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.

The End of the Tour

Dear Diary,

How have you been?  I see you've had a lot of visitors the last day or two.  I hope they were all wearing masks.  I was busy doing something I thought I had to finish in one big heave, but I'm sorry I neglected you for so long, especially since I'm still telling you about my hikes in mid-October.

At least this page should finish one of the hikes.  The previous page, "To the Beaches!" all of two weeks ago, left me trying to sleep at View Ridge Playfield's picnic shelter the night of October 12.  I woke there October 13, verified that the water fountain still wasn't running, and continued north to 75th St, getting food at the Safeway at 35th Ave.  Continuing along 75th, I stopped at 30th to take a photo of Maple Leaf hill:

Well, at least that's what I was trying to show.

My destination, way over at 25th Ave, was

Dahl Playfield

I wanted to do three things:

• verify that the water fountain still wasn't running (it wasn't)
• take a photo
• and take a video.

The photo had to do with a mistake I'd repeatedly made.  I've visited this park just enough to have picked out a preferred spot in it, one of a pair of picnic tables near the path from the park entrance to the restrooms.  Just south of those tables, a thin screen of ?saplings separates the tables from what, in the summer, had looked like a child-sized trail, and I'd thought, "how remarkably thoughtful!"

When I visited earlier in October to begin my water fountain census, of course I found out that this was actually a creek bed, dry in summer but, well, not in fall.

Finally the video.  When I came here on June 27 I think I took one, but then deleted it.  This time I didn't even take it.  But my past failures to describe correctly what makes the men's room at Dahl Playfield uniquely non-private, even compared to other restrooms without stall doors, weighed on me, and some time later I shot this one.  I'll try to embed it, but since I flagged this one as age-restricted from getgo, and my embedded videos aren't working properly, I don't have much hope where this one is concerned.

So here's a link to my demonstration that there's no privacy for men at Dahl Playfield.

Anyway.  There's a reason I've visited Dahl Playfield so often.  See, it's right across the street from the last of the "last seven" parks, as I then thought they were, that I visited on June 27:

Picardo Farm

Have you ever wondered what the "P" in "P-Patch", the name in Seattle for community garden spots, means?

Around the middle of the 20th century, there were still farms in the Ravenna neighbourhood, but by the 1960s only one was left, and it was on its last legs.  Neighbourhood activists worked out a deal by which the city bought the farm, and parceled it out into individual garden spaces.  When people in other areas demanded their own places, the name of the farm's family - Picardo - got attached.  Hence P-Patch.

I mentioned re Maple Leaf Community Garden (in "Six Parks in Search of Another") that most P-Patches are assigned by the city to the Department of Neighborhoods, which runs the program in all of them, and that when a P-Patch was instead accounted to the Department of Parks and Recreation, it was worth asking why.  In this case, I think it's inertia.  I don't know that the DoN even existed when the city bought Picardo Farm; it certainly didn't get the property, which has, I assume, been treated as belonging to Parks ever since.

One of the many distinctive things about Picardo Farm is its size:

Another is its plumbing.  It doesn't have a water fountain, but oh mama, does it ever have a sink:

Near the sink is the sign explaining the history I probably butchered above:

Continuing east to the northeast corner, we reach ... well, not plumbing, not exactly, but a restroom nonetheless:

If you Google "Picardo Farm", one of the first things you hear about - one of the main things they brag about - is their "composting toilet", shown above.  I didn't find it in June, but whenever I did, it was ringed with signs admonishing visitors to use sanitiser, which was offered on a nearby table.  Now, I would think that a good idea regardless of the pandemic, but when I returned in mid-October the table, sanitiser, and, I think, some of the signs were gone.

Did I mention that Picardo Farm is big?  Three acres, not large for a park, but huge for a P-Patch.  Not that parks that size normally get plumbing or restrooms, either.  So of course Picardo Farm also has a picnic shelter:

Well, enough.  Picardo Farm really is a P-Patch, which means the rules governing visitors from the general public differ from those applicable in parks; in particular, the hours are shorter.  (Which is one reason why I didn't yell and scream about the restroom earlier; Dahl Playfield, even with less privacy, has a sink and longer hours, and is clearly preferable.)  Visitors should read and heed those rules.

