake Ave - UNUSABLY DAMAGED (as I first reported May 1 in "Water Fountains:  Things We've Lost, Part II")

Freestanding street water fountain on 4th Ave in front of Freeway Park, between Pine and Pike Streets - NOT RUNNING (same first report)

(The person whose legs are in the shot was with me that day and gave permission.)

Freestanding street water fountain on 3rd Ave just south of Union St, in front of the downtown Post Office - NOT RUNNING (same first report)

Freestanding street water fountain at 1st Ave and Pike St, across the street from a main entrance to Pike Place Market - UNUSABLY DAMAGED (as I first reported June 18 in "Ways to Fight Water Addiction")

Cal Anderson Park

I actually didn't bother to check the fancy, huge, winterised new fountain in the park.  It's just that I'd forgotten this park has two drinking fountains - the other is reachable only across gravel, which I disliked walking on long before I had a cart to worry about.

Freestanding water fountain near the water tower - ON (my first report this year)

This means I've been worrying sort of needlessly about water on Capitol Hill - no, I don't think the fountains known to me in Volunteer Park are enough, and the library is open too few hours.  However, this fountain will be shut off sometime next month, whereas the formerly running street fountain in front of Rite Aid, and Cal Anderson Park's own new main fountain, would both have run most or all of the coming months.

October 1

A hike from Burke-Gilman Playground ending at the UW campus, phone charged along the way, begun in morning but extremely lazily conducted and not finished until night.  Covered the five last fountains visited September 17 (Part I) but not re-visited September 28 (Part II) plus three more.

Burke-Gilman Playground Park - ON

Street fountain on Burke-Gilman Trail at 30th Ave - ON

I said a while ago that I liked to photograph this fountain, but it had been some time since I did so.  Here are two:

Ravenna Park - both fountains ON but the double "lower" one difficult to drink from, as on September 17.

Cowen Park - ON

Freestanding street fountain on 15th Ave a bit nearer 43rd than 42nd Streets - ON AND USABLY DAMAGED (good water; first reported on May 1 in "The Curious Incident of the Light in the Night-Time", but I'm not sure when I first noticed its missing drain)

Christie Park

For more on this now reopened park, see the page after next, today or tomorrow.

Freestanding double water fountain near the ping-pong table - ON (both faucets giving reasonable streams)

University Playground

Freestanding water fountain near the women's room - UNUSABLY DAMAGED

I first reported this off April 25 in "Our Major Characters".  The October 1 hike is the first time I heard water move in response to my pushing the tap, but none came out.  I don't know whether the damage visible below is vandalism or a plumber's effort to find the problem.