Truth and fantasy about park restrooms in winter

Dear Diary,

I've now mapped the park restrooms that were promised to be open in North Seattle last winter:

and then modified that map by what I found in February and in March:

The big circles that are obvious on the map represent differences between what I found and what we were all told last November.  Eight of those differences are restrooms closed that the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation's spokes-person claimed would be open; and two are restrooms open that she did not claim would be.

1. Little Brook Park.  We were told the unheated wooden box of a restroom this park has would be open this past winter, and to emphasise the point, responsibility for keeping it open was given to both the Northwest and the Northeast parks maintenance crews.  However, someone on one of those crews sensibly enough put a closure sign up instead.  Lake City still needs real park restrooms, which should be in Virgil Flaim Park; it doesn't need jokes about the inadequate room it has instead.
   
2. Jackson Park.  The parks department tends to ignore this park in many ways, including lists of restrooms; in particular, the restrooms there are maintained, opened and closed by employees of a private lessee, not by the parks department.  So this is more an apparent difference than a real one, but still, there's restrooms in a city-owned park that were open this past winter but not in the posted list, so it's still a difference.
3. Sandel Playground.  Both in 2020-2021 and in 2022-2023 I found the restrooms there locked; in both years they were supposed to open.  I think this is a disagreement between the parks department's PR people and the northwest maintenance crew.  I hope they settle it before next winter.
4. Green Lake Park, Bathhouse restrooms.  These are customarily open in winter and summer, but not in spring and fall, so again, I wasn't surprised to find them open despite their omission from the posted list, but it's still a difference.
   
5. Salmon Bay Park.  I'm not sure whether this building has heat, but it doesn't have much room for it, and these restrooms haven't customarily been open in winter.  I'm guessing this lie was meant to appease people in Ballard who want the homeless to have somewhere to go besides the library and the bushes.  Maybe including Ballard's city council member?  Or maybe it was much less than that, just a joke on me, as previously suggested.  Mind, dear Diary, I still don't have a clue why the indoor restrooms with doors that open to the outdoors, in the Ballard Community Center, close each winter, unless it's out of hatred towards homeless people.  But we weren't promised Ballard Community Center last winter, and we were promised Salmon Bay Park.
   
6. Green Lake Park, Shellhouse restrooms.  These are customarily open year-round, but the building they're in is currently behind a construction fence.
7. Ravenna Park, lower restrooms.  These are customarily open year-round, but the men's room has been locked for years, and the women's room was locked too when I went there this past winter.
8. Woodland Park, Citywide Athletics Building ("Rio") restrooms.  These have also been locked for years, and have acquired an impressive amount of graffiti on this subject.  Now, closing restrooms in winter that could be kept open is supposed to enable the parks maintenance crews to clean graffiti up, so I'm not sure why they're neglecting these examples.  Nor am I clear on why the athletes were left without restrooms this past winter, considering that a perfectly reasonable alternative (Woodland Park Cloverleaf) is available a few blocks north, and was opened winter 2020-2021.
9. University Playground.  The restrooms have been closed for years, since the pandemic began and probably since before then.  They've been fenced in, in the recent past; they're now welded shut.  A blatant lie.
10. Gas Works Park.  A little further along than the Green Lake Small Crafts Center (whose restrooms are referred to by the name of the nearby Shellhouse); here it's the place where the building was that's now surrounded by a construction fence.

In the past, I've suggested that the parks department's pathological inability to tell the truth about its winter restrooms resulted from a sorcerer's spell.  This year, there's perhaps a more prosaic explanation.  This past winter, visitors to parks all over southern North Seattle, south of 65th, say, got to experience what park visitors in Lake City experience all the time:  no restrooms.  As many were closed despite claims they'd be open, as were open:  Green Lake Shellhouse, Woodland "Rio", Gas Works, lower Ravenna, and University were all promised but closed; Woodland Pink Palace and 50th, Green Lake 64th, Wallingford and - I presume, not having gotten there myself - Laurelhurst were all promised and open.  Now, something similar happens in West Seattle on a regular basis, and West Seattle typically has more political power in Seattle than southern North Seattle does.  But maybe the parks department didn't like the optics of admitting how far someone needing a restroom would have to walk, in southern North Seattle, so it decorated truth with fantasy.

