A Requiem for Seventy-Seven Bus Stops, part VI: The Route 73

Dear Diary,

Next in seniority to streetcar coverage of some of the route 20, in 1908, is bus coverage of most of the route 73, by 1965, among the areas losing bus stops.  (Blanchard's Street Railway Era in Seattle, page 114, says streetcar service along 15th Ave NE reached NE 80th St sometime between 1912 and 1925, but the route 73 currently has no bus stops that far south on 15th.)  Also, I want to talk a little more about the Northwest Puppet Center.  So let's start, shall we?

[Updated on September 23 with corrected competing bus route number and a note on dubious stops.]

All of the route 73 stops being closed are either on 15th Ave NE, or are shared with the route 322, and are covered under that route instead.  So no need for street headings this time.

I followed this route Saturday evening, and then went back today because I'd found that I'd made two mistakes - missing one stop, and mis-identifying another stop on Open Street Map.  So I had to go back over half the distance.

Again, links in the lists below go to my Google Drive, to photos of each stop.

Northbound, seven stops:

• Stop #39210, just north of NE 115th Street.
• Stop #39190, just north of NE Northgate Way.  Not far south of this, on the same side of the street, is the mural of the cat that I showed you, dear Diary, in part I of this page.
  
• Stop #39170, just north of NE 103rd Street.
• Stop #39160, just south of NE 100th Street.
• Stop #39140, just north of NE 95th Street.
• Stop #39120, just north of NE 90th Street.  This is the closest northbound stop to the NW Puppet Center, which is two blocks north and across the street.
  
• Stop #39100, north of NE 85th Street, a block from Maple Leaf Reservoir Park, and across the street from Waldo Woods.
  

I was going to say that none of these have any amenities except pavement, but then noticed that my photo of stop #39100 appears to show the top of a trash can attached to the pole:

So I dunno.

Southbound, seven much more interesting stops:

• Stop #38950, north of NE 115th Street.  Has all the amenities.
• Stop #38970, just south of NE Northgate Way.  Has a shelter with art and a bench.  The art may or may not be the best art on these shelters, but anyway this photo is the best one I took of these shelters.
  
  
  
  
• Stop #38990, south of NE 104th Street.  Has a shelter and a trash can.
• Stop #39010, just south of NE 98th Street.  Has a shelter with art and a bench:
• Stop #39030, just south of NE 94th Street.  Has all the amenities.  This is the nearest stop in this direction to the Puppet Center, which is a block to the south.
  
• Stop #39050, south of NE 89th Street.  Has a shelter.
• Stop #39070, south of NE 82nd Street.  Has a shelter with a bench and a trash can.  Maple Leaf Reservoir Park is a block west, although the route 67 stop at NE 85th Street is closer to the park.
  

I noticed today that some shelters I saw as not having art actually have it facing the street, away from the sidewalk.  The way I see it, that location makes the art available to drivers (including bus drivers) and passengers (including bus passengers), but not with any safety to pedestrians (including people waiting for the bus).  So I'm not sure it's a real amenity of a bus stop in the sense I'm using that word.

Anyway, Northwest Puppet Center!  I'd already looked up its bare-bones Web page, and noticed that that page describes as current an exhibit that, the same page says, closed in May.  So I got curious:  was it out of operation?  And today I went up the steps to the entrance.  Where I was gobsmacked to find, of all things, a small playground.

Now, Maple Leaf Hill is seriously under-parked, and certainly under-playgrounded in particular, but I didn't see any kids there.  Anyway, I looked at the door, where a sign announces a new exhibit in October:

So this left me curious.  Is this a private house that's also a museum?  Or is it really a public place where, for example, parents could bring small children to the playground?  A significant element is the "Carter Family Puppet Theater"; do the Carter family live there?

Not according to the King County Assessor.  But there's also an e-mail address on the bare-bones Web page, so careful parents can check for themselves.

The page's only other link is to the "World Encyclopedia of Puppetry Arts".  Sadly, this site doesn't return the favour:

You'll have noticed, dear Diary, that I've changed all the parts' titles.  Not until I was reasonably sure I had a complete list could I really count the stops closing, but I think the number now used is the final number.  The count of 77 excludes stop #17170 on the route 20, which [has been] acquired by the route 62, and stop #28680 on the route 28, which is already in use by the route D.  [In both cases I've now caught the relevant bus at the relevant stop.]  That count includes stop #23594 on the route 322, whose rider alert sign claims future service by the route 79, and stop #17570 on the route 20, whose rider alert sign claims future service by the route 45; neither of those buses currently serve or even pass those stops, and their promised schedules show no route changes enabling them to start doing so.