Roosevelt Land-Banked Site

When I looked up the address, 1321 66th St, I was sure the parks department had made yet another deal for, well, this:

But it's only a fifth of an acre, which even I know is too small for a football field, and the address turns out to be across the street:

I don't know whether the department plans to put a park there after the construction office closes, or to trade the land for some other parcel, but anyway, my Rand McNally maps are still wrong about Roosevelt High School being park land.

I headed from there toward Wallingford, for reasons I'll get to soon, but stopped along the way to visit

Froula Playground

Like Bitter Lake Reservoir Open Space, this park is built next to a reservoir, but offers not a drop to drink, so I tend not to pay it much mind, but thought I should make up for saying virtually nothing about a place so close to the UW - 12th Ave and 72nd St - by taking a picture:

Note the concrete seat in the foreground.  This place just keeps finding new ways to disappoint me.

There are two parks department parks left that I haven't told you, dear Diary, about yet, even though both are in "NE".  I reached one on October 14, the other October 20.  I wanted to finish the job in this page, but to start and then run up against Blogspot limits would be worse than just starting a new page from getgo, so I'll stop here for now.  Until the next page, dear Diary.

Go North, Aging Man!

Dear Diary,

I'm very sorry this is late again, but I can't swear it won't happen again, because it probably will, tomorrow night and the one after.  I told you I'd tried to visit the parks of northeastern Seattle when I was in touch with Erica C. Barnett.  Well, it's time to make good on that promise.

Tonight's set is the parks between I-5, Lake City Way, 110th St, and the water, but only the parks shown on my old 2003 Rand McNally map of Seattle.  Unfortunately I lost that map on one of the last visits, so I can't violate its copyright and show you pictures.

Tomorrow I'll use the official list of parks to cover the ones between Lake City Way and I-5, on Thursday whatever I can of the ones west of I-5.  I hope one of those days also to cover parks omitted from the following list because they weren't on my map.

Anyway, I'm not trying to provide full overviews of all these parks, just put the parks I am covering more fully into context.  I wanted to know whether two aspects of the local parks were unusual:

1. Lots of closed restrooms; and 
2. Most water fountains not running.

In this group of parks, both these things are extremely unusual, but in opposite directions.  I only found one more closed pair of restrooms to add to the four I already knew about.  But the two running water fountains I'd already found are all the running water fountains I could find in the parks of this half of northeast Seattle.

I'm using this list to identify year-round restrooms and, by exclusion, seasonal ones.

So to proceed up Sand Point Way from where I sleep to:

1. Burke-Gilman Playground Park.

Restrooms, one pair, open, seasonal.
Water fountain, running.

I arrived at 7:14 A.M. to find the restrooms already open, and the water fountain, which projects from the restroom building, running.  So I did my morning routine, eating the deli salad I'd bought the night before and drawing three bottles of water, drinking one.

Further along Sand Point Way to:

2. Warren G. Magnuson Park.

Three restroom pairs (plus one dead pair and three ghosts), two pairs open, the beach one year-round, the other two seasonal.
At least four water fountains, none running.

I wanted to cover things I'd left out of previous posts this time.  So:

• The dryer still doesn't work in the beach men's room.  (The beach water fountain doesn't project from the building, but is actually inset into it.  It's a mystery to me why that fountain is ever shut off. EDIT 10/19 - Because it isn't inset into the building. I believed this when I wrote it, but it's never been true.)
• There in fact are no "sanicans" near parking lot E4.
• Someone got halfway through updating an events board, leaving the old listings piled next to the board:
  
• I wanted to get a better picture of the ducks.  People kept walking their dogs off-leash along that stretch of shore, breaking two rules at once near as I can tell, and sending the ducks wherever we homeless go when swept (I later saw one pair along the Burke-Gilman Trail), but finally I got a chance:
  

By this time my phone was dying, so I turned it off soon after.  Thus no more times for a long while, and no more pictures at all.