Or maybe it didn't like admitting how few open restroom locations in North Seattle it was using our tax dollars to support this winter, so it added a few it knew wouldn't be open.  We were promised 25.  We got 18.  (Jackson Park's restrooms aren't supported by tax dollars.)  In 2019-2020, we got 23.  We got 72% of what was promised, and 78% of three years ago.  In my experience, in school, these would usually be passing grades, but they aren't in my current job.  Are they passing grades in parks department jobs?

At least this year, there isn't an agency serving the homeless that relies on the parks department to tell the truth about its own property.  So with any luck, my former peers weren't misled by those lies.  I wonder who else was.

Good night, dear Diary.  I don't know when I'll be back, so have a happy spring, by day and night both.

My March Hikes

Dear Diary,

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

March 5th

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

Jackson Park

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

Northacres Park and Playfield

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

had been shut down for the winter:

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

Bitter Lake Playfield

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

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

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

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

March 12th

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

March 19th

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

Gas Works Park

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

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

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

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

Woodland Park

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

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

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

Green Lake Park

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

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

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

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

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

March 22nd

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

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

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

And except in Licton Springs Park:

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

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

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

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

Meridian Playground Today

Dear Diary,

Yeah, I know, I told you I was done with these, but today I felt very lazy, finally convinced myself in late afternoon to go to my far-away bank for laundry quarters, and on the way back, even though I'd left my newspaper at home, I finally gave in to my curiosity:  if Gas Works Park had been swept, had Meridian Playground?

Also, I forgot to tell you, dear Diary, but I found Gas Works's water fountain running Wednesday night, the first time I've found that one running since your first page.  (Photos at Google Drive:  Meridian, Gas Works.)  So I was curious whether repair work on Meridian Playground's much more obviously damaged fountain had begun.

It has:

But:

By the standards of Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation, or at least its northeast maintenance team, winter has come.  So, predictably:

However, Meridian Playground has not been effectively swept.  And, well.  Meridian Playground is the former grounds of a residential school for girls (i.e., a place to throw them away).  The school building is now home to a bunch of non-profits, like other buildings such as University Heights.  However, unlike U-Heights, Good Shepherd Center is actually city-owned.  And see, dear Diary if you can figure out what's missing from this photo of their front door:

Yes, that's right, they've forgotten to put their "No Public Restrooms" sign back up!  So I'm not sure how badly off the homeless of Meridian Playground actually are tonight.

Anyway, I've been spending my lazy hours doing something I should've done months ago, building a spreadsheet of parks.  We'll see whether I finish hiking the set of downtown parks now known to me this rainy weekend, or punt and finish the spreadsheet instead, so as to go on longer hikes, to more parks, next weekend when (anything's possible) it might rain a little less.

Until whenever, then, dear Diary, good night and good days.

All Night Long, Holiday Edition

Dear Diary,

Happy Thanksgiving!

Last night I was itching to go hiking, and the weather forecasters were claiming that there wouldn't be that much rain.  Also, Boeing Field has started to record temperatures of 32° F, but only just barely.  So I thought of parks whose restrooms seemed likely to be open 24 hours and which I hadn't yet visited in that capacity, and got started.

And there's something to be thankful for!  The restrooms were indeed open at all three parks I visited - Bitter Lake Playfield (where they'll probably be closed soon, though not because of the temperature), Gas Works Park (where they should stay open all winter), and one to be named soon (that link to the Google Drive folder with the photos won't work until then; those restrooms not only close each winter, but have to).

On a less delightful note, I found the shelter at Gas Works Park empty for only the second time since I first found it, probably not too long after 2014.  Maybe it was swept in mid-September.  Unfortunately, that huge, dry shelter is right next to the playground, which makes its semi-permanent occupation more problematic.  I was surprised, of course, to find the shelter empty, whether or not it had been swept, and wondered whether the campers - who all had tents, even though they didn't really need them there - had moved to other parts of the park; but I hiked around for a while without finding a single tent.  Anyway, I was too disheartened by that, and by the realisation that I actually lacked the strength to end the night by walking Woodland and Green Lake Parks, to take any photos of the newly revealed shelter.