The stops will no longer be served by any buses as of September 14, which is this Saturday.  I have no idea how many people Metro devotes to stop demolition, so I can't begin to guess how long it'll take them to remove the physical stop elements.  However, most rider alert signs whose bottoms I photographed bear a note saying "Remove 10/1/24".  This implies that at least the poles the signs are mostly attached to will stay around that long, and perhaps other physical elements as well.

One of my purposes in writing this page was to notify people of these stop closures in time that anyone who might have an emotional attachment of some kind to a particular stop - most obviously, who might have experienced a proposal there - could have a chance to visit it again.  Obviously the closer we get to September 14, let alone if I fail to get those parts written until later than that, the less likely that is.  But then, I'm not seeing much reason to think they could find out about the closures from you anyway, dear Diary, so few people seem to be reading this page.  Ah well.

Before I remembered the removal date, I still hoped to get part VII, about the route 28, written in you tonight, dear Diary, and part VIII, about the route 322, is relatively short, so maybe that too.  But there are other things I spend my time on, so now that I have remembered it, I'll do those things instead.  A good night, dear Diary; we'll probably meet again tomorrow.

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.

Yesterday's Hike in More Detail

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, 

| many deteriorating posts advertising 

| a "story trail" whose text can be found various places, 

| including online.  They date to 2004 and aren't online any 

| more, not even at the Internet Archive.  Maybe a physical 

| copy survives.

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...

Running water fountains FOUND in N, and northern NW

Dear Diary,

Today I went to thirteen parks.  I only crossed Ravenna Boulevard, but the other twelve all have, or are supposed to have, water fountains, and some have restrooms.

The big news is that I found water fountains actually running at Bitter Lake Playfield, Licton Springs Park, and Greenwood Park, the three last parks in the part of the city between NE and NW that I had to visit.   I also found that the double fountain in Crown Hill Park was running.

Also significant:  Licton Springs Park's restrooms are still closed.  All the trash left by the incredibly messy encampment that was there last year has been removed, but I guess the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation isn't taking any chances on them returning, so isn't going to both turn on water fountains and open restrooms until there's reason to doubt that could happen.

Also significant:  I found additional water fountains at Bitter Lake Playfield and at Carkeek Park, or anyway its Environmental Learning Center; also, at Green Lake Park.  I'm sure these were there all the time; I just hadn't explored either northern park thoroughly, and since I hate walking on gravel, hadn't found Green Lake's non-trail fountain.  (I probably don't have enough years left to live to explore Carkeek thoroughly anyway.)  The additional one at Bitter Lake is near the playground, and is the one that's running at that park.  I did not, however, find the water fountain the parks department's web page for Baker Park on Crown Hill still claims is there.  Moreover, at that park I found a party of youngish people who admitted to remembering the park back to its re-opening from renovations last year, and none of them remembered ever seeing a water fountain there.

I've uploaded all relevant photos, and even a video (to show that Northacres Park's freeze-resistant water fountains are still not on), to the Google Drive folder I pointed to last time.  Here's the URL again:

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

I got a little sloppy this time; I had to settle for a photo of the Carkeek Park women's room door with no newspaper in it, and for some water fountain a photo that didn't show my finger pushing the button.

Anyway, I have other things to do with my loud laptop before quiet time, so will tell you all about it tomorrow, dear Diary.  But briefly, here are the parks.  Their restrooms were open except at Licton Springs (and I didn't re-check Green Lake); their water fountains were not running except at the parks named above (but again, I didn't re-check Green Lake).

• Ravenna Boulevard (neither fountains nor restrooms)
  
• Maple Leaf Reservoir Park (both)
  
• Northacres Park (both)
  
• Bitter Lake Playfield (both)
  
• Carkeek Park and Environmental Learning Center, Piper's Creek Natural Area, and Eddie McAbee Entrance (both)
  
• Licton Springs Park (both)
  
• Greenwood Park (both)
  
• Sandel Playground (both)
  
• Baker Park on Crown Hill (neither)
  
• Crown Hill Park (just water fountains)
  
• Soundview Playfield (both)
  
• Golden Gardens Park, where I was when 7 P.M. came (both)
  
• Green Lake Park (both, but I only photographed one fountain)
  

Good night, dear Diary.  Sweet dreams until tomorrow.

A Hike in Maple Leaf

Dear Diary,

My next hike included three Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation parks, and three other sites which I hope you'll find interesting.  This hike was on various parts of Maple Leaf Hill, the biggest and tallest straightforward hill in North Seattle.  A map:

As you can see, dear Diary, Open Street Map shows plenty of woods in this area too that I wanted to explore that day, but I was running out of time, and it'll have to wait.

