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.

Hike 9C: Meadowbrook

Dear Diary,

It was getting dark on January 20 as I approached Meadowbrook.  Now, if you were to look at the map I was hiking to check, say, today, it would show two symbols at that park - one for the playfield's restrooms, and one for the buildings a fair way east of those.  But in January the playfield's restrooms were closed, and since there were no "sanican"s near them, the map admitted they were closed.  Observe:

And on the other side?

Here's what I thought the best face of the restroom building, which was, as you can see, dear Diary, in January heavily covered with graffiti.

At least it was good graffiti on this side.

Now, as I said, this was January 20, and there were big doings in the other Washington.  But I'd kind of forgotten about them until I got to the Community Center, which the map then said offered restrooms and showers - and to which I'd been pointed for showers by an employee in June.  My attempt at a postcard shot:

The unexpected closed doors:

The unexpected extra-closed doors:

The dedication sign nearby, rendered deeply ironic by the previous picture:

How times change.

I actually needed a restroom by this point, so it was with deep disappointment that I turned away.  But as I was leaving I noticed a light in the direction of the building.

Well, it was pretty much full dark by then.  Above the picture sort of in the middle of the photo, though, I could see words then that I can't see in the photo, and those words included "Meadowbrook" and "Pool".

Now, obviously it makes sense for a pool to have showers, but this was the first sign I'd encountered that the pool was actually the building to go to.  Moreover, I was worried about a reception similar to the one I'd gotten at the Ballard library:  I only wanted a toilet and sink; the map claimed I could get those, but was it telling the truth?

It was.  Despite the signs' emphasis:

and the fact that I smelled pretty terrible (I was then only a week from the motel, but had been wearing the same clothes much, much longer), nobody considered it at all unreasonable for me to want only a restroom.  And what a restroom:

I'd just about forgotten that indoor public restrooms can be pretty nice.  Seems to me a pool, where people might have to wait in line to shower, is an unexpected place to find such a thing as a public restroom deserving the label "nice" - why encourage people to be slow?  But maybe the showers have some flaw that discourages lollygagging.

Anyway, the people staffing the place also had snacks on hand, and I left the building much happier than I'd found it.

Good night, dear Diary.  I'm actually not sure whether, that night, I went "home" to southeastern North Seattle, or just back to Green Lake and Woodland Parks, but anyway, the next stages in my investigation of those parks' restrooms' hours are the subject of the next page in the January story.

Six Parks in Search of Another

Dear Diary,

It's embarrassing to be so far behind with you that I'm still narrating to you hikes from mid-October, practically summer.  But if it's any consolation, this page and another I plan to write in you today feature photographs taken today.  There was a park mystery, and last night I had to visit the 24-hour restroom at View Ridge Playfield, spent the night in that park's shelter shiveringly trying to sleep, and finally this morning set out to resolve that mystery, plus some smaller mysteries, and take some pictures.  So this page, and the one I intend to write Wednesday, won't all be summer hikes.

On October 12, then, I took 15th Ave from Sacajawea Playground, where I left off in the last page, to Northgate Way.  I'd noticed Patty's Eggnest at its Holman Road location, and that morning I felt rich enough to get breakfast at the Northgate one, an omelet I ate in a bus shelter.  Then I went and splurged some more, at Target, whose elevators had been fixed, getting umbrellas, and a cap to replace one that had fallen off my cart once there were masks under it, boosting it too high.

Which brings me to something important.  I had, both on June 27 while visiting the 'last seven' parks, and on October 12, nine masks.  Three were gifts, and six I bought myself, at Target.  These six are very well designed, because they not only cover my mouth and nose, but for even better protection, my eyes as well.  Unfortunately, my glasses objected to this, and the rainy day June 27, when I first visited the 'last seven' parks, the mask, which I was then wearing for the first time, fought back, in particular by serving as a slide down which the glasses could fall off my nose.

I admit, for the hike that was finally, on October 12, nearing its end, I wimped out and chose one of the three masks I'd been given, instead.