Still, this is not a story of the parks working normally.  It is commonly claimed that Seattle has only six 24-hour public restrooms.  I've encountered this meme being attributed to at least two sources; one isn't online, but the other, Review of Navigation Team:  2018 Quarter 2 Report (PDF), by David G. Jones, City Auditor, has all the bits of the meme familiar to me on the report's pages 21 and 22, and on page 23 lists the alleged six.  I can't help thinking Jones must not have looked very hard.  His list turns out to be four "sanican"s, and the "wading pool" and "65th St" restrooms at Green Lake Park.  But "sanican"s were far more numerous in the parks than that already in 2018.  Perhaps he was misled by the parks' official hours; it's true that Green Lake is one of the few parks officially open 24 hours, but I don't think the average person experiencing late-night need is going to care, and at least I have never been challenged for late-night visits to parks.  Perhaps he never encountered the park workers' gossip through which I first heard that View Ridge Playfield's restrooms have been 24 hours for "many years".  And maybe park workers used to be much more on the ball, and got the restrooms locked diligently at out-of-the-way places like Bitter Lake Playfield and Carkeek Park.  But in any event, last night, there were probably four pairs of restrooms open at Woodland and Green Lake Parks, and four more open north (Bitter Lake), south (Gas Works), east (View Ridge) and west (Carkeek) of those.  Not even counting the "Portland Loo" at Ballard Commons, which also existed in 2018.  That's eight, or maybe nine, sites just in about a third of the city.  Some - Woodland, perhaps Bitter Lake - are likely to start closing once the famous homeless encampments there are swept, and Gas Works was opened specifically in response to the pandemic.  And Bitter Lake is needlessly seasonal (which, from its geographical position, it oughtn't be).  But nothing requires the city to go back to its old ways of doing things, and even those included more 24-hour real restrooms, to say nothing of the thousands of "sanican"s, than Jones found.

So, being as generous to Jones as I can manage, let's give thanks that in this regard, at least, things have changed for the better, and let's resolve to try hard to keep them changed.  Park restrooms are too inconvenient to be a real solution, but if we can't even keep what we've got now, we'll never get the restrooms we really need.  Thanks!

Speaking of the restrooms we really need, I expect to finish surveying the downtown parks this long weekend.  Until then, dear Diary, a happy holiday, and happy days.

Few Restrooms Closed, Only One Water Fountain Running in Today's Hike

Dear Diary,

Today I visited eight parks.  I only walked through the Wallingford Steps, but in each of the others there's a water fountain or (more usually) both a fountain and restrooms, and I took pictures of these with today's newspaper in each one.

I'm not going to spend the rest of the night uploading those pictures to Blogspot.  I've just uploaded them all to my Google Drive account, and it appears that the following link enables anyone who wishes to see those photos to see them.

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

Aside from not boring you and anyone who reads you with endless door shots, this has the great advantage that the date and time information that is the bulk of each photo's meta-information is preserved intact.  On top of which, each photo has tonight as its last-modified date, and each photo has today's newspaper in it.  I finally have redundantly dated photos for you, dear Diary, only I can't show them to you directly in your pages to accomplish that.  Sorry!

Anyway, then, as of this afternoon and early evening, here's a summary of the results by function:

Water fountain running at Sunset Place, which is in Northwest.  All the other parks I got to are in North, and no water fountain known to me was running in any of those.  They are:  Meridian Playground, Wallingford Playfield, Gas Works Park, B. F. Day Playground, Woodland Park and Green Lake Park.

Restrooms closed at Woodland Park (Citywide Athletics Building, which the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation nicknames "Rio") and at Green Lake Park (Community Center, women's room only).  Both closures had explanations posted, and were not simply the result of negligence.  All the other restrooms I visited were open, including ones in Meridian Playground, Wallingford Playfield, Gas Works Park, Woodland Park and Green Lake Park.

Results by park:

Meridian Playground - restrooms open (as usual, except that they close in winter), water fountain hopelessly damaged in a way that suggests metal thievery, as it has been since I first saw it last year.  I also decided to take notes on men's rooms on this series of hikes, and the men's room at Meridian has one toilet, one urinal, one sink, one dryer, and one soap dispenser.  I tried at least one sink for each men's room this kind of note is attached to, found it not of the kind that mostly sprays users' clothes, and found any dryer mentioned working.

