Dear Diary,
As I told you last night, I visited thirteen parks yesterday, hiking from about 8:30 A.M. to about 7:30 P.M. to do it. I can't do that every day, if only because then I'd never be able to tell you about it at all. So today I'm writing in you instead of hiking.
This hike covered everything left west of I-5 except for five NW sites: Ballard Commons, Ballard Community Center and Playground, Loyal Heights Community Center and Playfield, Salmon Bay Park, and Webster Park. I also tidied up a loose end between I-5 and Lake City Way NE. There may be a similar loose end west of I-5 among the parks I visited yesterday, but otherwise most of what's left is the entire set of parks east of both I-5 and Lake City Way NE, fifteen parks, including such convenient, easily visited ones as Cedar Park and Magnuson Park. Oh, well.
I hope to visit all twenty remaining parks - specifically, all restrooms and water fountains in them - before the month is over, but we'll see. Meanwhile, yesterday, first by function, then by park.
Most of the photos, as for the previous hike, are in a public folder at my Google Drive account, URL:
<https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1cfrNdJI9NVY3ux7OoGI7B8Vg3Klq3liT?usp=sharing>
Most photos in this page aren't in that folder, however.
Restrooms - Closed at Licton Springs Park. I speculate that this is to discourage the unbelievably messy campers who were there last year from returning. However, it's also possible that whoever opened restrooms yesterday morning just forgot this park, so I suppose I should go back a couple of times, as I did with Maple Leaf Reservoir Park, which I finally found open yesterday morning. Otherwise, open; this includes Northacres Park (two pairs of restrooms, which I identify as park and playfield), Bitter Lake Playfield, Carkeek Park, Greenwood Park (only one restroom, and my photo happened to catch a wide beam of light coming in through one of the peepholes), Sandel Playground, Soundview Playfield, and Golden Gardens Park (two pairs of restrooms, which I identify as upper and lower).
For most of the men's or all-gender rooms, I took notes of how many of each major item it had, and tested the sinks and dryers by starting the water running, waving my hand around trying to get the water to splash me, and then drying my hand off (if there was a dryer). By default, for each park for which I list items, the sink did not splash me, and the dryer, if any, worked. I note exceptions.
Water fountains - Running at Bitter Lake Playfield (fountain near the playground, which I hadn't noticed before), Licton Springs Park, Greenwood Park, and Crown Hill Park. Present (including the southern Golden Gardens Park water fountain, which I hadn't seen either in October or in January, and fountains I observed for the first time at Carkeek and Green Lake Parks) but not running at the rest, except for Baker Park on Crown Hill, where I finally found people other than me who attested the absence of the water fountain.
By park:
Maple Leaf Reservoir Park
As noted above, the third try was the charm. This is the second series of hikes on which I've had trouble with this park's restrooms not being open; so I'm guessing this isn't coincidence, but a park whose restrooms are often forgotten, or opened last and closed first, by door openers. This park has a free-standing double water fountain, and one of those is one of the fountains for which my photo doesn't include my finger pressing the button. The men's room has one toilet with a stall door, one urinal, one sink, one dryer, and one soap dispenser.
It appears currently to be illegal to walk 1st Ave NE from 95th St to 103rd St owing to construction on both sides of the street having closed both the sidewalk on one side and the shoulder on the other. Luckily, no police were around when I did so.
Northacres Park
I started with the playfield side, which one approaches via 3rd Ave NE. The water fountain there is unusually full of stuff that is unlikely to allow it to function well in whatever far-off day water fountains are allowed to run in North Seattle again:
The playfield side men's room has two toilets without stall doors, a wide urinal that without social distancing would easily fit two men and with difficulty three, one sink with a really wide counter, one dryer and one soap dispenser. This men's room sink has delivered water under such high pressure that most of it ends up on the user's clothes ever since I first visited this park last May.
The parks department probably refers to the other set of restrooms as "playground" or "pg" (I can't be sure because the map I hiked last January to check still doesn't admit that these are open), but since Northacres's signage refers to "Northacres Park and Playfield", I figure the non-playfield part is simply the "park". Anyway, these rooms are single-user stalls, and in Seattle parks in general, that means what it means here: one toilet, one sink, one dryer, one soap dispenser, and no urinals. I forgot to check the sinks and dryers at this location.
The water fountains here are designed to run all winter, but were shut off last winter. I've complained about this before, attributing my knowledge to an employee of Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation whom I met at this location last spring. However, it turns out I had another source of information:
I was told last winter that the department's plumber averred that the department owns no winter-proof water fountains. So is this water fountain an interloper owned by some nefarious third party, or was he wrong? Or is he simply helping cover up the extent of the current city government's reluctance to provide water?
From Northacres it's a pretty easy and quick hike across, um, Aurora to the next park.
Bitter Lake Playfield
It seems Bitter Lake Playfield is soon to be blest with its own lack of urinals. Right now the men's room there has one toilet with a stall door, one urinal, one sink, one dryer and one soap dispenser. I used the urinal, being unsure what some spots on the toilet's seat were. However:
Plans are afoot to renovate these restrooms, about a year from now, and turn them into single-user all-gender stalls. This conversion, seems to me, normally has two effects: it reduces the total number of stalls available; and it gets rid of urinals.
