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.

Happy Birthday, Dear Diary! Seattle Parks Lied Again!

Dear Diary,

I'm sorry for neglecting you for so long, and especially given that I left you on a cliffhanger, not knowing whether I'd become homeless over a month ago or had gotten a job at long last.

Well, it was the latter.  I've spent years of my life preparing people's taxes, and got a job by being willing to keep a tax office open the entirety of its open hours.  Which left me only one day off per week.

So I spent those days off hiking, but didn't even get around to uploading the photos to Google Drive timely, much less telling you, Dear Diary, about the hikes, with all the maps and other paraphernalia we've gotten used to.

Now that tax season is over, mirabile dictu, I still have a job, but with considerably fewer hours.  And I wanted to congratulate you on your third birthday, Dear Diary, with a preview of those hikes' results.

I'd told you before about the announcement by Christina Hirsch in November 2022 of which park restrooms would be open this winter.  It's her second such announcement, the first having appeared in 2019.  The 2019 list turned out to be a much better guide to which park restrooms in North Seattle were open during the winter of 2020-2021 than the map the city was then promoting as answering that question.  But by now, things have changed.  The 2022 list omits a few restrooms the 2019 list included:  Ballard Commons (which was fenced closed until March 12 of this year); Cal Anderson Park (sort of:  it's listed this time as having had "portables", but the 2019 list had no such note); Discovery Park's beach restrooms; Green Lake Park's Bathhouse restrooms (which I nevertheless found open).

And it adds a ton of others, eighteen, near as I can count.  Only four of these are in North Seattle, and in my own November 2022 discussion I expressed surprise about three of these.  I didn't find any of the four actually open.

On Sunday, February 19th, at 3:08 P.M., Little Brook Park's restroom (yes, only one) was closed with a seasonal closure sign posted:

At 4:17 P.M. that day, I found University Playground's restrooms not only closed, but welded closed:

On Sunday, February 26th at 6:33 P.M., I found Salmon Bay Park's restrooms closed.  I didn't think they looked like they'd been used recently, but the thing is, park restroom hours are 7 A.M. to 7 P.M. most times of the year, and I was trying, in these hikes, to be extremely fair to Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation, by limiting my hikes to 8 A.M. to 6 P.M.  So I went back to Salmon Bay Park on Sunday, March 12th at 5:47 P.M.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, March 5th, I'd reached Sandel Playground at 6:06 P.M., technically outside my limits, but I mean, really.  Of the many lies I caught the parks department in during the winter of 2020-2021, the only one that took Ms. Hirsch's colleague Rachel Schulkin by surprise was that Sandel Playground's restrooms were closed.  They hadn't been in the 2019 list, but in 2020-2021 they were supposed to have been open, and weren't.  The same happened in 2022-2023:

I wasn't able to get back to Sandel Playground before 6 P.M. until Wednesday, March 22nd, and having already found Greenwood Park's restroom, a twin to Little Brook Park's, open that day, was unsurprised to find Sandel Playground's restrooms open too.

Basically, I think none of the four additions in North Seattle was real, and three were outright lies.  The question I had, though, was whether that was Ms. Hirsch's little joke on you, dear Diary, and me, or whether the parks department was really inflating its winter restroom numbers city-wide.  I thought if those four were the only additions, that would be a give-away, but actually there were fourteen other additions, none of which I got a chance to visit.  Dear Diary, you've been visited a lot ever since I signed up at an active job-hunting site, but I'm not sure how many of those visits have been by actual human beings.  But if anyone who reads this can comment on whether restrooms were open this past winter in the following parks, I'd be very grateful:

1. Alki Beach - Was listed only once in 2019, but with three locations in 2022.  So two of 63rd, 57th and Bath House should've been open besides the one that was open then.
2. Alki Beach - The other new one.
3. Beer Sheva Park.
4. Dr. Blanche Lavizzo Park.
5. Hiawatha.
6. Magnolia Community Center.  The 2019 list included only Community Centers which had restrooms with doors that open to the outside, which are more obviously park restrooms than other Community Center restrooms.  I don't know that all the Community Centers in the 2022 list have such outside-opening restrooms, though.
7. Montlake Community Center.
8. Mount Baker Park.
9. Pratt Park.  This park's restrooms were definitely under construction when I first visited the place in winter 2021-2022.  It's at least plausible that the old ones didn't have heat while the new ones do.  (It's thoroughly implausible that Cal Anderson Park's restrooms went from having heat to not having it.)
   
10. Queen Anne Bowl.
11. Riverview Playfield.
12. Seward Park Picnic Shelters.
13. South Park Community Center.
14. Volunteer Park Bandstand.