Street fountain on N 45th St near Wallingford Ave N - still not running, as it has been since late March; before that, as far as I knew, it ran throughout the pandemic, incuding winter.  I took a picture, but either it didn't actually get taken, or I deleted it accidentally from my phone.  (My phone's camera has recently eliminated a feature that helped me know whether it really took a picture, so I periodically have to go through deleting duplicate and triplicate photos.)  When I take another photo of it, there'll be a folder at Google Drive for that photo.

Wallingford Playfield - restrooms open (as usual), water fountain recently repaired but still not running; last year it was hopelessly damaged.  The men's room at Wallingford has the same things as the one at Meridian.  I did not note, this time, at either of these parks, whether the toilet stalls had doors.

Gas Works Park - restrooms open (they're officially open 24 hours at least during the pandemic), water fountain not running; it still shows no sign of damage, but hasn't, as far as I know, run since the pandemic began.  The men's room has two toilets without stall doors, one urinal, one sink, and one soap dispenser.

B. F. Day Playground - water fountain not running.  It gave a trickle last spring and was running last autumn.

Sunset Place - water fountain running.  It ran both last spring and last autumn.

Woodland Park - By region:

• Northwest - There's a single water fountain near the entrance to the park at Phinney Ave N and N 59th St.  It's too damaged to use, as it has been since I found it last autumn, but the style of the damage suggests that it may have been disabled by parks staff rather than by metal thieves.
• Lawn bowling - A restroom building is right next to one of the lawn bowling greens near the park entrance at Aurora Ave N and West Green Lake Way N; its restrooms were limitedly open in winter, but last year were unpredictably 24 hours.  The men's room has two toilets without stall doors, one urinal, one sink, no dryer, and one soap dispenser.  One water fountain is under its eaves, within the usually locked bowling green; it wasn't running last autumn.  Another is some distance away, near shelter 6; it ran last autumn, but isn't running now.  Neither looks damaged.
  
• Pink Palace - Some way south of the lawn bowling restrooms this quite pink building is at the top of a hill.  It has two water fountains attached to it which haven't run since the pandemic began and still don't; they don't look damaged.  The restrooms have been open most nights I've been near them since the pandemic began.  The men's room has two toilet stalls with doors, one urinal, two sinks, one dryer, and one soap dispenser.
  
• 50th - Northwest of Woodland Park Ave N and N 50th St there's a restroom building which has been open 24 hours somewhat less reliably than the Pink Palace.  The men's room has two toilets without stall doors, one urinal, two sinks, one dryer, and would have a soap dispenser except that someone has stolen it.  Right out front of the men's room is a really old-fashioned water fountain which hasn't run since the pandemic began, but has been disabled since at least last autumn in a way reminiscent of the northwest fountain.  The same is true of a water fountain directly north of Woodland Park Ave N, which is of the same make as the northwest fountain and disabled in the same ways.
• Citywide Athletics Building (again, "Rio") - Two water fountains are on either side of the home plate of the big baseball diamond at the park's southeast corner.  They have both been hopelessly disabled, probably by metal thieves and maybe by the same bunch as at Meridian Playground, since the pandemic began.  North of the baseball diamond is the Citywide Athletics Building.  It has restrooms that open to the outside, and are normally open in winter, but since January have been posted as closed due to vandalism, which forced the parks department to do some juggling.
• Cloverleaf - With the big baseball diamond as field #1, the four Leo Lassen Fields are #3-#6, vaguely resembling a four-leafed clover.  A building with the address 5427 East Green Lake Way N in the middle of the cloverleaf holds two restrooms with doors that open to the outside.  These normally close in winter, but this winter were open with limited hours.  They were open today.  The water fountain attached to the building gave a trickle last May, and ran last October - that's only two in the park, the other being near shelter 6 - but isn't running now.  A girls' game was going on, resulting in a real crowd near this building, so I didn't take notes on the men's room, and thereafter stopped partly from forgetting, partly from rain.
  

