Seattle Parks Is Trying to Tell the Truth. Will I Survive the Shock?

Dear Diary,

I have a notion that being an inveterate liar is kind of like other moral failings, and so although lying has never been an important sin to me, I can figure out what it's like by analogy.  I think there are two ways to try to stop sinning in general, and so lying in particular.  One is the folk wisdom that a sinner has to "hit bottom", get to where confessing and giving up the sin is the only way forward.  But the other is to work on one's personality and one's reality until giving up the sin won't hurt so much.  In this particular case, until lying is no longer needed.  That path, which is if anything harder than hitting bottom and making other people responsible for dealing with it, is the path it seems to me the City of Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation has chosen.

I pointed out a number of ludicrous details in the department's new "dashboard" (a word I kind of wish had died of COVID-19 toward the end of the pandemic, but still, that's what it's called).  It said Cowen Park's restrooms, which had been damaged by early opening in March 2022 and hadn't re-opened since, were open.  It said Ravenna Park's lower pair of restrooms, which have been perennial targets of vandals, and where the men's room hadn't opened at all in 2022, were both open.  And to top this series of obvious whoppers off, it said University Playground's restrooms, which hadn't been opened by parks department employees at any time since before the pandemic started, were both open.

I recently learnt that I wasn't quite as poor as I thought I was, because my bank hadn't charged a fee I'd expected them to charge.  So today I splurged on a newspaper and went hiking, prepared to mock yet another parks department lying map afterward.

I found both of Cowen Park's restrooms open today.

I found all four of Ravenna Park's restrooms open today.

I didn't find either of University Playground's restrooms open today, but a small group of homeless people there told me that was because they'd been locked half an hour earlier.  Considering that it was 5:41 P.M. when I was told this, that's testimony to way too early closing, but still, sadly, believable.  Supporting this preposterous turn of events actually having happened, the restroom doors both had new handles (dear Diary, your readers can, if they wish, compare the handle shown here to those in previous photos via the tags at the bottom of the page, or directly here if reading on cell phones, which didn't offer those tags the last time I looked.)

Notice, dear Diary, that these handles are set into circular supports; the previous handles, which were blocky rather than delicate themselves, weren't set into anything like that.  I think the evidence is good that University Playground's restrooms have finally re-opened.

So the parks department has done the hard work to justify its claims regarding all the restrooms I visited today.  Including those at Burke-Gilman Playground Park.  Now, this is where Google Maps lied to me today; it claims the whole park is temporarily closed.  

 

But actually, well, let's see if I can do this:

(I was trying to just paste a print-screen from OpenStreetMap into the page.  No, I couldn't.  Darn.)  Only part of the park is closed, the northeastern part.  The parks department also tells the truth about this:

And someone carefully removed the sign adjacent to the Burke-Gilman Trail there pointing the way to the restrooms.

 

Yes, dear Diary, they're building new restrooms there.  I hope this time they're winter-proof, but I sure hope, if I become homeless again before winter and there's another pandemic, they finish quickly.

I remembered from long ago that the neatest thing I thought Burke-Gilman Playground Park had to offer was a play fortress thingy sort of at the northwestern corner of the northeastern part of the park.  So I looked in its direction from the street, but couldn't tell whether it'd been protected or not.  (I'm more pessimistic that the actually neater sundial, also mentioned in that page, could've stayed in situ and been safe, so I hope it was moved.)  The building all that landscape destruction is in aid of is still standing, but perhaps so far all they've had time to do is pull the plumbing out.  (In the photo I uploaded to Google Drive, at full size a viewer can see the holes where the water fountain was attached.)

Anyway, my point is, that this morning when I checked the dashboard again hoping they'd have stopped, as I thought, lying and I could do other stuff today, they showed a bunch of restrooms as closed due to "Capital Project"s, and this was one of them.

Their water fountain map is still way too optimistic, I suspect; it's now up to 5 off, 206 on.  I found three off today, but one isn't theirs; it's the one where University Methodist Temple used to be, the stone edifice of the water fountain (not the church) still standing, but with no plumbing left inside.  I've reported the "lower" Ravenna Park fountain using "Find It - Fix It", which is how they say they want updates to those maps.  I haven't reported yet the weird stone water fountain pretty far southwest in Laurelhurst Playfield.  I guess I'll see what happens to the water fountain map tomorrow, when I plan to hide from the rain, having already lost my umbrella this year.

The Seattle Times, whose weather forecaster likes to go to extremes, is currently predicting lows for the weekend of 33º Friday night, 32º Saturday night, and 34º Sunday night.  Usually the parks department has been able to shrug off October freezes, but if the Times's extremism comes true (as it does depressingly often), that may be a too long-lasting example for the same reaction.   No official word yet, but my point, dear Diary, is that as usual, I've left it too late to get every park visited before it all changes.  The questions is whether it matters.  Is the parks department really turning over a new leaf?  Will it, for example, admit what's happening when it closes the majority of its restrooms for the winter?  Or is this just another episode in a longer battle?

One reason I've been paying so much attention to libraries lately, dear Diary, is to have another string to your bow as well as my own.  I think the last thing I expected was to have the parks department remove your raison d'être, but if it happens, it happens.  I will admit, I found myself getting both reminiscent and bored today as I took all these photos; I really didn't want, in particular, to get the only newspaper I can probably afford soon wet by photographing water fountains.  (And Jenny Durkan is no longer in office, so need I really worry about another Durkan Drought?  Well, only if there's another pandemic...)

Anyway, photos other than the above (most of those above are actually not at these links):

Cowen Park

Ravenna Park

Burke-Gilman Trail, 30th Ave fountain

Burke-Gilman Playground Park (including none of the photos above, only the photo that sort of shows where the water fountain was)

Laurelhurst Community Center (restrooms) and Playfield (water fountains)

Burke-Gilman Trail, 47th St fountain

Former University Methodist Church, former street fountain

Christie Park

University Playground (including the photo above)

Time marches on, dear Diary; there's a reason I ditched "months" in the titles of the library pages.  I'm working on three fronts:

For part VI of public library hours, I've finished work on Wahkiakum County and started on revising the actual page and on San Juan County.  Cowlitz County, however, is nearly three times as big a job as those two put together, and Skagit County nearly four times.  So we'll see.

