Peace Park Today

Dear Diary,

It's been a long time, hasn't it?  Some things have changed in Blogspot, and I'm not sure how I'll deal with those going forward, but anyway, that's why the photo in this page is so huge.

I went on a long hike today, and my path took me through Peace Park.  It seemed weirdly deserted and non-descript, just a rather dry lawn with some unobtrusive interruptions.  For what seemed like minutes I couldn't find the park sign, and wondered if it had been taken down.  Not so, but the only thing it brags about is the sculpture "Sadako and the Thousand Cranes", and that sculpture is still achingly absent.

But people remember it:

I'm sure I haven't read everything that's been said about the violent theft of that sculpture, but in what I have read, I've seen nothing about any possibility of replacing it.  Seems to me that the alternative is to tar ourselves with the guilt of the thief, to say we aren't good enough for a statue like that any more.  Anyway, I think this possibility of a new sculpture should at least be raised, and, if possible, handed for a decision to the people who left all those flowers, or people who remember how to make origami cranes, or like that.

Good night, dear Diary.  I'm still not sure when we'll meet again.

Six Hikes in Brooklyn, part III: Southwest and Its Sweeps

Dear Diary,

None of the individual parts of this page concern all six hikes its title mentions; but this one concerns four of them, the next part too; all the others discuss only three.  Let's look at the whole set here:

• On December 22nd, 2020, I went hiking throughout southern Brooklyn, city and university parks both.  I ended up using some of the photos of the city ones in "Canalwards, Foolish Mortal" on January 1st, 2021, and deleted those from my phone as usual, so all I have left from this date are photos of places I associated with the university.  This hike hasn't featured in the previous parts but is in all the remaining ones.
  
• On October 8th, 2022 I started hiking this area focusing on properties listed in the City of Seattle's 2020 Real Property Report.  This hike is in all the parts except part V, assuming I get that far.
  
• On October 16th I went back, focusing on areas that looked park-like in Open Street Map.  This hike is in all the parts except this one and part VI.
  
• On October 23rd I re-visited I-5 lands; photos from this hike were in parts I and II.  I-5 this far south is well above street level, so there aren't any photos from this hike in this part.  And the remaining parts of this page are east of I-5, so they won't have any either.
  
• On October 25th I photographed two sweep notices in the area this part covers.  So none of the other parts have photos from this date.
  
• And on October 29th I re-photographed the areas of which I still had December 22nd, 2020 photos, because I thought I needed to re-visit them all before telling you, dear Diary, about them anyway.  This part and all those remaining have photos from this hike.
  

This part not only features the most hikes, it also features the most places; even after I took the forgotten island in NE 40th St out of this part, it still has six left to talk about, as does part V; the others, three or four.

As in previous parts and previous pages from my October hikes to Ravenna and the U-District, in each individual part or page I'm going in order of the hikes.

So we start with:

805 NE Northlake Place (H on map)

Oh, oops, I've written myself out of having space for the map in the introduction, haven't I?  But let's continue that for a moment while I show you, dear Diary, the first of the December 2020 photos of places I thought belonged to the university.  In this case, the university's map agrees with the King County Parcel Viewer that I thought correctly.

My unreliable memory claims that I was struck, as I trudged from the Burke-Gilman Trail and North Passage Point back towards campus that day, by this explosion of green (in December, mind!) in a rather grittily urban neighbourhood.

Oh, neighbourhood, map, right?  Here:

That's the only place in this area of which I still have a December 22nd, 2020 photo, dear Diary.

So going on with October 8th:

North Passage Point (I on map)

This park was actually the reason I picked this region to start with.  I'd gone through the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation list of parks and found no additions in North Seattle, but one subtraction:  this park.

Most of it is the property of the State of Washington Department of Transportation, which has apparently stopped leasing it to the parks department and fenced it off because of chips of concrete falling from the I-5 bridge.  A host of sites still document it, but not the parks department's, so apparently the department's taken down its web page.

But such measures don't actually lead to actual land disappearing from the face of the Earth, so I went there to see what I could see.

What I saw was a fenced-off park.  I saw a man inside the fence to dip his toes in the water, who clambered over a shorter fence adjacent to leave; I saw a woman inside the fence to walk her dog, but she left on the other side, so I don't know how she left.