Anyway, parks in North Seattle whose restrooms' openness I didn't check in winter 2022-2023:  I didn't visit Meadowbrook Playfield or Laurelhurst Community Center at all; I didn't visit Ross Park, Maple Leaf Reservoir Park (which Hirsch's lists call Maple Leaf Playground), Dahl Playfield, Licton Springs Park, Greenwood Park, or Sandel Playground, within the hours I'd limited myself to, before the spring openings.  Of these, Laurelhurst, Maple Leaf, Dahl and Sandel were supposed to be open, and I'm guessing the first three of those actually were open, though Maple Leaf is often closed on Sundays both in winter and at other times of year.  Ross, Meadowbrook, Licton Springs and Greenwood weren't supposed to be open, and of those, only Meadowbrook could reasonably have been opened.  (Licton Springs's restrooms, of course, have been torn down.)

I also in November called attention to Matthews Beach, which is consistently supposed to have open restrooms in winter, but I never found them so in 2020-2021.  I did find them open this time.  They're two single-stall all-gender rooms, one of which had been boarded over in 2020-2021; both were open on February 19th.

This time I only paid attention to water fountains conveniently near restrooms, but also to the street fountains.  I found four park water fountains running.  Three were attached to heated buildings - one of the golf buildings at Jackson Park, the cloverleaf restrooms of Woodland Park and the beach restrooms of Magnuson Park.  The fourth is free-standing, and I'm frankly amazed it was still running on February 19th, at Magnuson Park's central restrooms.  I don't remember what I found re street fountains - I think, one running, one not, but no idea which.

All for now, and pedants would say I've missed your birthday anyhow, but here's to a good year ahead for you, dear Diary!

Last Hike: More open restrooms, fewer running fountains

Dear Diary,

Well, today was my last hike this month for you.  I went to twelve parks.  All have water fountains, and six also have restrooms:

• Matthews Beach (both)
• Meadowbrook Playfield (both)
• Victory Heights Playground (fountain)
• Maple Leaf Reservoir Park (both)
• Licton Springs Park (both)
• Northgate Park (fountain)
• Pinehurst Playground (fountain)
• Jackson Park (both)
• Little Brook Park (both)
• Cedar Park (fountain)
• Albert Davis Park (fountain)
• Virgil Flaim Park (fountain)

I also went back to the street fountain on N 45th St.

My object was to complete the Google Drive folder in which I keep the boring door shots and such from the hikes I just finished.  I hadn't re-visited the parks from the third region I hiked earlier in May, as I had the parks from the first two, and so didn't have photos of them at Google Drive.  That is now fixed, as is my lack of a photo of that street fountain (which still isn't running).

Two major changes among those parks, plus some minor ones I'll cover below.  The first major one is that I found the restroom open at Little Brook Park, and the lock placed in such a way that it would not prevent latching the door.  I think that's the first time I've seen it like that, and expand on that a bit below.  The second major change is that while the water is still running to the water fountain at Virgil Flaim Park, some enterprising person has vandalised the fountain such that it's probably now easier to fill bottles there, but certainly harder to drink from the fountain.

I have nothing to say about some of the parks listed above, so don't say anything about them in this page, except what I just said:  there are now photos at Google Drive showing whether the restrooms were open or the water fountains running as of my last visit.

Matthews Beach

As in every one of my visits to date - none of which have taken place in calendrical summer - I found the shower restrooms on the lake side of the restroom building closed.  As in most of my visits to date, I also found one of the single-user stalls on the other side boarded up.  The remaining single-user stall has one toilet, no urinal, one sink which splashed me when I used it, but not as badly as the south-facing sink at Soundview Playfield, one dryer, and one soap dispenser.

The water fountain was not running.

Meadowbrook Community Center, Playfield and Pool

This is the sign I photographed by night on "Hike 9C", this time by day so it can be read:

The mural is signed "Miller" as is another adjacent; I don't know more.

The people staffing the pool as a shower and restroom provider have been busily posting updates:

unlike most of the Community Centers, including this one, although this one has at least taken down its sign saying it would close for the inauguration:

Meadowbrook Playfield's restrooms were open, as expected (even the hopelessly outdated - well, hmmm, some things on the map offered by the Seattle Department of Human Services that I hiked last January to check, some things have been updated, for example Meridian Playground's restrooms are now mapped as open, other things haven't, such as the U-District location of the Urban Rest Stop still shown as open - but anyway, my point was, that until today that map was very out of date, but even it showed Meadowbrook Playfield's restrooms as having re-opened).