Green Lake Park - By region; all restrooms can be open all year:

• Small Craft Center (nicknamed "Shellhouse" by the parks department), near the southern end of the lake.  Most of last year, I think these restrooms were open 24 hours, but the people who work there were unhappy with the results, and as of winter, it closes, though later than most park restrooms.  Two water fountains attached to two buildings ran last year (in spring as well as fall), but haven't been started yet this year.
• 64th St (nicknamed "65th St" by the parks department).  These restrooms were usually open 24 hours last year, and are now the designated 24 hour restrooms of this park.  I've never found a water fountain near them.  On the way there I saw geese escorting their goslings:
  
  
  
• Community Center.  The Green Lake Community Center and Evans Pool have been undergoing inscrutable construction work that got a lot more scrutable sometime between January and now with the erection of a sign that explains that they're doing "stabilization" work now, with the hope to buy time until mid-decade, to allow a more thorough planning of the replacement.
  
  The restrooms have been unpredictably open, but in recent visits ("Hikes 12 and 14" and today) the men's room has been open but not the women's.  Today the men's room had both warm and cold water, but it's a good idea to make sure it at least has cold running water before using it.  The water fountain trailward of the building ran last fall, but doesn't run now.
  
• Wading pool, at the north end of the park.  These restrooms have usually been the official 24 hour restrooms of the park, and are still usually open 24 hours.  Two water fountains attached to the building ran last fall, but not now; I didn't find the free-standing double fountain not far away then, so haven't observed it running.
• Theatre, the building known as the Bathhouse or Bath House Theater, the company inside it the Seattle Public Theater (parks department nickname "Bath House" or "Bathhouse").   I didn't find these restrooms open last May or October; they're supposed to open in summer for the theatre season, and by different people expected to open in winter too.  I first found them open in January and had to eat some crow about it; they're open now too, which they definitely oughtn't normally be.  So much as I complain about the parks department ignoring the pandemic in their decision-making, this is a notable exception.  Anyway, there's a free-standing double fountain in front of the men's room, and two fountains attached in back of the women's room; I'm pretty sure all ran last October, but none run now.

And since I got that far only after 7 P.M. (closing times for the Bathhouse, Community Center and Shellhouse restrooms seem to be between 8 and 9 P.M.), it was too late to go on to the parks of Greenwood, so that's as far as I got in "N" today.

More about the hikes I'm now trying to plan tomorrow, dear Diary; it's been quiet time for a quarter hour again.  Good night.

Another Hike along Lake Union and the Fremont Cut

Dear Diary,

There are lots of places to tell you about in this page, and lots of photos to show you, and I think the ground rules are by now pretty clear, so let's get started, shall we?  This page includes the only bona fide park I found by doing this in the first region I hiked.

This page's predecessor is "While Strolling in the Parks One Day", part II.

EDIT 5/11:  Map (the new bona fide park is "C"):

Sunnyside Ave N Boat Ramp

Despite its omission from the 2021 real property report, this park, which is the one I forgot to visit last Saturday, is still there:

and still has a "sanican", presumably for the benefit not only of boaters but also of the vehicle campers still parked nearby:

Harbor Patrol and Shop

This is ostentatiously not open to the public, and also neither parklike nor photogenic, so I took no photos, but it would be silly not to mention it at all.

It's sort of within the western side of Gas Works Park, whose restrooms were still open and whose water fountain was still not running.

North Transfer Station

and its Playground

When I lived in an SRO, as a "hotel" it didn't have to comply with city trash rules, so it didn't.  I therefore trudged to the North Transfer Station fairly regularly to get rid of my recycling.  Then I became homeless; although recycling while I stayed on Capitol Hill and downtown was a bit of a challenge, once I lived at the University I saw no reason to go anywhere else to dispose of my trash.  Moreover, the station was closed from 2014 to 2016 for a complete rebuild.  So I hadn't come back since it re-opened, and it looks like a lot of other people haven't come back either.  I'd found Meridian Playground and Gilman Playfield both crowded both days, but didn't see another human being the entire time I toured this one.

Yes, really, there's now an actual playground at the North Transfer Station.  If approached from the south, the label "playground" might be a bit confusing, because while there are nice wooden benches:

and a proper half-court for basketball:

all there is for "play" equipment is these space-age-ish structures obviously for grown-ups:

(notice the instruction panel in the background).