Up Sand Point Way to 95th, before checking the map and finding the turn at 93rd, oops.  This part of the trip provided opportunities to play many entertaining and instructive geographical games such as "Find the Sidewalk".

3. Matthews Beach.

Two pairs of restrooms, one pair open, which is open year-round.
One water fountain, projecting from the restroom building, not running.  I may well have missed more.

The restrooms that are open are two single-user "all-gender" rooms, as at Laurelhurst Community Center.  The ones that are closed are men's and women's, and include showers.  Those could be helpful to the stressed-out employed homeless mentioned in my previous post, but the sign on the women's room door says it's a "seasonal" closure, and I'm sure nobody could want an out-of-season shower.

Back up Sand Point Way to 95th, then along 95th:

4.  Thornton Creek Natural Area.

I not only didn't see any sign of plumbing, I didn't see any sign of trails that might lead to plumbing. (EDIT 10/19 - This part of the massive Thornton Creek complex of Natural Areas was renamed "Chinook Passage Natural Area" in 2019.)

Further along 95th to 35th Ave, then north on that to:

5. Meadowbrook Swimming Pool, Community Center, and Playfield.

Presumably the swimming pool has showers, closed as it is.  The community center is closed too, not keeping its regular 9 A.M. to 9 P.M. hours, except that its child care still runs 8:30 A.M. to 2:30 P.M. and it offers showers, according to a woman encountered in the parking lot, 2 to 7 P.M.  Presumably people there for either purpose also have access to toilets, sinks and water fountains.  In the playfield behind the building(s),

One restroom pair, open, seasonal
Three water fountains, one projecting from the restroom building, none running

My map confused high school playfields with parks, but skipping on past Nathan Hale, along 110th Street the short distance to 30th Avenue, then down 30th Avenue, which turns into Ravenna Avenue, to 103rd, beyond which my map showed more of Thornton Creek Natural Area. (EDIT 10/19 - This is "Lavilla Meadows Natural Area".)  Still no trails.

On to 98th St, where I crossed to Lake City Way.  The long hike south on Lake City Way took me past much of Thornton Creek's backside, whether it was a Natural Area or just a sort of natural area. (EDIT 10/19 - Apparently the latter.)  The hike also provided many opportunities for such exercises in self-knowledge as "Watch Myself Sunburn".  I bought a bag of tortilla chips, my preferred salt delivery system, at the first food source on my side of the road, a Seven-Eleven.  Finally, at 72nd St and 12th Ave (LCW having been et by I-5):

6. Froula Playground.

I saw no plumbing. (EDIT 10/19 - It's actually a park built on a still-operating reservoir's land. So this was careless of me to say, but it was also careless park-building.)

Not only my old map, but my much less detailed new 2016 map also thinks Roosevelt High School is a park.

But this had brought me to 12th Ave and 65th St; a quick walk along the latter and some fiddling with other streets got me into:

7. Ravenna-Eckstein Park

This is so dominated by a community center that I didn't expect any outdoor plumbing, but I was wrong; near a parkward door in the building is

One water fountain, not running

More fiddling got me to 25th Ave, which I took to 77th St and:

8. Waldo J. Dahl Playfield

One pair of restrooms, open, year-round
One water fountain, I don't remember where, not running

One of the biggest deficiencies Seattle's park men's rooms really have is privacy.  I suppose some of the, for example, missing doors, could be the result of vandalism, but in most cases it seems designed that way, probably to ensure nobody has any fun in there.  (Admittedly, some of the fun thus deterred tends to leave needles behind.)

Anyway, I'd talked myself out of testing men's rooms after Matthews Beach (which passed), but I needed to do Number One pretty badly by this time.  And thus found out that in that men's room, anyone who walks in immediately sees the toilet, and anyone seated on it. (EDIT 10/19 - Not quite true. Anyone who walks in will collide with a wall unless they turn left, and then they'll immediately see the toilet.)   I was lucky, nobody walking in while I was there, but seems to me that's a lawsuit begging to happen.

That men's room was also out of soap, and has no dryer.  Not recommended.