Anyway, fortified by food, I set off again.  This hike had a number of objectives:  First, to check on water fountains in North Seattle.  Second, to replace the photographs of some parks that I'd lost when my phone was stolen in July.  By October 12, that meant mostly what I'd thought, on June 27, were the last seven North Seattle parks I hadn't visited.  Third, to visit parks I'd learnt of since.  And fourth, to settle various questions about parks along the way, and photograph some of those I hadn't photographed before.

Northgate Park

Introduced May 29 in "South to and from Northgate".

Free-standing water fountain more or less mid-park:  NOT RUNNING.

Northgate Park turns out to be oddly bifurcated, its north side full of concrete and, well, weird stuff:

the south, well, not:

I stayed by the Northgate branch of the Seattle Public Library there for a while, catching up on Wi-Fi stuff, but not writing in you, dear Diary.

Maple Leaf Community Garden

This was one of the 'last seven'; in fact, three of those are introduced in this page, and since I covered three in "Lake City Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us!", that leaves only one for the pages ahead.  This one is near 5th Ave on 103rd St, actually across that street from Beaver Pond Natural Area, which, however, I didn't visit this time.

In June when I first visited, I found men working to build it, but by October it was a fully functioning ...

P-patch?

Actually the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation lists in its part of the Seattle real property report (which is where the list of the 'last seven' came from) several P-patches, including two of the 'last seven'.  It isn't usual, and it's worth asking why each time, but it isn't extraordinary.

In this case, my guess is that the Department of Neighborhoods, the usual custodian of P-patches, maybe doesn't have as much experience taking care of gorgeous old buildings, like the tower that dominates this 'park', as the parks department has.

But that's only a guess.

Victory Creek Confluence Natural Area

This next 'last seven' park is where Victory Creek, as in Victory Creek Park a few blocks north, meets the south branch of Thornton Creek.  Or maybe it's just somewhere near the actual confluence.  It's hard to tell, because its size as reported, a quarter acre, is nowhere near the size of the woods around the confluence, and of course there's no signage:

(12/15 edit) There's a video embedded there, but near as I can tell, Blogspot is not currently allowing me to write pages that show readers of you, dear Diary, embedded videos.  (This may be a general thing, or may be specific to me; dunno.)  The other recent page for which this is an issue is "A Problem", which is all about problems with videos and includes a pointer to its video at YouTube.  Here's a pointer to this video at YouTube.  What the video shows is lots of woods, with no sign singling out one quarter-acre as a public park.

So in this page's title, "Six Parks in Search of Another" (with apologies to Pirandello, who wrote a play whose English title I like, but I still haven't read or seen the play), Victory Creek Confluence Natural Areais the "Another".

In case you want to look for yourself, the official address is 1039 NE 108th St, although my Rand McNally map claims the actual confluence is between 11th and 12th Avenues.  The relevant instance of 108th St can be reached from Roosevelt Way.

Victory Creek Park

Introduced in the same page as Northgate Park.  I didn't go back to this frustrating park on this hike, so no, it isn't one of the title's "six parks".  Rather, I found out while writing this page that the frustrating thing about it - the absence of the picnic tables and playground its sign claims it has - was planned (PDF) as far back as 2018, and presumably happened by the time of my first visit in May.

Victory Heights Playground

Introduced in the same page as Northgate and Victory Creek Parks.

Two water fountains attached to the Victory Heights Co-op Preschool - NOT RUNNING

Note that this makes eleven, not ten, water fountain sites in North Seattle attached to heated buildings, and five, not four, of those not running this year.  (See the digression in the recent page "To a Land of Water and Honey".)

This time I took a picture of the translucent playground equipment I thought was neat in May.  Unfortunately the weather wasn't cooperative in allowing me also to photograph the coloured shadows they cast.

I actually didn't take any notes about the water fountains on October 12.  So when I was done with Meadowbrook, as narrated below, I came back to Victory Heights.  Well, no, that isn't quite true.  On my October visit, I'd found an entire fantasy trilogy I'd enjoyed, in hardcover at a nearby Little Free Library, but was in no position to carry them away.  I talked myself into coming back to see if they were still there, today, and since I didn't find the book bin before reaching the park ...  The books weren't there when I did find it.  I have two reasons for thinking the water fountains weren't running in October:  1) I remember my relief at finally finding a working fountain at Meadowbrook later that day, and 2) the fountains didn't have much tree litter in them today, but they had too much to have been shut off a week or two ago.