The shorter fence is in the photo immediately above.  But you see, dear Diary, there's also a gate, and if that woman had a key, she might've used that:

The side I was on while taking the first three photos is the parks department's side, which is not fenced off.  It includes the sidewalk whose decorations I praised on first visiting this park early in your life so far, dear Diary, and it includes some grassy land, on which, on this visit, I found an encampment of tents, presumably including homeless people.  Neither of the people I saw inside the fence lived there.

Northlake Park (J on map)

This "park" is simply an overlook adjacent to the sidewalk.  Well, the 2020 real property report claims it occupies 1,660 square feet, which implies that the land below the sidewalk, seaward, is the real park, but that's fenced off.  So most of my photos of this park have been views, and so's this one:

For much more about this park, see "Canalwards, Foolish Mortal", linked up top.

Eastlake Ave NE Street End (K on map)

For much more about this park (not belonging to the parks department, and frankly not much of a park), see the street end page that includes it.

Peace Park (L on map)

My main concern in re-visiting all the parks in this region was to see what had changed.  Specifically whether water fountains had been added, for example, but also to see what had been subtracted from North Passage Point.  Or here.

That statue is "Sadako and the Thousand Cranes", made in 1990 by Daryl Smith, who is not the glass artist born circa 1973 and is not the artist in wood who was a school principal in Indiana at the time (LinkedIn link, requires sign-in), but is surprisingly poorly documented considering he also made the Jimi Hendrix and other rock legend statues on Capitol Hill.  And what has changed is that Sadako (portraying Sasaki Sadako, 1943-1955) doesn't have anything, not cranes, not candies, not nuthin'.

Cheshiahud Lake Union Loop (M and brick-red line on map)

I still haven't done enough research to reconcile the widely varying online accounts of Cheshiahud, an Indian with whom the 19th century settlers of Seattle interacted.  But at least I've finally paid enough attention to the flimsy little markers with which this sort of virtual trail, made out of existing roads, trails, and whatnot, is pointed out, to establish its path in the U-District.  Which led me to the shocking discovery that the parks department page links to a perfectly good map (1-page PDF) that could've saved me the trouble.  I think when I first downloaded that map on my phone, I couldn't get the phone's software to fix its mis-orientation, so forgot about it.  But I think one of the photos I took documenting my not so trail-blazing effort is worth showing you anyway, dear Diary:

So enough park appreciation.  We now take some time out for sweeps.

805 NE Northlake Place

On the 23rd, visiting various I-5 patches of land, I'd come to the conclusion that the land from 40th to 42nd had been swept.  This surprised me, because I knew that WSDOT had been criticised by homeless-haters as far too slow to sweep encampments for their tastes. [1]  So on the 25th, I went back to see whether my conclusion was right, and concluded, as related to you, dear Diary, in part II, that it probably wasn't.

[1] For more on WSDOT and sweeps, see an article by Leo Brine in Publicola on a bill that ultimately failed.

I don't have a clear record of what I did after that on the 25th, but anyway, I eventually came back here.  And found that a bunch of RVs that had been parked just north of here, essentially blocking drivers from reaching the end of Northlake Place, had been swept that very day, probably while I'd been dithering over I-5 land.  The only notice I found was this one:

Now, this came as a complete surprise to me.  Not the sweep, that is, but the notice.  I'd seen a sweep notice just two weeks before, issued in mid-September.

The two most obvious differences are that the new ones are much easier to read, and don't have dates issued.  The more I thought about it, the more confident I became that they weren't sweep notices at all, but notices following a sweep, intended to help people reclaim their property (or at least, ostensibly so intended).  So I freaked out all over again.  Had Seattle finally decided to stop warning people of imminent sweeps?

North Passage Point

It's certainly gotten looser in its legalese:

Unless I'm living on a different planet from the writer of that notice, North Passage Point isn't in "Burke Gilman Trail to NE Northlake Way and from Eastlake Pl NE to Pasadena Pl NE", it's south of NE Northlake Way.