For part II of institutional libraries, I now have my list and just need to get through it; as I said in part I, it's a long list.

And I'm also dipping my toes into part I of academic libraries.

Whatever, though, you should hear from me again reasonably soon, dear Diary.  Happy nights and days until then.

Truth and fantasy about park restrooms in winter

Dear Diary,

I've now mapped the park restrooms that were promised to be open in North Seattle last winter:

and then modified that map by what I found in February and in March:

The big circles that are obvious on the map represent differences between what I found and what we were all told last November.  Eight of those differences are restrooms closed that the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation's spokes-person claimed would be open; and two are restrooms open that she did not claim would be.

1. Little Brook Park.  We were told the unheated wooden box of a restroom this park has would be open this past winter, and to emphasise the point, responsibility for keeping it open was given to both the Northwest and the Northeast parks maintenance crews.  However, someone on one of those crews sensibly enough put a closure sign up instead.  Lake City still needs real park restrooms, which should be in Virgil Flaim Park; it doesn't need jokes about the inadequate room it has instead.
   
2. Jackson Park.  The parks department tends to ignore this park in many ways, including lists of restrooms; in particular, the restrooms there are maintained, opened and closed by employees of a private lessee, not by the parks department.  So this is more an apparent difference than a real one, but still, there's restrooms in a city-owned park that were open this past winter but not in the posted list, so it's still a difference.
3. Sandel Playground.  Both in 2020-2021 and in 2022-2023 I found the restrooms there locked; in both years they were supposed to open.  I think this is a disagreement between the parks department's PR people and the northwest maintenance crew.  I hope they settle it before next winter.
4. Green Lake Park, Bathhouse restrooms.  These are customarily open in winter and summer, but not in spring and fall, so again, I wasn't surprised to find them open despite their omission from the posted list, but it's still a difference.
   
5. Salmon Bay Park.  I'm not sure whether this building has heat, but it doesn't have much room for it, and these restrooms haven't customarily been open in winter.  I'm guessing this lie was meant to appease people in Ballard who want the homeless to have somewhere to go besides the library and the bushes.  Maybe including Ballard's city council member?  Or maybe it was much less than that, just a joke on me, as previously suggested.  Mind, dear Diary, I still don't have a clue why the indoor restrooms with doors that open to the outdoors, in the Ballard Community Center, close each winter, unless it's out of hatred towards homeless people.  But we weren't promised Ballard Community Center last winter, and we were promised Salmon Bay Park.
   
6. Green Lake Park, Shellhouse restrooms.  These are customarily open year-round, but the building they're in is currently behind a construction fence.
7. Ravenna Park, lower restrooms.  These are customarily open year-round, but the men's room has been locked for years, and the women's room was locked too when I went there this past winter.
8. Woodland Park, Citywide Athletics Building ("Rio") restrooms.  These have also been locked for years, and have acquired an impressive amount of graffiti on this subject.  Now, closing restrooms in winter that could be kept open is supposed to enable the parks maintenance crews to clean graffiti up, so I'm not sure why they're neglecting these examples.  Nor am I clear on why the athletes were left without restrooms this past winter, considering that a perfectly reasonable alternative (Woodland Park Cloverleaf) is available a few blocks north, and was opened winter 2020-2021.
9. University Playground.  The restrooms have been closed for years, since the pandemic began and probably since before then.  They've been fenced in, in the recent past; they're now welded shut.  A blatant lie.
10. Gas Works Park.  A little further along than the Green Lake Small Crafts Center (whose restrooms are referred to by the name of the nearby Shellhouse); here it's the place where the building was that's now surrounded by a construction fence.

In the past, I've suggested that the parks department's pathological inability to tell the truth about its winter restrooms resulted from a sorcerer's spell.  This year, there's perhaps a more prosaic explanation.  This past winter, visitors to parks all over southern North Seattle, south of 65th, say, got to experience what park visitors in Lake City experience all the time:  no restrooms.  As many were closed despite claims they'd be open, as were open:  Green Lake Shellhouse, Woodland "Rio", Gas Works, lower Ravenna, and University were all promised but closed; Woodland Pink Palace and 50th, Green Lake 64th, Wallingford and - I presume, not having gotten there myself - Laurelhurst were all promised and open.  Now, something similar happens in West Seattle on a regular basis, and West Seattle typically has more political power in Seattle than southern North Seattle does.  But maybe the parks department didn't like the optics of admitting how far someone needing a restroom would have to walk, in southern North Seattle, so it decorated truth with fantasy.

Or maybe it didn't like admitting how few open restroom locations in North Seattle it was using our tax dollars to support this winter, so it added a few it knew wouldn't be open.  We were promised 25.  We got 18.  (Jackson Park's restrooms aren't supported by tax dollars.)  In 2019-2020, we got 23.  We got 72% of what was promised, and 78% of three years ago.  In my experience, in school, these would usually be passing grades, but they aren't in my current job.  Are they passing grades in parks department jobs?

At least this year, there isn't an agency serving the homeless that relies on the parks department to tell the truth about its own property.  So with any luck, my former peers weren't misled by those lies.  I wonder who else was.

Good night, dear Diary.  I don't know when I'll be back, so have a happy spring, by day and night both.

My February Hikes

Dear Diary,

To start with, I planned to tackle all the parks with restrooms in one region of North Seattle, that is, NE, N and NW, in one day off each.  In reality, on February 19th I visited the majority of NE parks; on February 26, the majority of NW (adding one on the 28th); on March 5 a few in NE and N; on March 12 only Salmon Bay Park; and on March 19 most of N.  (In each region I started in the north, to keep myself from focusing as usual on the closer-together parks further south.)  On March 22 (my day off had switched), I visited the parks of Greenwood and east of there, which were most of what was left, but it was already too late to evaluate their restrooms' winter availability.