Um, yeah, so the Meadowbrook Playfield men's room has two toilets with stall doors, one urinal, one sink, one dryer, and one soap dispenser.

I found all three of Meadowbrook Playfield's water fountains this time, exactly where I'd found them before.  Two ran in October, but none are running now.

Maple Leaf Reservoir Park

The restrooms were open, and there was even an employee of the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation there cleaning them.  When I update the maps tomorrow, I'll change this park's restrooms to half red, half blue.

Licton Springs Park

Unlike most of the restrooms closed in Ballard and southern "NE", but like University Playground and Little Brook, this park's restrooms have no sign on their doors announcing why they're closed.  The men's room's stuff is mostly around a bend from the door, but I could see most of the women's room - the stalls have doors, in both rooms, but one of the women's stall doors had swung open - and I saw no damage.  I've heard there's damage at University Playground but not heard a convincing explanation why that was the only restroom damage not fixed last year in North Seattle, and I've also heard a completely different reason for why those restrooms haven't opened.  I figure without even a half-assed sign like those at Ravenna Park's "upper" restrooms, there's no reason I should assume a park restroom is closed because it has to be.

Anyway.  Licton Springs's water fountains are still running.

Northgate Community Center and Park

After I visited this park as part of the third region, I complained vigourously about the way the people working for Curative Inc at a COVID testing site at the south end of the park had blocked off large parts of it.  Whether because someone at the city actually read that page (something I haven't seen signs of in months), or because someone else complained effectively, or maybe because there's an actual considerate human being among Curative's local employees, their tape is now much more carefully placed.  In particular, although it runs for some distance alongside the playground and the Community Center's front, it leaves paved paths into both areas open.  I was in a hurry, however - this was only the hike's halfway point - and took only a water fountain photo (still not running), and no photos of the tape or the Center's front, at which I didn't even look.  Sorry, dear Diary.

Pinehurst Playground

As my photo shows, the water fountain here is running rather low.  I had decided to try the water of parks whose water I hadn't tried yet, so I drained the second bottle I was carrying, but it was so hard to fill a bottle (it only got halfway, actually) that I gave up on filling two.

 

Jackson Park

I owe an apology to the Jackson Park café, which I failed miserably to describe on the basis of vague, hurried impressions on my first visit earlier this month.  (All my previous visits to this park had been too early in the morning or too late in the evening for the place to be open.)  I basically conveyed my surprise that it isn't what one normally thinks of as a "café".  Well, duh, because even though they call it that at Jackson Park, it's actually much more like a bar and grill, or at least a rather unpretentious restaurant.  It does have a few pastries, and while they're definitely not Little Debbie, they also aren't the hand-crafted wonders most actual cafés take pride in.  I got a grilled cheese sandwich to go, trying to make up for many uses of their driving range men's room, and it was pretty good blocks later.

That men's room is a single-user stall with one toilet, no urinal, one sink, one dryer, and one soap dispenser.  Jackson Park is almost entirely devoted to a sport, so this is a fair test, and I did not see yellow spots on the toilet seat.  Score one against my argument that it's a bad idea to eliminate urinals from park restrooms.

I also looked carefully at the buildings, and Open Street Map hasn't left out a building, but it may have misplaced it.  Again, the map:

The building on the upper left could be the building by the driving range, but it can't be, because it doesn't really face the driving range, which is that big lighter green area on the top left.  It also isn't anywhere near wide enough.  I'm not sure I can learn enough to fix things like this in Open Street Map, but it needs fixed.  Anyway, though, I thought that was a building between the wide lower building and the unmapped driving range building, but there is no third building in that sequence; what I described as a "workshop" was actually a conflation in my memory of "employees only" doors in both buildings, the second of which (the one behind the part of the driving range building I'm familiar with) is rather workshoppish.

Little Brook Park

As noted above, I found the restroom not only open, but for the first time opened in such a way that the lock that closes it at night doesn't also keep users from latching it by day.

I don't know how much of this to attribute to the presence of a parks department employee, whose job it is to provide fun for people in neighbourhoods.  Someone, probably him, had set up a stereo providing music, and a portable basketball hoop, at which he was trying to teach a couple of teenagers some moves.  The parks department slogan is, I think, "Neighborhood Rec'n"; at least that's what's on their trucks.  However, a quick Google search on that turned up 0 results, so I just don't know.

Anyway, my point is, I don't know whether Little Brook's restroom has actually opened for the season or not, let alone whether its door will be reliably carefully arranged in future.

It has one toilet with no meaningful door, no urinal, one sink, one dryer, and a spot where someone had stolen one soap dispenser.