Sacajawea Playground

This is the only "Playground" in North Seattle that lacks actual playground equipment, which is at the school next door.  It's basically a lawn with one big tree in the low middle, with woods on the uplands to east and west.  I've shown you pictures before, dear Diary, and there were other people there, so I settled for a couple of transverse landscapes to demonstrate that no water fountain has arrived here:

Alley at 9012 12th Ave NE

This is an 896 square foot property that I couldn't quite identify, because there are two candidates.  See, there actually is an alley on the block in question, a neat and tidy place that I'm not good enough at estimating distances to assess against the stated size.  A photo:

However, there's also a weird little messy space between the hedges of two houses along 90th, and that space is more consistent with the address given, for whatever that's worth.  Just as I think the real alley might be too big, I think this space might be too small, but it also might not be.  A picture:

Anyway, at least one of these is city property, perhaps both.

Waldo Woods

I introduced this newer park to you relatively late, dear Diary, in "The Kingdom of the Winds" last November.  It's a conservation easement, in other words, a deal with a private land-owner to protect a large stand of Douglas firs.  The owner, Aegis Living, built a fence, but made a bay in it which allows public access to both one double-trunk fir (now busily spreading saplings) and an Aegis Living sign:

Maple Leaf Reservoir Park

This is the major park of Maple Leaf Hill, and so it has restrooms and a water fountain.  I had by that point needed restrooms, though only for Number One, for several hours, so it was deeply disappointing to arrive only to find this:

However, a woman approached me after I'd taken two shots of each door - the first without the newspaper - and mentioned that a parks employee had just locked them.  She and I talked for some time about you, dear Diary, about her complaints to the city that the restrooms closed too early, about the restrooms' history with fire, about my observations of this park's defenses against the homeless, and so forth.  After all that I really didn't have time to wander around the park, so I confined my attention to the water fountain, a double one that hasn't run since I first visited the park:

And then wandered around the park anyway, because it turned out my last two sites were in it:

Maple Leaf Reservoir

The park is the biggest of three parks in north Seattle built on reservoir land, the other two being Bitter Lake Reservoir Open Space, and Froula Playground, neither of which have plumbing of their own, so I haven't visited them as often.  But I knew from previous visits to Maple Leaf that most of the Seattle Public Utilities buildings that remain are dreary-looking and closed to the public:

However, this time I was specifically looking for the reservoir, and found this, which is actually in the background of a picture I've shown you before, dear Diary:

Northeast Radio Towers

I actually left the park looking for this, but it turned out to be adjacent to the water tower.  Duh.

Maple Leaf Reservoir Park Again

I went back yesterday, Saturday, morning, assuming I'd find the restrooms open and be able to ignore the photos from Wednesday of them shut.

It didn't quite work out that way.

A photo of the front page:

The restrooms:

These photos were taken at 10:16 A.M., and the park was crowded.

I'm used to the idea that during this epidemic, homeless people should just fast all Sunday because the already unreliable park restrooms become deeply unreliable, but now Saturdays too?  I'd visited three publicly managed and six privately managed park restrooms in this region.  The private ones, all at Jackson Park, had all been open; the public ones, at Little Brook and Maple Leaf Reservoir Parks, had all been closed, on two occasions each.  Is our city government really this incompetent after all?

That said, I didn't make any decisions on the spot, and one of my errands in this park was to photograph some of its neat stuff.  A garden there is named after a child who died, and he seems to have been a butterfly fan, so there are butterflies all around the playground.  Some examples:

I particularly like the use of butterflies to lighten up one of those dour SPU buildings:

Well, dear Diary, I may have time for one more page of park appreciation tonight, but although I have now made some decisions, I probably don't have time to tell you about the change of direction after that.

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...

Hike 1A: Inconvenients, part II

Dear Diary,

They said this winter would probably be cold and wet.  So far, half right.  It's certainly been wet, and part of my fear of rain comes from the certainty that nothing that gets wet will dry out anytime soon.  But even though I've been shivering a lot, it hasn't been all that cold.  My basic clothing right now, thanks to my own lazy refusal to go change, is absurdly underdressed for winter, and the only reason I'm getting away with it is mild temperatures.

We should, in fact, dear Diary, consider this in relation to your upcoming birthday.  Our wonderful mayor was getting a lot of criticism, last March, because she sent people to closed park restrooms.  Well, that was careless (and it isn't a good thing that her parks department is repeating the mistake this year) but many of those restrooms should in fact have stayed closed; the last night to reach the mid-30s was April 13, one week after she ordered those rooms opened.

Um, so, anyway.  It's been warm.  Most of the time these days, when climbing hills with my cart, I regret it if I don't actually strip down to my seasonally inappropriate T-shirt.  And since it was close to noon, of course that happened yesterday as I climbed Maple Leaf Hill.  I'd tried to use the topographic maps I've downloaded to plan my travels, and it partly worked, but it was still uphill.