In your previous page, dear Diary, I focused on the lists of park restrooms open in winter posted by Christina Hirsch in 2019 and in 2022.  In particular, I noted that of four restrooms or restroom pairs added to the 2022 list in North Seattle, three appeared to be outright lies (University Playground's restroom doors welded shut; Little Brook Park's restroom posted as seasonally closed; Salmon Bay Park's restrooms locked on two visits) and one, at best, a conflict between Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation management and the parks maintenance workers who actually open, clean, do minor repairs on, and close the restrooms, that is, Sandel Playground's restrooms, which now in two winters (2020-2021 and 2022-2023) have been advertised as open but have instead been closed.

However, I found other interesting things on these hikes, including but not limited to more lies, and so plan two other pages to tell you about them, dear Diary.  This is the first, and covers NE and NW.

February 19th

I've now uploaded most of the photos to Google Drive.  For this hike, that means Magnuson Park, Matthews Beach, Little Brook Park, all visited between 1 and 4 pm; then University Playground, Cowen Park, Ravenna Park, Burke-Gilman Playground Park and View Ridge Playfield, between 4 P.M. and 9 P.M.  (The restrooms at Burke-Gilman Playground Park, which I reached at 7:20 P.M., both had visible seasonal closure notices still up; those at View Ridge Playfield, which I reached at 8:04 P.M., stay open all the time, 24/7.  For which I was very grateful by that time, because all the other open restrooms - Magnuson Park's beach restrooms and Matthews Beach's - had been early in the hike.)

I found the street-style fountain near the intersection of the Burke-Gilman Trail and 30th Ave NE not running.  I didn't check the park-style fountain further south.

Other notes:

Magnuson Park

As the previous page noted, without going out of my way re water fountains, I found four that were running, of which three were attached to heated buildings.  The fourth was in Magnuson Park.  It was running strongly:

I was concerned enough about this - cold weather was then forecast - to write to Rachel Schulkin, PR at the parks department.  But I thought there was a real chance that someone in charge at Magnuson Park was doing a controlled experiment, comparing an attached fountain with a free-standing one.  So I told her the fountains should be turned off unless they represented such an experiment.

I think I was worrying too much.  I've told you before, dear Diary, that while homeless I began tracking low temperatures in spreadsheets - a succession of these as the electronic gadgets where I kept them broke or were stolen.  (And as my standards changed.  I originally just listed temperature readings from signs I passed on my way to campus.)  The surviving version goes back to 2019, and I still go to some trouble to keep that spreadsheet up.

Now, 2022 was distinctive compared to the other years I still have, and as best I remember going further back.  I track three thermometers:  one at the roof of the UW's Atmospheric Sciences building, measured every minute by UW personnel; one at Boeing Field, measured every five minutes by the National Weather Service; and one at NOAA's building on the UW campus, a couple blocks south of the Atmospheric Sciences building and much closer to the water, measured every hour also by the National Weather Service.  Historically, my comments on the spreadsheet concerned almost only missed readings at one or another of these.  UW was usually the highest, NOAA often the lowest.  But in 2022, NOAA's readings started going haywire, very often dropping by 8º Fahrenheit for a single reading, sometimes two or three times in 24 hours.  I noted these but only recorded more believable lows.  My complaints about NOAA's readings got ever more baroque as these "swoops" became more frequent and more extreme (for a time they were consistently 11º F in extent).  Finally October 1st to 6th, neither NOAA nor UW gave credible readings; readings at both ranged 11º to 15º F throughout those days.  From October 7th to November 23rd, NOAA was credible, the UW not; but on November 24th, NOAA swooped eight times, and this pattern of frequent swoops making it un-useable as a data source has been its pattern basically ever since, except for a few weeks around New Year's.  On November 28th, the UW came back, and has been steady ever since.  I've since learnt, from my work on the counties, that actually the Weather Service has multiple stations whose temperature readings regularly swoop; I suspect the main brand of thermometer NWS relies on is maybe not up to being used outside for years on end.

Anyway, though, this melange of sources reported a bunch of temperatures in the 20s before February 19 of this year.  November 9th, 2022:  NOAA 29º (Boeing 30º).  November 18th through 20th (both NOAA and Boeing).  December 1st and 2nd, also the 15th and 16th (all Boeing; UW higher).  December 21st through 24th (both UW and Boeing, and going down to 16º).  January 30th, 2023 (both UW, at 29º, and Boeing, at 21º).  So when I found that fountain running on February 19th, one of two things had to be true:  Either it was equal to 16º temperatures, or it was being closely supervised by someone able and willing to turn it off when such temperatures threatened.

So I shouldn't have worried so much.  It looks like Seattle parks could have a lot more running water fountains in typical Seattle winters, although if the explanation is close supervision, that probably doesn't scale up too well.

I didn't find the showers at either Magnuson or Matthews beaches running.

Ravenna Park

Both the 2019 list and the 2022 list said Ravenna Park's lower restrooms were open.  I know from when you began, dear Diary, that the 2019 list was telling the truth.  The 2022 list was not, and I can't imagine why a list that had clearly been actively compiled included the long-term-closed restrooms at Ravenna Park.

February 26th

Again, most of the photos are now at Google Drive, including Carkeek Park, Golden Gardens Park, Soundview Playfield, Loyal Heights Community Center, Salmon Bay Park, Ballard Community Center, Ballard Commons, and also the street water fountain at Greenwood Ave and 85th St, which was near a place where I changed buses, and which I found running very strongly:

Carkeek Park

Carkeek Park is distinctive among the parks of North Seattle with regard to its restrooms:  It's the largest park with only one restroom location.  Jackson Park, the next largest, has only one location for restrooms whose doors open to the outside, and all its restrooms are in one small part of the park, but most of the park is a golf course, which apparently makes that OK.  Otherwise, the next smaller park with only one set of restrooms is Maple Leaf Reservoir Park, one-seventh the size of Carkeek Park.