Cedar Park

Awkwardly, I found myself following a family that includes a teenaged girl for about half a dozen blocks on the way to this park.

It has a water fountain that ran last October, but isn't running now.

Albert Davis Park

This park was officially closed for one week after its May 6 sweep.  Supposedly that closure was to enable parks department employees to start restoring the park from the damage done by an encampment that was there for more than a year.  The parks department web page says nothing now about a closure, so presumably it hasn't been extended.

I visited this park twice during the closure, in prime daylight hours, and saw neither department employees nor their trucks.  Now it turns out they didn't even bother to show up to take down their closure materials.  For shame!

Virgil Flaim Park

As I walked to this park, a visibly homeless man saw the bottle in one of my satchel pockets and asked if I had any water to spare.  I didn't - for one thing, I've been drinking from that bottle for months, and for another, there were only a few sips in it - but I assured him that the water fountain in Virgil Flaim Park, just a block away, was running.  I had walked too far to hear his reply.

This park had the only outdoor water fountain known to me running in Lake City.  (I visited the Fred Meyer in the area today, and it may have a water fountain that's running, but I didn't find one.  The Lake City branch of the Seattle Public Library, and the Lake City Community Center, are both open limited hours.)  It's still running, but no longer drinkable from.

Some clever and immoral person, probably a resident of one of the neighbouring RVs, has extracted the pipe that delivers water to the spigot, and routed it so it instead delivers water toward the ground.  I think it's probably turnable enough to be a great bottle-filler, but can't be made a useable drinking spout.  I was too disgusted - this really is the kind of vandalism homeless people are endlessly accused of, plain as day really our fault this time - to experiment, and far too disgusted to try to fill my own bottle as I'd planned.

[EDIT 6/11 - All wrong.  I went back June 8, and found that the water actually comes not from this detached pipe, but from a hole in the side of another pipe, which makes it useless for filling bottles as well as for drinking directly.  I'm pretty sure this was sabotage rather than metal theft, and the main victims are probably the nearby homeless, so the saboteur was probably someone housed who objects to the existence of homeless people.  I apologise for blaming the victims.]

And from there, or anyway a few blocks from there, I caught a bus away, got a picture of the still not running N 45th St water fountain, and went on.

I still have one project to do, which I hope to accomplish next week, but we'll see.  At any rate, I hope not to hike for you next month, dear Diary.  Tomorrow, I should be able to update the spreadsheet in the Google Drive folder, and also show you final May maps of open and closed restrooms and running and otherwise water fountains.  Until then good night.

Another Hike in Lake City

Dear Diary,

On Wednesday, May 12, I started by going back to Lake City for several reasons.  First, to see whether anything had changed with regard to Little Brook Park's closed restroom and shut-off water fountain.  Second, because I'd forgotten to check whether Albert Davis Park's water fountain was running while I was there.  And third...

See, I'd started using Open Street Map the day before.  This wasn't really practical on my phone, I had thought, while hiking, because Open Street Map doesn't have a phone app.  (It worked OK when I tried it Wednesday, though, although the auto-locator feature of Google Maps is often important, and OSM lacks that too.)  Also, and more importantly, I dreaded trying to edit images on my phone, so I couldn't really do anything with maps except use them to guide my hikes.  Hence maps showing up in you, dear Diary, a few weeks after I bought a laptop.

Well, one important difference between Open Street Map and Google Maps is that Open Street Map maps woods.  Because I still haven't figured out where one six-acre park property is, as mentioned in the previous page, I was looking for woods.  Now, the only unaccounted-for woods on the North Fork of Thornton Creek, which the property's name indicates, are outside the region I was hiking, between I-5 and Lake City Way, but I figured I should get some practise in looking for Open Street Map's woods so as to be prepared.

So on May 11 and 12 I went carefully through this region and the two I'd already done, looking for green, unaccounted-for, on Open Street Map when I magnified the map such that, usually, five north-south blocks (for example 35th to 40th Streets) filled the screen.  I only found three such places in the second region, southern "NW".  There were eight in the first region, southern "N" and southwestern "NE", all but one in Fremont, and most of those adjacent to Aurora Ave N.  And there were eleven in the region I was going back to, including some vast areas.  So that would be my test.

Here's the unaltered Open Street Map presentation of most of the part of Lake City I was hiking, at the same scale as the maps I've been showing you, dear Diary.  Can you spot the four places I wanted to investigate?

Here's the same map, marked with the places I looked at.  Note that Albert Davis Park is actually off the map to the south.

Finally, here's the front page of the day's newspaper, for recognising it better in the photos from the entire Wednesday hike:

Now let's get started.