So I went home and wrote to two real journalists who might be interested, neither of whom has replied so far.  And I stewed.  But six days later, when I came back to re-photograph the university parks of West Campus...

805 NE Northlake Place

I found two RVs parked along Northlake Place again, and the owner of one, who called himself Red, hailed me.  He told me he'd been on the streets most of the time since he was ten years old, and he was 42 at the time.  He said they had in fact gotten notice - visitors.  He also said his RV didn't run, needed a new engine which he couldn't afford.  Which I interpreted as meaning that his RV had been towed (either by the sweepers, or by a friend beforehand), and then returned to him.

So I still don't know whether Seattle is continuing to post sweep notices, physical objects that nosy people like me can see, as opposed to just notifying people they find on-site.  But it isn't (at least in this case) doing something as obviously wicked as not warning people at all that their lives will be up-ended.

Which brings me to the last photos in this photo-heavy part, since I then took a closer look at the explosion of greenery.  It turns out not to be so very green.  In fact, there's a big clearing in the middle of this vacant block.

Although I wanted to spend today at home, I panicked when I saw that both Open Street Map and Google Maps show a building on this block.  Had I gotten something catastrophically wrong?

The Department of Neighborhoods has a photo of a building, dated 2002.

The Department of Finance and Administrative Services has an April 2015 notice that the property is for sale (6-page PDF).  The city had acquired it in 1971 thinking it would need it for work being done at the time on Pacific St (which Northlake Way turns into there).  At the time a sculptor they call Theodore Jonsson already leased the land, and the city had renewed the lease as recently as 2014 (10-page PDF), but that was due to expire in 2019.  They worried that his sculptural work, in metal, had led to environmental contamination.

As it turned out, Jonsson, who'd been born in 1933, died in June 2015 at his daughter's house.

So the damage to the land, and a few bits and pieces, are what's left of the building.  This is a surprisingly recent park; its life as such can't have begun before 2015, which means the nearly two years between December 2020 and today are a significant part of its lifespan so far.  That it's come this far without, possibly, any real work by anyone, is impressive.

Meanwhile, I got the impression that Jonsson was another poorly documented sculptor, but that's because I'd looked for him as Theodore.  Turns out there are several pages memorialising "Ted Jonsson" and depicting his art.  He was an important advocate for the 1% for art policy, and an early beneficiary too.  His art isn't much to my taste, but I've liked plenty of other work paid for with 1%, so on balance, I'm grateful.  And also for whatever hypothetical pollution he may have produced that's intimidated anyone from building on his studio's former site.

So, dear Diary, another part with an ambiguously happy ending.  Good night, and happy hours until we meet again tomorrow.

Canalwards, Foolish Mortal

Dear Diary,

I spent several days in December making short hikes, as I told you some time ago I intended.  These hikes took me to arguably seven parks owned or managed by Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation, all south of 43rd St in the University District and Laurelhurst.  And in most of them I found problems with what I've told you, dear Diary, before:  some outright errors of fact, some weasel wording to avoid other errors, and plenty of omissions.  So this page is my attempt to do better by these parks.

None, unfortunately, have restrooms, and only one (the only one this page isn't apologising to) has a water fountain, which I found not running today.

I discovered the hard way in writing this that it's really dumb to copy a modern web page into a Blogspot page as one writes the latter.  (Because Android and/or Chrome wouldn't let me copy just the paragraph I wanted.)  I think the ill effects are confined to me writing this, but I trust, dear Diary, that if anyone reading you sees, in particular, an annoying blue horizontal bar, they'll complain in the comments.  (EDIT 1/1:  Actually, I think I've fixed it.  Let me know if not.)

December 22

Fritz Hedges Waterway Park

This park is on Boat St, west of Brooklyn Ave.  Introduced May 13 in "Down by the Canal", then given full treatment October 20 in "Fritz Hedges Waterway Park".  In the latter page, I wrote:

"Unfortunately, as in the expanded Christie Park, all the furniture is metal."

Nope.

See those discolourations in the long concrete benches?  There are four total; in that shot, one is hidden by the shade.  Let's take a closer look at that one.

I was wrong.  (Heck, I was technically wrong just because of the concrete benches, even without their wooden inserts.)