Lavilla Meadows Natural Area

This is the third and last of this page's 'last seven' parks.  It's well hidden, but actually findable.

First, find Fischer Place, a diagonal connecting the Victory Heights neighbourhood with the Meadowbrook one.  Exit Victory Heights; on foot, one can do this at 102nd St.  Cross Lake City Way somewhere that seems safe.  Fischer Place starts opposite 102nd, and goes up to 105th west of 27th Ave.

On Fischer, look for Lavilla Dairy.  Go in back to the parking lot.  Behind the parking lot you should find this:

and this:

It's over four acres, so it's probably all the woods behind Fischer Place.

Meadowbrook Playfield

Introduced May 6 in "Go North, Aging Man!".

Free-standing water fountain near the picnic shelter shown two pages ago - ON, and overflowing enough that I couldn't use it.  (Today, however, it was of course NOT RUNNING.)

Water fountain attached to the restroom building west of there - NOT RUNNING October 12; I don't think I bothered today

Free-standing water fountain near the tennis courts, furthest west - ON, and my first chance that day to fill my water bottles; I didn't pass near it today.

The relief a working water fountain gave me that day left me feeling kinda guilty when I left the park without having found a single thing I wanted to photograph.  So when I got there today, I was determined to fix it.

See, the problem is general.  Playfields, in Seattle's hierarchy of parks, are mainly for big grassy areas for sports (specifically baseball), and even though I played in Little League, I don't find these photogenic.  So I always have to more or less do an end run around the park's whole reason for being, find some angle, and Meadowbrook had always seemed angle-free to me.

But the October visit was the first on which (because of Fischer Place) I'd approached along 105th, and noticed a lot of rather un-playfield-like land, greenswards and woods and just disorganised compared to the square playfield norm.

So first of all, yes, there's a brook at Meadowbrook.

It creates something of a view from a well-placed picnic bench:

But a square enough reader might prefer the picture I took first, cynically, figuring playgrounds are always safe, even though I find this one as bland as the rest of the playfield:

(Seattle Public Utilities) Meadowbrook Pond Nature Refuge

This was the mystery I set out to solve this morning.  At Matthews Beach there's a map of the Thornton Creek watershed, and it shows a park right across the street from Meadowbrook Playfield.  I needed another park to make up the six, not wanting to use Hubbard Homestead, which I still haven't photographed and in which I'd most recently done Number One.  So I thought I'd go solve it.

Well, there isn't much mystery.  This park not Parks' of course doesn't have usual parks department signage; it also doesn't actually have much frontage on 35th Ave.  So for someone as unobservant as me to miss it made sense, but it was there all along.

It doesn't have any restrooms or water fountains, but I fell in love with it and took scads of pictures anyway, too many for this page.  In fact, although I'd planned to put one here as a teaser, Blogspot won't let me.  So that's why, dear Diary, I plan to write two pages in you today.

Standing Room Only, Part V: Elsewhere

Dear Diary,

Whew!  Just one more page, and I can go back to telling you about October 11 and 12, and then October 16 and 17.

This page is actually sort of about those dates too, as well as about October 9 and 10.  Because I saw a picnic shelter discussed in this page on each of those pairs of dates:  I slept in Carkeek Park's shelter 2 between the 9th and 10th, and in one of Golden Gardens Park's between the 16th and 17th, and visited Maple Leaf Reservoir Park's rentable shelter both the 11th and 12th.  (It isn't at all a good place to sleep, plus I was harassed both dates.)  It's worth remembering that each of those nights was rainy; I had to plan those hikes around shelters.

Carkeek Park

Carkeek Park has two shelters, but unlike Magnuson or Woodland Parks, or to anticipate a bit Golden Gardens or Maple Leaf Reservoir Parks, the two at Carkeek Park have very little in common.