Little Brook Park

The only change in the restroom and water fountain is that this time I photographed them with the newspaper I'd brought along.  I've already shown you, dear Diary, the first photo.

Here's the other:

(And isn't it wonderful to see in that headline that a local government actually cares about Seattle's homeless?)

That's all I did in Little Brook Park that day.

Private Yards and Schoolyards

Open Street Map doesn't show, at any level of magnification, people's private front, side, or back yards.  Except when it does.  Northern Lake City includes some very large housing developments.  Some of these have very large yards.  And for some reason Open Street Map thinks two of these are worth singling out in green.  It even names one of them.  If someone goes to "Sherwood dog area" as shown on Open Street Map, one block from Little Brook Park, this is what greets her:

The other, considerably larger, property Open Street Map greens is way off to the west.  I found one of similar size also near Little Brook, but OSM doesn't bother with that one.  The one they do green has this sign:

To be fair, OSM did warn me about the third place, that it was adjacent to a school, I just ignored that.  I didn't bother photographing their sign.

So at this point Open Street Map was 0 for 3, but then...

NE 133rd St trail

This one is in fact parklike and open to the public.  It's the block between 27th and 28th Avenues NE, which are the avenues on either side of the library, Albert Davis Park, and so on, and I can imagine reasons for cutting 133rd off there, but in any event, Lake City is under-parked, so every bit helps, even one as small as a single block of unimproved street.

 

It even has parklike signage, threatening all manner of evildoers but especially negligent dog walkers:

Albert Davis Park

I found a copy of the notice that was given of the sweep:

I did what I came for, and no, of course the water fountain wasn't running.

I observed that the boundaries of the notionally closed park remained unclear even with keep-out tape:

It only occurs to me as I write this that I visited this closed park twice during the week it was closed, a week that was supposed to serve the purpose of getting the park back into shape, both visits were during the day, and I didn't observe a single employee of the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation actually present, or at least not - it's not like I've memorised the faces of every parks department staffer - doing anything to improve the park's state.

Near the spot shown in the last photo is one piece of genuinely neat stuff, a "shrine" to Will Rogers at what it claims was the site of his last rodeo:

One thing that does bring to mind, though.  Both Will Rogers and Albert Davis were white men.  But I don't have a clue what Virgil Flaim looked like.  Hmmm.

Anyway, my errands in Lake City done, I took a bus to my next stop, Hubbard Homestead.  Which is the subject of your next page, dear Diary.

A Visit to Little Brook Park

Dear Diary,

Today I'll try to tell you about my hikes on Monday, May 10, three days ago.  The first of these was kind of a flop; I had two places to visit within a few blocks of each other in northern Lake City, but one was just a landscaping "snippet" I couldn't identify.  So only Little Brook Park is the subject here.  Map:

Little Brook Park is a park of just under an acre in size.  It's basically one lot, facing east, so it's longer east-west than north-south.  At the front (east) end, there's the restroom, the water fountain, and a sign.  Behind these is the playground.  Behind that is the lawn.  And in the back is the titular Little Brook, which people who eat spaghetti pasta, as opposed to, say, spaghetti pudding or spaghetti ribs, insist on calling Little Brook Creek.

North Seattle parks have two restroom buildings doubtless purchased as a set, but not installed that way.  Instead, one went to Little Brook Park, the other to Greenwood Park.  These buildings have many flaws - they aren't winter-safe, they're so designed that the easiest place to store a lock while they're unlocked makes it so the user can't even latch, let alone lock, the door, and they have ventilation holes through which it isn't difficult to take cell phone photos.  (Greenwood Park is busier, so it would be harder to get away with doing this there; at Little Brook, not only are fewer people around, but there's convenient screening shrubbery in the relevant area.)  To a first approximation, then, women would only use these rooms as a last resort.  In Greenwood Park there's also a "sanican", plus Greenwood Park is only a few blocks from Sandel Playground, a Fred Meyer, and various other alternatives.  In Little Brook, on the other hand, there's basically no other public restroom or even "sanican" for miles.  And this is the only park restroom in a place that can reasonably be considered Lake City.  But I've ranted about all this to you before, dear Diary, with photos, so this time I concentrated on other things.