It turns out that the playground proper is across N 35th St, between Carr Place N and Woodlawn Ave N:

and at 2:17 P.M. on a Wednesday, there were no children there.

Clearly something has gone wrong with this playground's publicity, but there may be another factor.  Wallingford Playfield has restrooms open all year.  Meridian Playground's are open anyway about seven months of the year.  This one?  In principle it has restrooms, in the building:

but we all know what happened to those:

Anyway.  There is also public art, by Jean Shin, using materials from the old building:

The business side of the site is apparently open to the public again after all, but that wasn't what the sign said:

I did glimpse an employee running to her car here.  Anyway, I figured if I wasn't welcome I should leave, and did so, but first took a picture of the promised "sanican", which would be in the left background if it were visible in the photo above:

3500 Interlake Ave N

This site across 35th from the station has a big fence around it, so I didn't take any pictures, but one of the signs on the fence explains that what's being built there is a tunnel for storage of storm water overflows.

The Burke-Gilman Trail

There's a "sanican" a little way south of where the trail intersects Stone Way N.  It evidently isn't city-funded, or they would've claimed credit for it in the map I hiked to check in January, but it's only locked so as to keep it from being locked, see:

 

Land under Fremont Bridge

I'm not actually sure this rather large site, with the notional address of 3101 Fremont Ave N, is actually in Fremont as opposed to Queen Anne, but if it is in Fremont, it's a parking lot.

Lake WA Ship Canal Tower 2

This is infrastructure, and has nothing to do with restrooms or homeless people, but it's very public, very photogenic, and in a park.  Everyone who traverses this part of the Burke-Gilman Trail passes under it.  So here's a photo:

Whew.  One more "another" hike, and after that most hikes will include both parks and other city stuff.  Until later, dear Diary.

While Strolling in the Parks One Day, part II

Dear Diary,

This is the second of, I hope, four pages about my hike today.  This one covers two parks on Wallingford's Lake Union coast, plus one waterway (a state-owned property explained in detail October 8 in "Lake Union's North Shore").  This hike was primarily about:  1) whether restrooms were open or closed; 2) whether water fountains were running or not running; 3) taking lots of photos; 4) in particular, looking for any hint that water fountains or restrooms had been added to any park I hadn't visited since last spring, and taking photos meant to document that they hadn't.

EDIT 5/11 Map:

Gas Works Park

My January visit to this park is described in "Hike 8A" from March 21, which also gives reference to previous pages relevant to this smallest of North Seattle's famous parks.  In general, I've avoided taking any but purely functional photos of this and the other famous parks, so I started by taking some clearly non-functional ones today:

Much of Gas Works Park's land area actually consists of rolling, grassy hills pretty much like this.  The things it's famous for are concentrated in the park's eastern half:

That said, I also took functional photos.  This park was publicly announced last year as offering 24 hour restroom availability.  By my standards it's deficient in privacy and service - soap and drying capacity, in particular - compared to most of the other 24-hour park restrooms in North Seattle, so I've basically taken for granted that the city followed through on this announcement, because it would be far too easy to embarrass them if they hadn't, and avoided visiting it personally at night.  But anyway, today the restrooms were open, as expected:

And the men's room lacked privacy, soap, and a dryer, as expected.

Also as expected, the water fountain isn't running.  It wasn't last October, either.  Note, please:  The many water fountains across North Seattle in this situation haven't provided water at least since November 2019.  A year and a half ago now.  Is it any wonder many have been vandalised?

Waterway 19

As mentioned above, the state Department of Natural Resources controls the Lake Union waterways, of which at least ten, and probably at most eleven, are on the northern shores.  It licenses various entities to occupy them.  Waterway 19 is the only one the Seattle parks department has licensed and operates as a more or less regular Seattle park in its own right.  (Others have been incorporated into the Burke-Gilman Trail, and part of waterway 14 is incorporated into Northlake Park.)  Waterway 19 would be called a "Natural Area" except that in North Seattle only politically well-connected creek valleys get that name, so it just retains its previous name, but what it fundamentally is, is a Natural Area on Lake Union's shore.  Examples:

It's adjacent to Gas Works Park, to the east, and I've mentioned it to you, dear Diary, June 9 in "At the Centre of the Universe, Does Gas Work?" and October 8 in "Lake Union's North Shore", but the only previous photos I've shown you were in "Past Work and Gas Works" June 21.