North Passage Point

This park is between Northlake Way and the water under I-5.  Introduced in "Down by the Canal", and I seem not to have mentioned it to you since, dear Diary.  In that page, I noted that other people being around had cramped my photography.  I also made a big deal out of this park having land, unlike, for example, the next one, so downplayed this park's water views.

Well, on December 22 none of that was an issue.  Here's a landscape:

Now, the builders of I-5 of course chose a narrow point in the water to cross, specifically the strait between Portage Bay and Lake Union.  This means that from this park, one can look at either of those water bodies, or in between, at South Passage Point across the water.

Portage Bay, seen through the University Bridge:

South Passage Point:

Lake Union:

Northlake Park

This is basically a viewpoint on Northlake, a block east of North Passage Point.  I introduced it rather badly in "Down by the Canal", then never mentioned it again.

One of the things I did wrong was spoil my photo of the view with a finger in the shot.  That's what I focused on fixing this time.

Peace Park

This is between 9th and Eastlake Avenues on 40th St, which puts it right next to the University Bridge.  Introduced in "Down by the Canal" with the following wording to avoid saying what I just did:

"This isn't on the canal, but is essentially built into one of the bridges over the canal, the University Bridge."

I did so because the parks department page propounds the cockamamie notion that the park is actually at the intersection of 40th and Pacific Streets, and I refused to believe the evidence of my own eyes, and the street signs there.  In my lists of parks, that's the address I use.  So I went there December 22 to establish the real address.

(To be fair to the department, they may simply mean that the park is on both 40th and Pacific, and indeed I showed you, dear Diary, a photo of the boring Pacific Street side.  It's still an inadequate and misleading address.)

December 23

Fritz Hedges Waterway Park

Yes, it's wooden.

December 29

Union Bay Boglands No. 1 and No. 2

This park, so to speak, is on Surber Drive from 41st St to a little south of 38th St.  Introduced rather confusedly and perfunctorily May 13 in "Back East, Where the Gardens Are Pretty".

What I know now that I didn't know then is that from 1926 to 1966 the city had a landfill there, where about half of the university's east campus is today.  My guess now is that when the city conveyed most of the land to the university, they held back the Surber Drive edge in hopes people would build more mansions with pretty gardens, hopes that were not to be fulfilled.

My further guess is that the two parcels exist because a Seattle Public Utilities pumping station is between them.  At any rate, No. 1's address is "Surber Drive NE & 41st NE", while No. 2 is at "3905 NE Surber Drive".

When I first went there this time, my eyes immediately flew to a green space north of 41st.  A bunch of people had parked there, but it turned out not to be part of the huge Talaris property next door.  Oops:  it's actually an unimproved block of 38th Ave.

(Those photos are actually from December 28.)

The best clue came from the university's own map, which stops short at 38th.  And if you go into the area, differences emerge between the university's Yesler Swamp and the city's Union Bay Boglands.  One is that the swamp's famous boardwalk seems never to come too close to the eastern edge.  Another is that in the city side, but not the university side, there's lots of that welcome green in winter, conifers:

(Yes, I know the green up front is ivy.  Look behind it.)

January 1

And happy new year, dear Diary!  Did you ever expect to get so old?  I certainly didn't expect it of you.

Christie Park

This park is on the southwest corner of 9th Ave and 43rd St.  Introduced May 6 in "Go North, Aging Man!" and then corrected the same day in the first "Foolish Mortal" page; lavishly depicted October 4 in "Christie Park, Expanded, at Sunset".  It's the furthest north of these parks, and the only one I don't (as far as I know) owe an apology to, which, yes, means it's also the one with a water fountain.

In this case, as of today I still can't find any furniture that isn't metal.

Peace Park

I continued south on 9th, which means I reached here.  I decided to see whether Sadako of the Thousand Cranes had been given Christmas candies, but to my surprise found a few actual (and rather bedraggled) cranes, so took a picture.