I had rushed to Carkeek Park from way across town at Mineral Springs Park.  Of course I wanted to check on Carkeek's water fountains, and I had to take pictures at the Blue Ridge parks on Carkeek's other side.  But I also expected rain, and wanted a shelter roof over my head very much.  When I saw what I'd be getting, I couldn't believe my luck.

The luck held, too.  Soon after my arrival, a loud crowd of kids - high school or college, I thought - started trickling in.  Apparently they'd planned to have a party in that building, but when they found me there, they gamely went on to shelter 1:

and didn't even reconsider their generosity when a torrential rain hammered their party and got them to flee.

Particularly relevant to this set of pages' focus, shelter 1 shelters no tables at all, shelter 2 (which is indeed the WPA project it looks like) three.  This is, of course, reflected in their daily rates at Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation:  $120 for #1, higher for #2 - but frankly, the latter is a preposterous steal at just $195.  Just compare their rain resistance - shelter 1:

versus shelter 2:

The problem, of course, is location.  Carkeek Park's shelters are on the park's main, upper, level, not on its beach; those at Golden Gardens, and the beach one at Magnuson, Parks are all level with their beaches.  Separately, location is also the problem for homeless habitation.  It's years of hard travel - well, anyway an hour or two, largely on gravel - to the QFC on Holman Road.  You could only live in shelter 2 if you had a partner you could trust to protect your stuff, every time you went for supplies.  At least there's a working water fountain, but for how long?  (Neither shelter's sink was on; I'll spare you the photos I took of them.)  Oh, and, of course, the ultimate 21st century deal-breaker:  no electricity.  So no, I won't be abandoning my doorway for Carkeek Park's palace in the sky.

I suppose what stories I have of Maple Leaf Reservoir, or of Golden Gardens, Parks belong not here but in the stories of the hikes themselves.  (I will end the suspense right now on one count though:  the young woman quoted in part I has not become the partner I'd need to live at Carkeek Park.)

Maple Leaf Reservoir Park

The rentable shelter is on the upper level of this two-tiered park.  It is overwhelmingly made of metal.  Seems to me all the parks in this page are even more unlikely to be in the path of a homeless wanderer seeking a seat than Woodland Park's shelter 7.  But at Maple Leaf, that wanderer would only find metal seats anyhow.  It's $210 per day.

This shelter does have electricity, though.

There's another shelter on the lower level, also all-metal.  It's still too small to rent out; maybe in a decade or so it'll have grown big enough.

Meadowbrook Playfield

I only noticed this shelter out of sentimentality.  When I was testing the nearby water fountain on October 12, I noticed some kids sitting there.  At first I just envied them the shade they had, but then it penetrated my thick skull that they were playing D&D, or something similar, just like my friends and I at their age.  Anyway, they left before I did, so I took a picture of another non-rentable shelter.

With, sigh, metal seats.

Golden Gardens Park

As mentioned above, these shelters are practically on the beach.  So of course they partake of the beach ethos, that rain does not exist, and neither is really designed as shelter at all, so much as shade.  (They're basically identical, including in price, each $120 per day.)

I survived because each does have a table, shoved against its other amenities at the dryest place in the "shelter".  I bumped my cart up against the table and sat myself and my satchels on it too.

Well, as shelters at Magnuson and Maple Leaf Reservoir Parks and Meadowbrook Playfield have shown, not all park picnic shelters are listed in the rental list.  There are also other kinds of shelter with seating in some parks.  In particular, if seeking such, be sure to try the baseball fields' bullpens.  But I trust this is enough to show that the parks can't single-handedly provide the sheltered seating homeless people will want this winter.  I hope this winter won't be standing room only for me, but it will be for too many of us.

Odds and Ends

Dear Diary,

It's so good to be back!  Have you missed me?  As much as I've missed you?

The Thursday and Friday before my backpack's theft, the 14th and 15th of May, I visited something like 27 parks in something like 29 hours.  I want to be fair to a lot of them about their plumbing, so, since it's been so long, I'll have to re-visit them before I can tell you about them.