Perhaps the sight of a urinal is traumatic to some women and/or transgender people. But the sight of yellow spots on a toilet seat is irksome to a whole lot more women, and some of pretty much every other category of human. The usual response to this argument seems to be that men should be better than we, in fact, are; in other words, it's wishful thinking, or perhaps punitive thinking - until men are perfect, it's better that everyone suffer. I have the impression that over the longer term, this conversion is likely to come to many parks, so people in Seattle in general, and in the area around Bitter Lake right now, should assess whether they're OK with this probable result, and if not, speak up.
As for reduction: Why on Earth, having lived through the current pandemic, would anyone think fewer park restroom stalls is a good idea? Why hasn't this experience driven a stake through the unbeating heart of this process? Inquiring minds want to know.
In the meantime, in a photo that is at the Google Drive folder, someone seems, this past winter, to have expressed displeasure at the "sanican"s that alone were available:
PubliCola has just reported on the evil deeds of the terrorist pedophiliac Satanists who camp in this park, which include starting both the COVID-19 epidemic and World War II, and now we can add illegal fires to the long list of their crimes.
I dawdled on the way to the next park to wait for an advertised garage sale to open. I bought a book there.
Carkeek Park
A few feet to the side of the Environmental Learning Center's "sanican", the one that's now locked each night against intruders (but nobody was keeping watch by day to enforce its notional restriction to certain users) - anyway, a few feet to the side, sits one of the oldest water fountains in North Seattle:
It's similar to one in Woodland Park, the one adjacent to the N 50th St restrooms, and not to anything else in North Seattle. It looks like it could have been made by the same people who made the shut-down water fountain in Freeway Park that's obviously over a century old.
I'm ashamed that I allowed my aversion to "sanican"s to blind me to this fountain's existence for so long. To be a little more precise: I've explored the ELC on, I think, each visit, and can easily imagine that I'd seen the fountain before but not recognised it for what it is. But in general, once I knew there were no restrooms with doors opening outside in the ELC, it fell off my priority list, and I'm pretty sure at least one or two explorations were by night. Oops.
Oh, and by the way. Carkeek Park is by far big enough to have two or even three or four pairs of restrooms. I presume the reason it doesn't is that the ELC has restrooms. However, the parks department's web page listing ELCs currently says: "Though the Environmental Learning Center at Carkeek Park is available for rentals, we regret that because of budget reductions, it is no longer open to the public." Oops. Carkeek Park should get more restrooms of its own.
Of course, it does already have restrooms of its own, a mile or so from the ELC. These are amazingly large, as if quantity could make up for distance. The men's room has three toilets with doors, an oversized urinal as at Northacres playfield, two sinks, one soap dispenser, and no dryers. The sinks do not splash clothes.
In order to check the water fountain at the Eddie McAbee Entrance, as well as to go south, I left the park by the Piper's Creek trail, the same one described in "Escaping Carkeek Park". This is the trail by which I entered it for the second time last spring, and at that time I described, in "The Ballard Seacoast" part II,
Unfortunately, I didn't take, or at least didn't show you, dear Diary, a photo of these posts, and now they're gone; I thought so in January and now am sure. I did find a couple of signs branded "Salmon Stories", but they aren't new and I saw only two.
However, many posts seem to have held signs of about that size in the past, but to have had them removed, presumably by vandals. So maybe "Salmon Stories" was some sort of successor to "Story Trail", but it isn't any more, and now "Story Trail" itself has been not only forgotten, but also erased. Not only does this mean I can't now show you a picture of the posts, dear Diary - and a quick Google Image Search turns up none as well - but I also doubt I still have the URL they used to be at, which was on those posts.
As your next page will make clear, dear Diary, I care about stories, and I care about cultural loss, so this bothers me more than it may bother other people. Maybe I should go on to the next park, but anyway, I want to register my unhappiness with this decision. [EDIT 5/23: No, the next page didn't make that clear; I was in a hurry, and forgot.]
Licton Springs Park
As I said, the trash is gone:
But I assume the restrooms' closure is a lingering effect of that trash and the reprehensible homeless people who left it. The water fountains are running; I'd set out with two full bottles of water that morning, so as not to have to turn aside to buy water, but by this point in the afternoon had drunk more than one. So I filled the empty bottle there, and if the water didn't taste great, it was certainly good enough, and I drank most of it before getting home.
Greenwood Park
Restroom open, water fountain running.
Sandel Playground
Restrooms open, water fountain off.
Baker Park on Crown Hill
Last October, I visited this park, unlike most parks without water fountains, because the parks department's web page claims it has one. I also asked people who were there - young parents - if they knew anything, but they all said they hadn't been visiting the park long enough to be aware of any water fountains.
Well, I tried that again this time, but got the same results.