The reason Carkeek Park can get away with having so few restrooms is partly that most of what's interesting in that park is near those restrooms - the beach, the playground, the picnic shelters.  It's also partly that, like Jackson Park, it used to have park restrooms whose doors open indoors.  But then the Environmental Learning Center at Carkeek Park, which is way off at the other end of the park, much closer to city streets, closed to the public, leaving Carkeek with only one set of restrooms.

So what's new is that one of the ELC buildings has re-opened to the public:

In 2010 it was open Tuesdays through Saturdays, but 10 A.M. to 4 P.M.  So the current schedule is nearly as many hours, though, as in many libraries, it's managed this largely by expanding morning hours.

The front of this building has a lot of glass:

Through this I could see the doors of the restrooms, and could also see a couple of people working.  But they weren't formally open, and I didn't want to bother them (partly because, after all, I hoped to finish NW that day).

Golden Gardens Park

I vaguely remember that the showers here were running, unlike those at Matthews Beach and Magnuson Park.  But my photos don't document this, and it could be a false memory.

February 28th

Gilman Playground

As with Burke-Gilman Playground Park, I got here outside my usual hours limits (6:06 P.M.), but it was OK because there were still closure signs on the doors.  At Google Drive see here.

All for now, dear Diary.  I'll write up the March hikes in the coming days as my schedule allows.  Until then, happy nights and days.

Three Hikes in Ravenna, part II: Northeast

Dear Diary,

This part's title is actually untrue:  I've recently made five hikes to this part of Ravenna.  So let's hurry up and get started.  Here's the map:

 

One thing I want you to notice on that map, dear Diary, is that dozens of homeowners north-northeast of Ravenna Park don't have back yards, they have back forest, and near as I can tell (this was the topic of today's hike), they pretty much don't treat it as their property.  That doesn't mean they want you hiking into it, but does mean that in every case I got the chance to look at, there's a pretty sharp dividing line between the areas they actually use, and the areas they seem to be aware they're stewards of.

Today's hike was also a lesson in the reliability of Open Street Map.  Those gray blotches reproduce OSM's map as best I could, because it checked out everywhere I was able to look.

On October 8 (hike #1), I went and visited most of the properties I knew to belong to the City of Seattle in the entire region, including this piece of it.

Olga Park (RB9 on map)

As before, I've numbered the blocks of Ravenna Boulevard with the numbers I used, counting from Ravenna Park towards Green Lake Park, in "Ravenna Boulevard", a much earlier page in you, dear Diary.

I'd forgotten in writing the previous part of this page that I did take one photograph of Ravenna Boulevard, of the specific extra-wide block of it that has the separate name Olga Park.  I took it because I was pleased to see that when Olga Park was swept, they didn't also sweep the sign declaring that name:

Ravenna Park

On this hike, I didn't take many photos in this park, other than of the water fountains and restroom doors.  (As in past hike series, the photos are in a shared folder at my Google Drive.)  I know perfectly well that I've shown you lots of photos of Ravenna Park in the past, dear Diary.  But I was pleased to notice that the alleged construction near the shelter there a) is supposed to be completed fairly soon and b) at the moment isn't fencing off the actual shelter.

Also, you may find this photo of just how the water fountain in "lower" Ravenna Park is malfunctioning mildly amusing:

Also, this time I found about about Ravenna Triangle, a tiny Seattle Department of Transportation property at one of the southeastern corners of gigantic Ravenna Park.  Notice two things about it, dear Diary:  It's nicely landscaped (something SDOT is sometimes good at), and the bench in the photo is on the parks department's side of the property (benches are something I haven't yet noticed SDOT doing).

Ravenna Ravine (A on map)

The core of the area where all those homeowners take care of woods is a reasonably big area where the city does instead.  It's in a maze of dead ends and has no plumbing, so I'm not sure I've visited it since May 2020, when I was telling you, dear Diary, about all the parks in the general vicinity of where I then lived.

So here are more photos of Ravenna Ravine, showing that at least here the city's Department of Parks and Recreation has not installed a new water fountain.  As before, I found it impossible to get further into the park than a few steps.

One reason I set out, last summer, to visit each city property known to me, was that I wanted to find all the Seattle Public Utilities parks.  SPU really likes to parkify its properties.  But it turns out most things with SPU's name on them in North Seattle are not only not parkified, they're invisible - sewers, standpipes, you name it.  However, it sometimes turns out that they're in interesting places, and so it proved this time.  Around the corner from the non-entrance to Ravenna Ravine I'd visited this time and before, on 24th Ave, there's a dead end on 61st St. to which I went looking for the fictional address SPU had used, and there I found a sign:

"Habitat restoration.  Please do not enter or climb on bank.  Thank you!"  Now I belatedly realise that this is actually a dead end into one of the private parts of Ravenna Ravine, not the city park.  So at least one homeowner is taking stewardship seriously.

Park Home Circle (B on map)

This is a pretty good tiny playground for kids, but really shines at Christmas time, when I hope I'll still be housed.  Meanwhile, another photo:

And that was it for my hiking of this area on October 8.  I went south and got onto the Burke-Gilman Trail and away.

On October 12 (hike #2), I came to make up for the one area I hadn't reached before sunset on October 8.

17th Ave NE Center Strip

Yes, that's what SDOT calls one of its more boring parks.  No fine landscaping here.

Two blocks of this park are in the area on this map, three in the one covered in the next part of this page.  I took one photo per block, plus one extra, but that one is south of here.  I didn't get the idea of really varying the shots much until the third block, too.  Sorry, dear Diary; I hope tomorrow to show you more interesting pictures than these.