First of all, the restroom, for whatever it's worth, wasn't open Monday.  I had a newspaper with me, but stupidly didn't use it in any photos I took that day.  But here's the photo anyway:

A water fountain is attached to this building.  Last May this was the first park water fountain I found running in North Seattle, outside my then-home region of southeastern North Seattle.  However, it wasn't running when I visited in October, let alone in January.  It also wasn't running Monday:

Now, it seems to me that given the number of homeless people in Lake City, the housed neighbours of the only working and accessible water fountain in that area might get a little uptight.  So while it's possible that there's something wrong with the fountain someplace I can't see (and therefore doubt is vandalism), it's also possible that the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation just decided to give the neighbours here a break.  It's also possible that this water fountain was shut off at the same time in the middle of summer as the one in Burke-Gilman Playground Park, but then the department just forgot to turn this one back on.  Regardless, this fountain doesn't quite add to the list I'm accumulating of fountains that had worked in October but not in May.

Since one of my goals for this set of hikes is to be photo-positive, and I'd already shown you, dear Diary, a general landscape-from-the-front and a picture of the creek, this time I picked the playground and the picnic tables:

And then went on to my dud landscaping snippet, and from there via NE 135th St to Jackson Park.

Almost done...

Dear Diary,

No, of course I'm not almost done hiking around testing water fountains and photographing parks.  I'm almost done with the single region, of the eleven into which I've divided North Seattle this time, that had the most sites to visit.  At this point I have reason to go back to three sometime soon.

Executive summary:

Twenty-four of the sites were official parks owned or managed by the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation.  None of the other sites had restrooms whose doors opened to the outdoors, "sanican"s, hand-washing stations, SPU sinks, or outdoor water fountains.  However, two of the other sites are buildings that have partly re-opened to the public, including restrooms whose doors open to the indoors and indoor water fountains.

Restrooms:

Jackson Park - Three pairs of restrooms.  Two pairs, multi-user and gendered, open to the indoors of buildings that have been open to the public since at least last May.  The third opens to the outdoors, and consists of gendered single-user stalls; this is the only one I've used.

Lake City Community Center - I know nothing about them but assume they exist.  The community center is open a few hours some days, staffed by staffers of the charity God's Lil' Acre.

Little Brook Park - One restroom (not a pair, not gendered, not lockable, very peepable).  I found it locked Monday at 1:54 P.M. but forgot to put the newspaper in the photo.  I found it locked today at 11:37 A.M. and did put today's newspaper into the photo.

Maple Leaf Reservoir Park - One pair of multi-user, gendered, restrooms.  I found them locked at 6:37 P.M. (though my photos with newspaper are a bit later); a woman who saw me photographing them spoke with me at some length and, in particular, informed me that they had been locked not long before I got there.  Since this is well within a reasonable time of 7 P.M., the official closing time, I have to get back there soon; this is the most important of the three parks I hope to re-visit before telling you, dear Diary, in more detail about them.

Park buildings that might offer restrooms under normal circumstances but aren't offering them now include the Northgate Community Center and the building on the grounds of the Thornton Creek Addition.

Non-park city-owned building that currently offers restrooms with doors that open indoors:

Seattle Public Library, Lake City branch.  I'm pretty sure I've used this branch's restrooms in the past, but don't remember anything about them.

Non-park buildings that normally offer restrooms with doors that open indoors, or that I presume do so, but aren't offering them now:  Lake City Neighborhood Service Center; Seattle Public Library, Northgate branch.

I deliberately haven't investigated other levels of government this time.

Various groceries, and probably at least some other businesses, also currently offer restrooms with doors that open indoors; a Dick's Drive-In location near downtown Lake City has restrooms with doors that open outdoors, and there may conceivably be other such businesses.

Water fountains

Albert Davis Park - One, off.  I've never found this one running.

Jackson Park - Two, running.  These have run each time I've visited (May and October; I skipped January because the map I was checking didn't include this park, but was told in October that they would run in January too).

Little Brook Park - One, off both days I visited.  This was running last May but off in October and January.

Maple Leaf Reservoir Park - One, off.  I've never found this one running.

Northgate Park - One, off.  I've never found this one running.

Pinehurst Playground - One, running.  This ran last May and October but not in January.

Victory Heights Playground - Two, off.  I've never found these running.  (I didn't visit in January because there were no restrooms or "sanican"s there).

Virgil Flaim Park - One, running.  This was off last May but running last October.  (I didn't visit in January.)

I assume the situation for indoors water fountains is similar to that for restrooms summarised above.  I have yet to find outdoor water fountains in this region other than in Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation parks.

"Sanican"s and related things

I can't summarise these parks' whole histories with these, only what I know basically from writing you, dear Diary.  There are unlocked "sanican"s more or less all over town outside the parks, but I pay them limited attention since I don't consider a "sanican" without even a hand-washing station an acceptable thing to use except in emergencies.

Albert Davis Park (and/or other nearby city institutions) - Was swept last Thursday, May 6.  As of Monday, May 10, the "sanican"s, hand-washing station, and SPU sink I had seen in January were gone.  I think the "sanican"s and hand-washing station, but not the SPU sink, went to Lake City Mini-Park.