East on 80th St to ... 28th Ave.  Both my maps said 80th went through to 45th Ave; both lied.  So up to 85th St and across, then back down to 80th to actually reach this part of 45th, which I took until it ended. This part of the hike, and the next, were enlivened by an incredible profusion of Little Free Libraries and such, though I didn't find any books I wanted.

9. Inverness Ravine Park.

I left this park convinced I hadn't found it, only to be set right by a friendly neighbour.  Turns out it has three accesses, but two are blocked by blackberry bushes.  The one on 45th is thus the only way in, but only across private land, and until a few years ago the owner blocked it.  So there's no signage, and no such "improvements" as I'm telling you, dear Diary, about, but he said there is "plumbing":  a sewer line runs through the ravine.

Back down 45th all the way to:

10. View Ridge Playfield

One pair of restrooms, open, year-round
One water fountain, not running

This time I decided to ask some people where all the water fountains were hidden.  Turns out there was a water fountain near the restrooms as usual, but it was removed so as "to not spread germs".

Now I'd like to,believe this means the device was, say, hopelessly infested with E. coli, but I actually suspect this is a preview of Seattle's main excuse for discarding its inheritance for the next fifty years.  I mean, "Let's wreck this before the junkies do", or "the homeless", always seemed obviously idiotic, for all that it often won anyway.  But the nihilism behind "to not spread germs" isn't so clear.  (Hint:  "I don't know who's touched this car / house / clothing / food, so I won't use it.")  And in Seattle, I suspect it'll mainly be used, as here, to get rid of public amenities.

Further down 45th, plus some more fiddling:

11. Bryant Playground

One water fountain, not running

I then returned to BGPP (this is when I saw the ducks on the trail).  EDIT:  By this time I was really thirsty, after all, and if I wanted more water, that was where I had to go.

My old map showed a waterfront park in the Windermere complex, Windermere Park, but said it was private.  Now, I don't know it's still private.  I do know that through an imposing gate one can see no buildings, and that the whole block in front of that gate is full of "No Parking" signs except where one black car is parked.  But mainly I know that there's no Seattle Parks signage, which means I don't have to cover this park

From there I went through the local parks, except for BGPP.  But there was a surprise at the first, Laurelhurst Playfield.  A clock seen through a community center window read 7:40; the sun was going down, so this was P.M.  But the restrooms (year-round) were locked.  I knocked on the doors - were both just in,use?  No answer.  Well, the community center had been closed since before the time change - surely it was really 8:40?  That got me out of the park, but six pieces of evidence over the next forty minutes showed the clock really meant 7:40 P.M. PDT.

Between hiking and a stop at the U-Village Safeway, none of the other times were shocking.  Ravenna Park lower (year-round) was locked at 8:56.  (I'd turned my phone back on.)  The Ravenna Park upper (seasonal) men''s room was locked at 9:10, but the women's room wasn't, and I'm sorry, dear Diary, but we have a solution to the mystery of the light in the night.  That light keeps coming on at night, but probably both times I've found doors there unlocked have been the work of non-parks employees such as the persons I found near the women's room that night.

Anyway, Cowen Park's rooms (seasonal) were locked at 9:29, but this time they were brilliantly lit, so I could see that the huge drift of leaves at the men's room doorway hadn't been disturbed.  University Playground's doors (seasonal) were locked shortly after 10 P.M.  But the main reason I re-visited all these parks was to check their water fountains.  None ran except Ravenna upper's, just like last time.

I came back to campus via one last park on my old map, Christie Park.  It was a tiny one at the southwest corner of 43rd St and Roosevelt.  But the Jack Straw Cultural Center is there now, closed.  EDIT:  THIS IS COMPLETELY WRONG.  SEE NEXT POST.

Further on my way, I drank from the street water fountain on 15th Ave just south of 43rd, and noticed that the building whose shrubbery it's in is to be demolished.

What a weird series of events!  Dear Diary, I may not have time today to go to Northgate after all; I haven't even started going through the official list of parks.  So maybe today's proper page will come before midnight after all.