On October 14 (hike #3), I came back intending to visit the areas I'd noticed as worth attention on Open Street Map.  There was only one of these in this part of Ravenna.

Traffic circle, 17th Ave & 63rd St (C on map)

Wow, wouldn't it be nice if all traffic circles, which I experience as terrifying places where no driver ever signals a turn, were as pleasant as this one!  It's got nice landscaping:

nice paths, adding up to a significant chunk of its area, with one nice bench and several things that clearly belong to that genre of street furniture designed primarily so as to be uncomfortable enough that homeless people won't monopolise them, otherwise known as cutting off your nose to spite your face, well anyway, it's got furniture:

And it's even got a Little Free Library:

The safety cone visible in the second photo and the truck in this third are because it's also now got construction nearby.  A "sanican" is, in fact, across the street from it.  Nevertheless, I found that even as tiny a park as this, even with construction noise, could soothe me, and I recommend it.

So that was the only one I'd noticed on Open Street Map, but as I walked away, I chanced to notice something all on my own.  I'm not very observant, dear Diary, so I was pretty proud of finding it.

Battlement bench (D on map)

No bus goes down 63rd St or, for that matter, 21st Ave, so by Seattle logic, no bench is needed on those streets, but someone saw fit to put one there, and not only that, to give people who sat there something to look at.  I recommend this one, too, to anyone who comes to these parts to see the traffic circle done right.

Yesterday (hike #4), making my second attempt at the map up top, I noticed something on Open Street Map I hadn't noticed before.  Well, actually, a bunch of somethings, so I incorporated them into yesterday's hike.  But again, only one was in this map's area:

Ravenna Trollbooth

Given my own interest in fantasy - I long intended to write a history of it - of course I came and looked.  It isn't actually very easy to find, but fortunately the artist puts the exact address conspicuously on his website.  Anyway, here's a photo:

One result of going six places in Ravenna yesterday was that I forgot to go look more thoroughly at the woods around Ravenna Ravine; another was that I ran out of time to do so.  So I finally convinced myself to come back today (hike #5) and do the job right before writing this.

In the first area, every single place I tried was just as obviously private property as it was woods.  I didn't think I had any business taking photos.

Turns out the easiest path between the areas where streets contact the woods is through Ravenna Park.  So I also investigated two more things I'd noticed in the park as rendered by Open Street Map.  One turned out to be a large slab of concrete on the western side of the park.  The only obvious thing about it was two basketball hoops; a full court would occupy about a third of the space, and I have no clue what the other two thirds were intended for.  The only attractive thing about it was the couple using the basketball hoops, so I took no photos.

The other thing didn't turn out any more attractive, but I figured in case anyone else's curiosity was whetted by "Ravenna Park Sulfur Spring" (F on the map above), I'd better photograph it anyway and save some people the trip.

As I walked away, I did indeed notice a faint smell of sulfur.  Huh.

Anyway.  There are two bridges at the south end of Ravenna Ave as it reaches the park.  One takes people to 61st St northwest of the park, the other to 60th St east of the park.  I thought from Open Street Map and what I remembered from the King County parcel viewer (which for some reason won't load on my phone) that those bridges marked the park's boundary.  So I took photos looking northish from each of them.  This one, G on the map, actually probably looks into private woods:

But once I got home and could look at the parcel viewer again, turned out the other is parks department property, an inaccessible part of Ravenna Park across that bridge from the rest.  H on the map.

A railing of the bridge is visible on the lower left of that photo.

The few remaining places on the east side of the woods were as un-photo-worthy as those on the west had been.

Well, all for tonight, dear Diary.  Tomorrow I hope to finish, or at least nearly finish, surveying the buildings of UW's Seattle campus, and then come home and tell you about the remaining part of Ravenna.  Until then, a good night and a good day.

Introduction to my hikes of the U-District and Ravenna

Dear Diary,

Whoopee!  I'm almost ready to tell you about my hikes of one week ago.  Within a few days I hope to be completely ready; as things stand, I'm ready for the first three parts, anyway.

I liked the scale of the maps I made for downtown so much that I decided to standardise on that scale.  It's proving useful for North Seattle as well, but inconveniently, I don't yet know enough to make maps on that scale as large enough as I want them.

So these hikes are going to be narrated with more than one map per page.  Here's an overview:

"Three Hikes in Ravenna" will be illustrated by maps A, B and D.  I intend to begin writing the three parts of this page I plan tonight.

"Three Hikes in University Heights" will be illustrated by maps A and C.  I intend to begin writing the one part of this page I plan tomorrow.

"Four [or more] Hikes in Brooklyn" will be illustrated by map E.  I hope to begin writing it on Tuesday, October 18.

And whenever I can, which will probably be months from now, "Many Hikes on Campus" will be illustrated by maps E, F and G.

Spoiler:  There's very little news.  The water fountain in "lower" Ravenna Park has completely stopped working, possibly because of vandalism; however, its water is running non-stop, so it's as wasteful as it can reasonably be.  Otherwise, the park water fountains in this area - "upper" Ravenna Park, Cowen Park, University Playground and Christie Park - all work fine.  The shell of the street fountain that used to be in front of the University Temple is still behind the fence of that vacant lot.  The restrooms in "upper" Ravenna Park and the women's room in "lower" Ravenna Park are all open; the men's room in "lower" Ravenna Park and both restrooms at each of Cowen Park and University Playground are not open.  (Come winter, the only open park restroom in this area will be the women's room in "lower" Ravenna, if that.)  Oh, and most of North Passage Point is fenced off because concrete chips are falling from the bottom of the I-5 bridge.