Finally I plucked up my courage and approached the party in one corner of the park. They appeared to be a group who knew each other from some combination of school and/or work, probably all in their twenties but probably not early twenties. Their first reaction was to offer me alcohol (like the mayor!), then they found some fizzy water and offered me that, but several of them were quite definite that they remembered the park's re-opening from renovations last year, and did not remember a water fountain being present then or since.
So it isn't just my imagination. There really isn't a water fountain at this park, and I'm wondering how long the parks department is going to go on advertising its presence without actually installing the thing.
I stumbled on something odd in the pavement that might be, but probably isn't, the intended hookup; this picture is at the Google Drive folder, being all there was to photograph of the supposed Baker Park on Crown Hill water fountain:
Oh, darn, it isn't even in the pavement.
Crown Hill Park
This park is adjacent to a playground that used to belong to a school. Now the building in question is a landlord to non-profits, and the playground was inherited by some sort of child care center, which promised to keep the playground open to the public on a similar basis to what the school had offered. This promise is still not being kept, nearly a year after my first visit:
There were girls' games going on in the ballfields at both this park and Soundview Playfield, but here they had a working water fountain, while there they had restrooms.
Soundview Playfield
Soundview Playfield's restrooms distinctively have no signage at all. No "men's" or "women's" or even "all-gender". Just nothing. The photos at the Google Drive folder, dear Diary, make this clear, since the single-user stalls here are hard to prop open, so I just shot the fact that I could open them enough to stick my newspaper in.
Perhaps the absence of the "all-gender" label is how they get away with having a different suite of features from those at, say, Laurelhurst Community Center, or Northacres Park park-side: Each stall has one toilet, one urinal, one sink, one or two dryers (the old one in the south-facing stall doesn't work), and one soap dispenser. It's easy to imagine that this old-looking building was originally meant for male athletes only, and that's why the stalls both have urinals. But anyway, they show that it's at least physically, if not culturally, possible to put urinals into single-user stalls. The girls I saw dealing with the south-facing stall did in fact get grossed out, but by a spider, not by the urinal.
The south-facing stall's sink has, as I previously reported, a sink whose water pressure is so strong that way too much of it lands on clothing. In this case I didn't dodge fast enough, and since I had my vaccination card in my shirt pocket, this was a sub-optimal result; but the card seemed undamaged in the end. The east-facing stall's sink is just fine.
The water fountain is not on. Rachel Schulkin, communications manager for the parks department, told me last October that all the water fountains that could be turned on had been. I hope in general that this isn't true - all those fountains with busted controls - but in this particular case I think it's realistic to hope it isn't true, because the water fountain is near a water play area that isn't on, so it's plausible that they can't turn the one on without the other.
Golden Gardens Park
Was crowded, as usual. Both pairs of restrooms were open, and I have to revise my previous statement that the beach pair is extra-capacious. The upper pair, usually referred to in relation to the off-leash area for dogs' people nearby, has a men's room with two toilets that lack stall doors, a wide urinal as at Carkeek and Northacres Parks, a sink, a soap dispenser, and no dryer. The lower men's room has one toilet with a stall door, two urinals (as opposed to the just-described wide urinals), one sink, one soap dispenser, and one dryer. There were two men in safety fluorescent vests, parks department employees, in the doorway of the lower women's room when I went to photograph it; one walked away, the other told me yes, they were there to close it, but while I photographed the open doorway he walked away, and I'm not sure when they did get around to actually closing the restrooms. I saw them later directing traffic; they seemed assigned to the park for the day.
[The above paragraph edited later the same day. The upper restrooms' toilets don't have stall doors; I'd mis-read my notes.]
The last two times I visited Golden Gardens Park I didn't find the south water fountain. It is now clear to me that this is because I didn't go far enough south. More precisely, in October I left via the Burke-Gilman Trail. The south water fountain is so far south that it's essentially adjacent to the Eddie Vine Boat Ramp; the trail is some distance from it. And in January I didn't even try; my whole visit to this park was while I waited for a friend to bring a replacement cart, so I rushed.
Like other water fountains I saw on this hike, it's weird. But that photo (which is at Google Drive) is timed 6:51 P.M. I noted the time as I passed the open doorways of the upper restrooms: 7:09 P.M. So I didn't go on to Loyal Heights Playfield.
Green Lake Park
Later that evening I passed a park water fountain where I didn't at all expect one, though many people walk past it every day. It's at the intersection of East Green Lake Way N and NE 72nd St. I showed you, dear Diary, a picture of it in the previous page, and my other picture of it (with newspaper) is at Google Drive, so there's no point in reproducing either photo here, but the entire control is gone. There is something metallic just inside there, seeming loose. I think it's extremely unlikely that metal thieves came and restrained themselves to only taking the controls, because taking that next piece would just be greedy, so this only strengthens my belief that control damage is usually not done by conscious evildoers, but by parks employees, for reasons I'll discuss in a page a week or two away.
Anyway, that's what I saw in and around Seattle parks yesterday, dear Diary. I hope still to write one more page in you tonight, and after that we'll see what happens. Happy hours, or perhaps days...