N 45th St

But first I have to backtrack a bit; last night I forgot something important.  On my way to Wallingford Playfield I knew I'd pass the street water fountain on N 45th St near Wallingford Ave N, in front of QFC.

Now, in "Water Fountains:  Things We've Lost, Part II" on May 1, I boldly claimed that these street fountains stayed on all winter, little dreaming that when winter came I'd still be writing you and accountable for that.  I strongly suspect what allows this to work is heat supplied by nearby institutions, which would explain deference the fountains sometimes show to their neighbours, most obviously the one painted red in front of Bartell Drugs at 5th Ave and Stewart St.

I already knew that the peculiar fountain on 15th Ave NE south of NE 43rd St had stopped running, though not whether that was for the winter or permanently (due to its damage and to construction nearby).  And the street-style fountain on the Burke-Gilman Trail had been shut off, but that happens every winter.

So I made a deal with myself.  If the fountain was working, I'd get the day's groceries at the QFC that probably made that possible.  It was, so I happily, um, well, no, in the rain it was actually a tedious nuisance, but still, I was able to fill my bottles.  And on my way from Wallingford Playfield to Meridian Playground went and got the day's food at QFC.

Maple Leaf Reservoir Park

I first told you, dear Diary, about this park May 29, in "South to and from Northgate".  The first pictures I showed you were in "Standing Room Only, Part V:  Elsewhere" November 24, but rather more came three days later in "The Kingdom of the Winds".

Between that, and worry that I'd have to deal again with the harasser mentioned in that page, and the fact that the park was crowded enough (though socially distanced) to give me some trouble finding a place to eat the food I'd bought - well, on this visit, I only took the three photos I'd come to take:

Last winter, these rooms were supposed to stay open, and they're on both the current HSD and the outdated Parks maps; no surprises here.

As I got ready to leave, a man with an accent similar to the harasser's, but not similar in voice or appearance, asked me for cash, and I refused.

Northgate Park, Community Center and Library

Turns out the peak of Maple Leaf Hill is actually on Roosevelt, so I went down to 5th Ave NE to avoid it.  I resisted the impulse to hike into Beaver Pond Natural Area to photograph the South Fork of Thornton Creek.  My missions were:  Northgate Community Center, to photograph its closed doors, and Target, to replace my umbrella.

At first I went to what turned out to be the wrong door of the Community Center, where I found something astonishing.

Do you see that, dear Diary?  An actual wooden bench actually sheltered?

Anyway, it was the wrong door, so I went round front.  The postcard shot:

And the closed door:

Now, that sign is arguably not entirely true.  This page offers signup for child care starting Tuesday, September 8, which means 2020, at a bunch of community centres, including four in North Seattle:  Bitter Lake, Meadowbrook, Ravenna-Eckstein - and Northgate.  Considerable physical evidence attests that this care is in fact being provided at Northgate, which would explain all the health check stuff at the door.  (Why check the health of people entering the building if nobody is entering it?)  However, I haven't seen actual kids, so still could be wrong.

Anyway, as I turned to go, I found something else astonishing.

This is not, up to right now, on either the HSD or the Parks map.  Now, the Parks map may be bureaucratically restricted, showing only things Parks pays for; that might explain its omissions both at University Playground and here.  (Though that's not a very helpful sort of map.)  Alternatively, this might be omitted from the Parks map if its physical location is actually the library's property.

But library and park are both city property, so unless this "sanican" unlocked itself and walked to Northgate from a nearby construction site, it's city-funded - which should qualify it for the HSD map.  And I wrote to HSD nearly 24 hours ago now.  I'm mildly surprised their map still omits it.

As to the interior?  Plenty of toilet paper, but dear Diary, did you remember the angle of that doohickey in yesterday's photo?

Another "sanican" without sanitiser.  This makes four now.

Well, I went to Target, and found the last umbrella of the same size and colour that they had.  Then I checked my phone and found that I was nearing my photo limit.  So I went to

Hubbard Homestead

And while I sat on an already mostly dry wooden bench there and played a trick on my phone to let me take more photos, I remembered that I still have not shown you, dear Diary, a single picture of this unassuming park where I have now several times stopped for such utilitarian purposes.  I didn't have time to study the park properly, but hope these two photos conveniently close to where I'd sat will tide you over, dear Diary, until I do.

More stones

A pond.  I hadn't at all remembered a pond.

I need to get moving, dear Diary, but still hope to find time to write another page in you tonight.  We'll see.  [EDIT a few hours later, but technically the next day.  Nope, I've gathered the data but they still don't make sense to me, so not tonight.  Good night, dear Diary.]