There is, however, one very little bit of big news, which I hope to tell you about in detail before months from now, dear Diary.  The University of Washington's Seattle campus, to quote someone to whom I described you yesterday, "is becoming a locked campus".  So for the time being, while I can't photograph any of the popular parks on campus because they're thronged all day long, I'm visiting the buildings instead, and observing their hours.  Just in the few days I've been doing this, I've seen several hours changes, but in broad outline, the quote is true.  Concretely, I spent my days at the UW mostly in five buildings, at least fourteen hours inside per day.  If I become homeless again in the near future, one of those buildings will be closed to me, and the other four's hours have been cut very much.  I've already found a few examples of other buildings becoming more accessible, but none in ways that would actually make a difference.  So I'd certainly have to spend holidays outside, and weekends during breaks outside, and probably could spend no more than twelve hours per day inside during regular quarters, and no more than eight in summer quarter and breaks.

Between this, the park restrooms' closures, and the closure of the Urban Rest Stop's U-District branch, it's become immensely harder to be homeless in the U-District lately.  No doubt if I were to ask anyone who made the relevant decisions about this, they'd say it was all a coincidence.  They'd mention COVID-19, the difficulty of hiring anyone (people are so hard to find right now that I've managed to stay unemployed for seven months!), and budget tightness.  But, well, to whatever extent I'm a journalist at all, I'm not the kind of journalist who asks people like that questions like that.  I'm just going to document what I can of the facts I observe, and leave your readers to decide what they mean.

This problem is much bigger than the libraries, but I hope anyway to tell you, dear Diary, about the public university libraries - meaning the major state schools, mainly UW but also Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington State University in Vancouver, Evergreen State College (which now offers some masters' degrees, so I'm counting it as a university), and also the campuses without libraries of Central Washington University and Western Washington University in Everett and Eastern Washington University in Sammamish.  Tuesday, October 18.

As a reminder, here's the key I'm using:

To unpack:

Open land (without concern for how easy it is to walk through) is green if it's represented by the City of Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation.  It's blue if it's owned by any other governmental unit.  And it's black if it's privately owned.

Open land is also olive green if it's owned by the Seattle parks department, if it's closed to the public in some way (usually a fence, for open land).  Similarly, it's whatever that different bluish colour is called if it's owned by some other governmental unit, and dark gray if it's privately owned.

Buildings are the same colours but only in outline.  (Usually, closed buildings are just locked.)

Restrooms are shown as small rectangular outlines.  There are four cases:  Are they on open land, or somewhere else?  And are they open to the public (at least some of the time) or are they closed?  In practise, I needn't have worried quite so much.  Essentially all buildings open to the public have working restrooms, though not all such buildings have public working restrooms.  A restroom that isn't working or isn't public is red.  (The careful reader will notice that this is a change from the key.  Sorry, but I'd rather spend time writing up the results of the hikes than updating that key.)  A public restroom that is working is the colour of the owner, or if it's on open or closed land (which is usually the case), it's white.

Water fountains are shown as small round outlines.  They have the same colour pattern as restrooms.

All for now, dear Diary.  Let me try to get at least part of "Three Hikes in Ravenna" written up tonight.  But if not, have a good night, and I should manage to write the first part by tomorrow morning.

Today's Hike: Many water fountains turned on in areas around the University

Dear Diary,

I have very little time left to tell you much about today's hike, so will summarise.

I went to Christie Park, University Playground, Cowen Park, Ravenna Park, the Burke-Gilman Trail (specifically, its eastern water fountain), Burke-Gilman Playground Park, and Laurelhurst Playfield and Community Center.  Also University Heights Plaza, which still has "sanican"s and an SPU sink, and Ravenna Boulevard, which still has no plumbing.

Restrooms - All open except, still, Cowen Park and University Playground.

Water fountains - All running except, still, Christie Park.  The double water fountain in the northeast of Laurelhurst Playfield is probably un-useable, however:  the lower bowl gives so little water I doubt it can be drunk, let alone fill a bottle, while the upper one overshoots its bowl so spectacularly, the same doubts hold.  The single water fountain in the same playfield's southwest was much cooler than the last time I tried it, last year, so evidently is just affected by the temperature in general, rather than specifically heated.

I found that I do still, after months of filtered tap water, like the water from Burke-Gilman Playground Park's water fountain.

I then went to another suburban library for another Korean drama (which I'd actually hoped to get from the first one last week), and found the water fountains still shut off, but the men's room was fine.

On returning downtown I looked for three of the street fountains listed on the pseudo-map that I hadn't known about.

The one at 298 James St, actually a little north of James on the west side of 3rd Ave, is running despite both kinds of damage I'd found in other running fountains:  its control-and-spout mechanism is wobbly, as at 5th & Olive Way, and its push button is uncapped, as at 1st & Pike.

I couldn't find one within a block of 200 Columbia St.

I did find one at 898 3rd Ave, that is, on the east side of 3rd Ave just south of Marion, but from the ingrained dirt in the bowl, I doubt it's run any time this past year, and it certainly wasn't running tonight.

The fountains at 2nd & Madison and at 3rd & Union were running, but I found I liked the taste of neither.

So things are looking up in North Seattle, but Seattle Public Utilities lied at least a little.  I'll take what I can get.  Good night, dear Diary.

The Biblically Heroic Sweep of Cowen Park

Dear Diary,

Today I went to Ravenna Boulevard, Cowen Park, Ravenna Park and 17th Ave NE, whose boulevard is considered a park by the Seattle Department of Transportation, but not by the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation.

Important news:  Both the "upper" restrooms in Ravenna Park were open.  I didn't have my newspaper with me, so didn't take pictures.  But there are now open park restrooms sort of near the U-District.  I found no other changes in the parks' plumbing - neither Cowen nor Ravenna has a running water fountain, Cowen's restrooms are still closed (and in a recent page I boneheadedly forgot that they do have explanatory signs on their doors), and Ravenna's lower men's room too.

The block of Ravenna Boulevard between 15th Ave and University Way NE, also known as Olga Park, was swept this morning.  A camper there was murdered by a visitor earlier this week, and so the entire camp was punished.  This is, of course, biblically correct, dear Diary, for as Numbers 14:18 says:  "and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation."  Imagine how much better a place Seattle would be if every neighbourhood where anyone was murdered were evacuated and levelled.  We might still have five buildings standing in town, who knows?