Northlake Park

This was my main destination today.  One main reason I introduced it badly is that I wanted to complain about the parks department page more than I actually wanted to introduce the park.  The page's text indeed is gibberish to the uninitiated (such as me when I wrote "Down by the Canal"), and focused on things of no interest to most:

"The 7th Avenue NE Street End is not on 7th Avenue or a street end. The property is part waterway, part street right-of-way for NE Northlake Way. The site is located on the southwest edge of the University District, between I-5 and the University bridge, at the intersection of Lake Union Waterway 14 and NE Northlake Way, and across the street from the terminus of 7th Avenue NE. The upland portion of the waterway is owned by the Washington State Department of Natural Resources and the remainder of the property is street right-of-way owned by Seattle Department of Transportation. The property was included as part of the 2000 Pro Parks Levy to “Develop park at 7th Ave NE street end at Lake Union.” "

I wanted to complain that Northlake Park is not on the official lists of either street ends or waterways.  The writer's cute opening sentence shows that he (I'd bet this paragraph was a man's mistake) anticipated that.  Most of the park is textbook 7th Ave NE Street End, but since 7th wasn't on the list the city adopted, that doesn't matter.  (Now I'm probably speaking gibberish to the uninitiated.  See, please, "North Seattle Street Ends:  Introduction", December 20.)

As for waterways?  With ashen face I discover that the map of Lake Union which, in "Lake Union's North Shore:  Waterways and Street Ends" (October 8) I recommended as listing all the waterways, omits five of them:  7, 10, 12, 13 and 14.  Oops.

So.  I think this is the "upland" part that could have been a very steep waterway (i.e., place to put boats into the water or take them out):

That's on the left as one faces the water.

Thinking as I went there that it really was a street end, I took my standard three photos.  But the street that ends is no beauty, and the land the city claims (though not under the street end law) doesn't look like much in my photos.  So that leaves only the park's main point, its view.  My third try:

Good night, dear Diary.

Down by the Canal

Dear Diary,

Four more of the little local parks I've been ignoring are close to the ship canal.  As befits the location, only one of these is mainly about its land; but as if to make up for that, three of them have regular Seattle parks signage.

(For anyone keeping score at home on the basis of the lists I wrote in you, dear Diary, last week, I goofed and left two of these out of them, thinking they were west of I-5.  In fact, one is east of it, the other under it.)

Fritz Hedges Waterway Park

The parks department website speaks of this in the future tense, and in this case they aren't out of date (although the projected completion date is):

It sounds like it'll include some land and also have a boat ramp.  It's on Boat St, not far from Recycled Cycles.

The next two are the ones I mistakenly omitted from my list.  They're both on the south side of the block of Northlake Way between 6th and 7th Avenues.

Northlake Park

The website's discussion of this explains what it is not, who owns it, and other confusing topics.  Near as I saw, it's a viewpoint; sorry I screwed up the photo:

It does have a park sign, though:

This is the one I left out that's east of I-5.

North Passage Point

This is the one, of these four, that currently is mainly about its land, which is directly under I-5.  I saw a couple having a picnic and a man sleeping.  (I sure wish someone would do something about all us homeless people!)  As you may have noticed, I try to leave people out of the pictures I post here, not wanting to negotiate image rights while socially distanced, so I had a hard time getting a shot of the four geese present:

It does, of course, offer another view of the water:

And its paved path has lots of insets, alternating simple and complex; I picked this one not as a favourite, couldn't choose, but because of a graffito on the pavement there, of a scared-looking ghost, in red, that I can only hope you can see in this photo:

Peace Park

This isn't on the canal, but is essentially built into one of the bridges over the canal, the University Bridge.  I didn't remember that it's a formal park, rather than an unexplained collection of similarly themed artworks:

The park sign calls this sculpture "Sadako and the Thousand Cranes", and I've seen many origami cranes left there, but Seattle weather being what it is, on this visit there were Easter candies instead.  Nearby:

I've often wondered what wonders might lie down the stairs from the area I knew, but never enough to find out with my heavy satchels.  Sorry, though, it isn't all that exciting after all:

Anyway, it's easy to miss the park sign, which is the furthest from the bridge of the park's main elements:

All for now, dear Diary; I decided to combine the other post I'd considered for tonight (University Heights Plaza) with some other loose ends coming up.  Wish me luck, dear Diary:  I'm setting out tomorrow on a long hike with the damaged cart.  Until we meet again!