Waterway 21

This is a small, pleasant viewpoint with benches not far from Stone Way N.  It had started raining - not mist or drizzle, but actual raindrops, though rather infrequent - while I was in Gas Works Park, and I needed to plan the rest of my trip in a less crowded place.  So even though it's not a bona fide Seattle parks department park, my focus on these trips, I figured it deserved a photo.

You already have several more photos of this one in "Lake Union's North Shore", dear Diary.  I have no idea who licensed it and put all that nice stuff there, frustrating though that all must be for boaters who want to use it the way waterways were used in the 19th century, as boat access to and from the water.

Well, this is a gracelessly short and rather incoherent page, but I was worried about adding these photos to the crowd on the previous page.  Next, on to Fremont.

Hike 8A: Near North

Dear Diary,

On January 19 I set off for Ballard.  My plan was always to visit the three parks in this page along the way, which is why I designated Wallingford Playfield and Meridian Playground, too far up the wrong hill, as "inconvenient" right from the start.

And although all these hikes were kind of predictable once I had decoded the map, from the city's Department of Human Services, of restrooms supposedly open this winter, the map these hikes were meant to check, a decoding described in "How to Lie to the Homeless" too many days ago - still they were part of the task.  They'll also get a bit more interesting after this page, which hasn't much story to it.  Sorry, dear Diary.

Sunnyside Ave N Boat Ramp

This small park is also presented as a street end by those who deal with those.  I've told you about it, therefore, dear Diary, in "At the Centre of the Universe, Does Gas Work?" on June 9, and again in "Street Ends:  North Lake Union" December 21.  But neither park nor street end brought me there on January 19; instead, the presence of a city-funded "sanican" did.

While I was there, for some reason I thought I hadn't photographed the view from the shore in October, so I took another photo.  I think it's slightly worse than the one in the street ends page, but anyhow:

In these hikes I'll take what beauty I can get.

Yes, this stop was kinda trivial, or so it seems.  But a lot of people appeared to be living, that day in January, in the parking areas across Northlake Way from this "sanican", and not all of them had RVs.  I really have no idea how much daily use the thing gets, but wouldn't be surprised if it were significant.

At this hour, today, the map correctly reports that this park hosts one "sanican", that it isn't ADA and doesn't offer hand-washing.  I think that map, all in all, represents a deliberate attempt to lie to Seattle's homeless, but it's so constructed that it also tells a fair bit of truth, and this is an example.

Gas Works Park

This is one of North Seattle's marquee parks, dear Diary, though the smallest of those.  So I've told you about it in plenty of pages.  See, besides "At the Centre":  June 21, "Past Work and Gas Works"; September 6, "Cal Anderson Park Is Not a Park"; October 8, "South of North Once More", part I; and November 23, "Standing Room Only", part III.

This park's restrooms have been announced as 24 hours, so it was no surprise at all to find them open in broad daylight:

The, um, least unattractive side of the restroom building:

From there I climbed up the right hill, by way of Troll's Knoll Park (stopping along the way to replace the photograph of the Troll my stolen phone had held) to 

B. F. Day Playground

This smallish park has figured in two of the same pages as Gas Works Park, "At the Centre" and "South of North".  And in the latter, dear Diary, I mocked it unfairly.  I showed photos of a sign saying the playground equipment was open and another saying the playground was closed, and made fun of the mixed message.  Problem is, the sign saying the playground is closed actually refers to a different playground, that of the school next door, which actually is closed.  Sorry!

To try to make up for that, I looked at the basketball court and got a pleasant surprise:  two baskets facing each other from a reasonable distance:

But the reason I was there was that the map had initially shown a "sanican" there, but then had retracted the claim, so I wanted to see for myself.  Well, here's where it used to be:

My guess is that with no ball games happening there, but COVID testing happening at Northgate Park, the city decided there was a greater need elsewhere.

Anyway, after that I went to Ballard, but I'm out of time to tell you about that tonight, dear Diary.