At any rate, this meant that, given my policy against showing you photos of tents, that today was my first chance to take landscape photos of Olga Park.

I found a notice proper in form, though it didn't meet the 72-hour standard that was once legally required:

There was also this confusing declaration:

Given that the parks department is now allotting itself two weeks to do nothing, presumably because the one week in which they did nothing at Albert Davis Park hadn't been enough, they did a really thorough job of putting up closure signage:

However, what I witnessed, and in fact participated in, wasn't the sweep of Olga Park, but of Cowen Park.

I found a couple of young women with stacks of pizzas and other stuff set up across 15th Ave NE from where I took the picture just above.  They told me Cowen Park was being swept as we spoke.  Since I'd never actually seen a sweep done, I figured I owed it to you, dear Diary, to find out what they're like.

What I found was a rather odd confrontation.  A single tent stood in one of the awkward corners Cowen Park has many of.  A man stood in front of it.  Surrounding him on three sides were many employees of the parks department.  And on what passes for a sidewalk at the edge of Cowen Park - that is, a dirt path with some edgy gravel here and there - stood a bunch of people yelling at the parks department employees.

The man who was in front of that tent is black, as are quite a few of the parks department employees, including both of those I'll quote to you, dear Diary, from memory.  There may have been a white parks department employee or two there, but I didn't notice them; there were people of various other races.  Essentially all the protestors were white; mostly young women, and a few who might have been men, plus one man at least my age.  He and one less young woman, who turned out herself to be homeless (she claimed to have seen tents slashed at Albert Davis Park, where she was living May 6), were by far the loudest.  There was a guy on a bicycle who struck me as not really belonging to any of these groups, but who seemed to have some sort of rapport with the man in front of the tent; he's also black, and for all I know he could be anything from a relative to a fellow homeless man (though if so, he was travelling awfully light) to a dealer to a social worker.

For a while everyone focused on each other, and a weird sort of argument.  Some of the protestors yelled, others, including me, made caustic but quieter remarks.  The parks department employees said what they could, quoting law, saying they were just doing their jobs (and that bit of World War II folklore has certainly not died out from among the youth of today, unfortunately for people just doing their jobs everywhere...).  Since the louder people were the angriest, and had trouble restraining their movements, things escalated, giving the parks employees all the excuse they needed to call the police, and when those arrived, the whole confrontation collapsed.

Two episodes in the confrontation are worth quoting.  At one point a parks department employee apologised to the homeless man.  Apparently this employee had advised him, while sweeping Olga Park, that Cowen Park might be a safe place to go, and now regretted giving this advice.

At another point, when one of the protestors asked where the man should go next, a parks department employe mentioned that there are mountains all around Seattle with plenty of places to camp.  I reiterate that the person who said this boneheaded thing is just as black as the foolishly compassionate colleague, and as the homeless man himself.

Anyway, on the police's arrival, several of the quieter young women started giving orders which various people obeyed, and next thing I knew I was one of about half a dozen people lifting the tent before it'd been emptied.  Basically, the protestors and their hangers-on (including me) did the sweep for the parks department.  They certainly did check our work, but we left the spot as clean as they would have.

Ironically, the next stop was ... Ravenna Boulevard, halfway across the street.  One block from Olga Park.  The protestors had hired a rental van, which arrived reasonably soon, but the homeless man had trouble deciding what to do.  By the time I left he'd pretty much decided to spend the night there on Ravenna Boulevard, and maybe the next day move to the doorway of a vacant building across the street.  Last time I saw him, a few hours later, he was still there.

I followed my usual rules, dear Diary:  I tried not to photograph any tents or people, and will not show you my failures.  Here's what I did photograph:

First, the vast threat this one man's tent posed to the public's enjoyment of Cowen Park:

Notice also in that photo the vehicles.  There were well over five parks department employees there, and if I wasn't willing to photograph them, I was certainly willing to photograph their trucks.  Here's another:

Really, I think there were more like ten of them.  The group I spoke with later was four men, and was definitely not even close to all.

So yes, obviously one tent would've made it impossible for anyone else to use Cowen Park.  And of course someone just swept has no right to pitch a tent where the sweepers can see.  After all, sweeps are like bills of attainder, which everyone knows are constitutional somewhere:  they attach to this man, and to his descendants unto the third generation.  Little details like notice or legal authority don't matter compared to that.

Anyway, that's the threat from which these valiant parks department employees spared the neighbours of Cowen Park.  I put off writing this page, dear Diary, long enough to skim the books of Numbers and of Joshua, looking for something explicitly saying that evildoers should be hounded from door to door until slain, or some such, an explicit declaration that those not of the tribe must all die.  I didn't find one; I'm just not as biblically literate as I thought I was.  Oddly, however, in other books which some people consider biblical, one finds other things, for example this, from Matthew 25: 31-40:

³¹ When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:

³² And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:

³³ And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.

³⁴ Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

³⁵ For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:

³⁶ Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

³⁷ Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?

³⁸ When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?

³⁹ Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

⁴⁰ And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Good night, dear Diary.

Details of southern NE Seattle, part I

Dear Diary,

Yesterday I really didn't want to go hiking, so I decided to start with the toughest job left:

Magnuson Community Center and Park

As you already know, I found two restroom pairs open, the usual two closed, and, also as usual, no water fountains running.  The central men's room has two toilets without stall doors, two urinals, one sink, one dryer, and one soap dispenser.  The beach men's room has two toilets without stall doors, two urinals, one sink, one dryer that I haven't found working since last May, and one soap dispenser.  Anyway, there were also other things worth telling you about.

Near the entrance this sign currently stands:

Now, way back in October, in "Water Fountains - An Interim Report", part II, I wrote as follows about the joys of approaching Magnuson Park:

| Of course there were also tears and the gnashing of teeth 

| along this route - not on 75th, and not in the neighbourhood 

| of switchbacks between 75th and Sand Point Way, but rather 

| in the epic struggle to walk the three blocks from 77th to 74th 

| Sts along Sand Point, a part of it not designed for the human form.