But the ones in this page shouldn't need re-visiting, because none of them have plumbing to be fair about.  Heck, the first goes all the way back to May 12, when you may have noticed I took a long time to get from Cowen Park to University Playground; that's because I visited en route

University Heights Plaza

It turns out much of the city block on which the former school, University Heights Center, sits is the property not of the non-profit that runs the Center, but of the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation.  It's astonishing how many parkish amenities they jam into the space, regardless of which entity owns the land under each:

A playground, of course.

A P-Patch.

A basketball court.  But there's one amenity not there; I'll let the Center explain:

(Well, at least one.  I haven't found any water fountains either.)  As if to make up for this, there's currently this:

I saw several not obviously homeless people use these while I was there.

This is the last of the little, plumbing-free parks I listed as local some while ago, at least as far as I know.

Leftovers

Skipping ahead to Thursday the 14th, I decided to start my trip to Lake City with visits to the three remaining little parks in the area I'd already covered, up to 110th St.  I took 35th Ave north, partly because I thought (correctly, thankfully) it might have sidewalks the whole way, and partly because all three parks are pretty near it.

Wedgwood Square

Seattle has a lot of streets that share their names and general latitudes or longitudes with other streets.  I like to use the computerish term "instance" for these.  For example, one instance of 82nd Street, a very small one, runs from 34th Ave to 31st Ave.  There it's divided by a triangle.  And this triangle is Wedgwood, um, Square.  It's full of trees, and on that afternoon also of kids.  There definitely isn't room there for a restroom, and I saw no sign of a water fountain.

Mock Creek Ravine

This park's official address is actually on 35th, but all you'll find there is a fence.  However, if you go down 97th St, just north, pretty much to its end, you'll find, first, that this is yet another piece of the Thornton Creek Natural Area, and, second, that it has a fairly big grassy, level area at its front door.  However, just like all the other TCNA pieces, it lacks plumbing.

Nathan Hale Playfield

I mocked my old map for claiming each high school was surrounded by a park, but in this school's case, it's sort of true.  The parks department has several deals with other entities, in which one party owns the land, the other manages it; here, the Seattle Public Schools own, but the parks department handles some of the management.  (Since the substantial Meadowbrook establishment is next door, this may be as simple as equipment sharing.)

In theory, when school isn't in session, the general public can use the field.  In practice, since this is a high school, it can't possibly be that simple, school teams practising in morning, evening, and summer.  I don't know whether you'd get into trouble if you just wandered over alone and, not seeing kids, started running laps, but the school officially bars unauthorised visitors, and you'd have to be an idiot to bring a team there without prior arrangement.

Anyway, apparently right now, since the school is closed, so, according to the school, is the playfield, park or no park.  I saw several people climb a fence to get in.  In my previous out-of-neighbourhood trip, my phone was very low on power, so I didn't take any pictures, consoling myself that the parks I was visiting weren't my real focus.  This time, I took a few, but more or less of the door shot variety, not neat stuff shots.  Dueling signs at Nathan Hale Playfield:

And yes, that's the fence people were climbing.

There are a bunch of buildings near the playfield, and for all I know some might have plumbing, but I doubt any are open to fence-climbers.

The page with the rest of Thursday the 14th's parks will feature another such deal, and the page with the parks I visited on Friday the 15th will describe one the other way round, with the parks department as the landlord.

I also stopped at Meadowbrook while in the neighbourhood, and so can now attest that its men's room works fine.

All for now, dear Diary.  Isn't it great to be back?

Go North, Aging Man!

Dear Diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Burke-Gilman Playground Park.

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

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

Further along Sand Point Way to:

2. Warren G. Magnuson Park.

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

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

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

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

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

3. Matthews Beach.

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

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

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

4.  Thornton Creek Natural Area.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

6. Froula Playground.

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

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

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

7. Ravenna-Eckstein Park

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

One water fountain, not running

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

8. Waldo J. Dahl Playfield

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

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

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

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

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

9. Inverness Ravine Park.

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

Back down 45th all the way to:

10. View Ridge Playfield

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

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

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

Further down 45th, plus some more fiddling:

11. Bryant Playground

One water fountain, not running

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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