Jackson Park - Removed "sanican"s from the golf links early in the pandemic, according to two employees with whom I spoke last year; I haven't asked whether they've been brought back yet.  I don't know there to have been hand-washing stations.

Lake City Mini-Park - Had more "sanican"s and one more hand-washing station than it had in January.  Both hand-washing stations worked on Monday.

Maple Leaf Reservoir Park - The woman with whom I spoke today said that a few years ago, someone lit a fire in at least one of the restrooms, so the parks department brought in a "sanican" until they could fix the restroom(s).  Then someone burned the "sanican".  I've never seen one there.

Northgate Park - The one I found in January is still there (so evidently it hadn't been borrowed from B. F. Day Playground, whose "sanican" has returned, after all).  However, it's now locked.

Pinehurst Playground - Still has one.

Parks

Albert Davis Park - Only photos of the "sanican"s (etc.) before.

Beaver Pond Natural Area - No photos before.

Flicker Haven Natural Area - No photos before.

Homewood Natural Area

Hubbard Homestead

Jackson Park - No photos before.

Kingfisher Natural Area - No photos before, and not much this time; this is the least urgent of the three I hope to re-visit before telling you, dear Diary, about them in detail.

Lake City Community Center - I only took photos of signs this time.

Lake City Mini-Park - Only photos of the "sanican"s (etc.) in the past and this time.

Licorice Fern Natural Area - No photos before.

Little Brook Park

Maple Leaf Community Garden

Maple Leaf Reservoir Park - So far this time, only photos of the restrooms and fountain.

Northgate Community Center - Wasn't able to approach closely this time.

Northgate Park

Pinehurst Playground

Pinehurst Pocket Park - No photos before.

Rainbow Point - No photos before.  I took today, among others, view photos, but they were towards the sun, so this is the medium-importance park to re-visit.

Sacajawea Playground

Thornton Creek Addition - No photos before (first visit).

Victory Creek Confluence Natural Area - I have a hypothesis, with photo, as to its location, but if my hypothesis is right, it's more or less inaccessible to the public.

Victory Creek Park

Victory Heights Playground - This time I was finally able to photograph the coloured shadows the playground equipment casts.  Yay!

Virgil Flaim Park

Waldo Woods - This time I photographed the small area that isn't walled off from the public.

I have to get these photos off my phone and into you, dear Diary, before I can usefully hike again, so expect at least eight pages (heck, just from the number of photos, more like sixteen) in the next two or three days.  Until then, happy times...

A Tale of Three Lake Cities

Dear Diary,

I just got home from visiting a bunch of sites, including twelve parks, half of which I'd never photographed before.  So I'd tell you all about it, except that it's late and my house has quiet time starting quite a few minutes ago, which isn't really consistent with showing you a bunch of photos.

Instead, I'll summarise.

EDIT 5/11:  Map of the region, courtesy of the Open Street Map project.

Hike 1:  Northern Lake City.  One park:  Little Brook Park, photographed before.  Restroom closed, water fountain not running.  That water fountain ran in May of last year, but not in October.  I've always assumed it was turned off in summer, like the fountain in Burke-Gilman Playground Park, but then never turned back on.  However, it's possible that it's broken somewhere that doesn't show.  Or it really was forgotten last summer, but it's on the same water supply as the restroom, and the reason it's off now is that that hasn't been turned back on.  My point is that while this is proof that the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation is not, in fact, re-enacting last year, it doesn't prove much else.

Hike 2:  Jackson Park and vicinity.  Three parks:  Flicker Haven Natural Area, Jackson Park and Licorice Fern Natural Area, none of which I'd shown you photographs of before, dear Diary.  Jackson Park has six restrooms (three pairs), all of which I found open (this is both the first time I've photographed the doors, and the first time I've seen one pair, because before today I'd only visited Jackson Park early, and the café doesn't open until later), and two water fountains, both of which I found running.