So never let it be said that the current city administration has done nothing for me.

The Cross Park Trail (officially the South Cross Park Trail, but since the North one doesn't cross nearly as much of the park, I don't care) reaches the lakefront path halfway between the beach restrooms and the "tower" ones.  I turned south towards the "tower" first.  Along the way I spotted a sign on a tree.  I like it when parks make it possible to identify plants - we'll see an example on a much bigger scale later - so I stopped to look at the sign:

What Green Seattle Partnership aren't telling you in this sign is that because this tree isn't native to Washington, they'd just love to have the chance to uproot it.  That's why they make an issue about its being native here at all; they just can't help themselves, even when they're trying to be politic and not tell people that the tree providing those people with shade ought not to be there.

Anyway, speaking of uprooting, I think something's changed at the "tower" since I first visited it, although I'm not sure just when.  The change is that the water fountain there is now considered a risky thing to approach:

I was going to say that it had never hurt me, but actually, when I first visited this fountain last May, I vaguely remember that the controls then existing, as opposed to now, actually sort of bit my thumb.  So I suppose this caution is warranted.

I put an extra photo into the Google Drive folder where I keep all the boring shots showing me trying to get water from water fountains and observing open (or, on this trip, closed) restroom doors.  Let me repeat it here:

That's one of the two shower controls for Magnuson Park's beach showers.  Notice that it can't be turned.  Neither can.  Now, this could be vandalism, even metal thievery, but I've been coming to believe that this kind of controls-disabling is actually done by employees of the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation, and this is a case in point.  Why would metal thieves have stopped where they did?

The Magnuson Community Center is under construction:

and could thus be excused if it were ignoring the idea of "re-opening" as much as other Community Centers are.  But actually, when I went to its temporary home at the Brig (west entrance), this is what I found:

Much better than when I looked for it in January and couldn't find it.

Burke-Gilman Playground Park

Its water fountain, whose water I really like, is off.  Its restrooms are open.  The men's room has one toilet with a door that doesn't latch or lock, one urinal, two sinks, one dryer, and one soap dispenser.  The bench I liked still has not been repaired.

The Burke-Gilman Trail

It's been a long time since I showed you a video, dear Diary, so I thought I'd show you this one, although it's very short.  Its point is that the Burke-Gilman Trail's eastern water fountain, one of only two park water fountains running in southern "NE", is not in ideal shape.

It's dripping both at the control and from the opposite side of the fountain.

In order to make sure I actually got going, I left the house without taking time to pack food or water (though I did drink some before leaving).  To make matters worse, I got a bag of tortilla chips for breakfast, where I got the newspaper.  So I was pretty thirsty by this point, and, ignoring the damage, washed and filled both the empty bottles I was carrying there.  The water proved good, as it has been in the past.

Speaking of the past, this fountain is part of why I'm suspicious of controls vandalism.  Last winter the controls were visibly damaged, but when the fountains came back on the controls of this one were magically healed.

Since I had water, I didn't need to get it from University Village, and so was free to get my day's healthy food at Safeway.  But I didn't like what they had available, so went to Chipotle in U-Village anyway.

Ravenna Park

Neither men's room is open, only the lower women's room is open, and neither water fountain is running.

I took, and uploaded to Google Drive, two photos of the upper women's room door, one a close-up trying to show the latch that locks it.  I remember doing the same with the men's room but the photo doesn't seem to have taken.

The lower men's room door bears a sign blaming the closure on vandalism.  Both upper rooms' doors bear signs blaming the closure on all four choices:  seasonal closure, vandalism, malfunction or freeze, and maintenance needed.

Near the lower restrooms is a sandbox that constantly spills sand onto the pavement nearby.  A man was sweeping the sand away, blessed be he, and when he saw me taking pictures he introduced himself and explained, with rather slow speech, his job, involving programs at this park.  Someone better equipped than I should try to get this guy the fifteen minutes of fame he seems to want.

On my way between the lower and upper restrooms and water fountains, I stopped at a Little Free Library.  While I looked, a parks employee drove up and hailed me; it was the man I'd met at Northacres Park.  He'd regaled me with tales of closed restrooms then (one involved an unhappy rabbit in the women's beach restroom at Magnuson); this time, he just listed them to me.

Nevertheless, I took a big risk and ate my burrito and drank a bottle of water near the picnic shelter near the upper restrooms, not knowing where I could take care of the probable results.

Cowen Park

Neither restroom was open.  This time only the "malfunction or freeze" box was checked.  You may remember, dear Diary, that in "Some Odds and Ends" I mentioned having seen the men's room here open on March 23, with the water running.  Since UW, nearby, recorded 36° F on the Atmospheric Sciences Building rooftop as recently as April 11, a freeze wouldn't be much of a wonder.

The water fountain also isn't running.

University Heights Plaza

As I told you, dear Diary, I'd worried about the SPU sinks.  Well, in the U-District, they're still there:

Here's a close-up of their new decoration:

On my way to the next park, I stopped by the University branch of the Seattle Public Library.  It thinks there's plenty of time left before it has to worry about anything like "re-opening":

University Playground

This park was recently swept.  So, as at Albert Davis Park, this was the first time I could shoot a landscape at this park without catching a tent, so I did that, even though the landscape of this park is singularly uninteresting:

The restrooms remain closed without explanation.  I've heard two explanations of very different kinds from the two parks employees with whom I've talked the most (one, the guy mentioned above), so I don't know what to think.

On the way to the next park, I verified that the SPU sink is still at the encampment at I-5 and NE 45th St.  Remembering that I hadn't actually tried the one at U-Heights, I decided to photograph this one running:

And there I'd better stop, because I have more photos to show you, dear Diary, and this is sort of a natural stopping point.  Until later today, then.