Little Brook Park is in a black neighbourhood, Jackson Park a white one, and their users reflect this.  On the other hand, Little Brook is publicly managed, Jackson privately.  So I wondered, is this an instance of racism or one of public incompetence and private competence?  It certainly seemed a straightforward tale of two more-or-less Lake Cities.  But then:

Hike 3:  Downtown Lake City (west of Lake City Way), whose population, both homeless and housed, is mixed in race.  Four parks:  Albert Davis Park, Lake City Mini Park, Thornton Creek Addition and Virgil Flaim Park.  I've photographed only "sanican"s and other plumbing in Albert Davis (and/or the Lake City Community Center) and Lake City Mini, and hadn't visited Thornton Creek Addition at all before today.  Albert Davis has a water fountain I didn't remember to check; it didn't run last year.  Albert Davis was swept a few days ago, and is now officially closed through Thursday; its SPU sink is no longer in a Lake City park, but its "sanican"s went to Lake City Mini, which also now has two working hand-washing stations.  Virgil Flaim has a water fountain that ran last October, and is running now.  The pair of park restrooms downtown Lake City badly needs to get before The Big One strikes has not yet been built in Virgil Flaim.  But also, the Lake City Community Center is keeping a few open hours thanks to the people from the charity God's Lil' Acre, and the Lake City branch of the Seattle Public Library has re-opened in the limited way a few libraries outside North Seattle had already done.

So at this point I didn't know what to think.  To complete the story, though:

Hike 4:  Across Pinehurst plateau.  Four parks:  Homewood Natural Area, Hubbard Homestead, Pinehurst Playground and Pinehurst Pocket Park.  I'd shown you photographs of all but the last, dear Diary.  Pinehurst Playground has a water fountain, which I found running (as it had last May and October), and a "sanican", but no hand-washing station.

All for now, dear Diary; some food for thought, and of course an incomplete summary of four or more upcoming pages in you.  Good night!

Hike 9B: Far Northeast

Dear Diary,

I'm going to try to consolidate two visits to Green Lake and Woodland Parks into one page, thus giving me a better chance of finishing with the January hikes before summer.  So hikes 8D and 9A are being postponed to accompany hike 10; all you need to know for now is that on January 20 I went northeast from Green Lake Park to Lake City.

Albert Davis Park and Lake City Community Center

Introduced May 28 in "Top of the City", part I, and later discussed November 17 in "Lake City Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us!"  Please assume these same pages for the rest of the parks in this page, dear Diary.  Each time I've visited this park, it's been the site of a large homeless camp.

All the "sanican"s here are in the park, but for some reason the map these hikes were meant to check thought they were in the community center, so I've used both names.

About the time I got to the main bloc of "sanican"s, so did a young man who informed me, as I puzzled over my first encounter with an SPU sink, that it didn't work.  Neither, quoth he (and I soon verified), did the hand-washing station.  Sensing a major story, I asked how long things had been this way.  "Well, that worked yesterday [the hand-washing station], and that [the sink] is new in general."  Nope, no story, just bad timing on my part and on my young informant's.  His timing was rescued by another guy who showed up with a small water bottle, which he tossed to my contact.  That gentleman then proceeded to do what ablutions he could do in public with maybe twelve ounces of water.

So I couldn't photograph that setup just yet, and instead started the surprisingly complex task of circling the community center so as to decide where to focus the postcard shot.  Along the way I came across a "sanican" that apparently had misbehaved enough to get it ostracised from all its peers, way off at the other end of the park:

By the time I got back, the group of young men was gone.

The open door at the end wasn't a malfunction, just an airing out:

Anyway, here's what I thought the community center's best face:

and here are the (mostly) closed doors:

Lake City Mini Park

Oops.  Apparently this one isn't in the page from November?  Anyway, also a big homeless encampment served by "sanican"s:

Of course I checked, and yes, this hand-washing station had water:

God's Lil' Acre

This not being a park, I haven't brought it up before.  It appears to be one of the crutches allowing the city to get away without proper park restrooms in Lake City during this pandemic, like the Dick's Drive-In mentioned in the November page.  It also appears to be more of an all-around charity, as opposed to the primary focus on hygiene of the two North Seattle branches of the Urban Rest Stop.

Anyway, my main interest in the charities was verifying that they were open, or more precisely documenting that they were open, giving the map that listed them credit where it's due.  So here's my best attempt at a postcard shot:

And here are the open doors:

Cedar Park

Not, that I've observed, a campsite.  But it does have a "sanican":

Just as the map said, then and today.

Little Brook Park

I've also observed no camping here.  Like Greenwood Park, covered January 25 in "Hikes 3C and 6A", it has only one restroom, designed so as to be latchable but with that capacity usually impeded, with nice big holes for peeping Toms to look through, oh, I could rant for days about these rooms' blatant inadequacies, but what's relevant here is that as simple boxes, they aren't at all winter ready, so:

My best try at making this bad building look good:

Now, arguably Meadowbrook Pool, Community Center and Playfield, and maybe even Matthews Beach, are in Lake City, but I took far too many photos at Meadowbrook, and didn't get to Matthews Beach at all that day.  So I'll stop here for now, dear Diary, but may still get to Meadowbrook tonight.