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.

Three Hikes in Ravenna, part I: Northwest

Dear Diary,

This page is about a bunch of places shown on this map:

I visited these places in three hikes.  The first hike was October 8, when I only visited places I knew to be owned by the City of Seattle, most listed in the 2020 real property report (27-page PDF).  I walked the whole length of Ravenna Boulevard that day, but photographed none of it, because very early on I devoted a whole page in you to it, with lots of photos, dear Diary.  The islands as shown on this map are keyed to that page's numbering of them.

Cowen Park

As already mentioned in the introduction to this set of hikes, Cowen Park's restrooms remain closed, and its water fountain continues to run.  There's still a "sanican" there.

I made a list of pages in you, dear Diary, a long time ago, and noted which ones had photos of which parks.  One of my purposes in these hikes was to take more photos, primarily landscape shots.  As of that list, I'd photographed none of Cowen Park's landscape, and although I think I've shown you one or two such photos since, considering that this was one of the parks I started with, I figured more couldn't hurt.  The first shows a view from the roof of the restroom building, aimed south of the playground; it shows the water fountain, the "sanican", and, rather blurrily under a tree, the bench at which a squirrel once attacked me and my stuff.  The second is a glance at the enormous greensward that dominates the more accessible half of this park.

Beck Place (F on map)

This is a trivial traffic triangle SDOT lists in the real property report as over 2000 square feet.  I don't know where all those square feet are hidden.

The second hike was yesterday, meaning October 14.  Its main purpose was to visit areas depicted by Open Street Map as potentially interesting.  I also went back to all the park plumbing, making sure nothing had changed in the intervening week, but nothing had.

East of I-5, area 1 (A on map)

This is a mostly grassy area, with some trees, south of the bus stop and east of the parking lot under I-5.

Ravenna Boulevard triangle 1 (D on map)

This triangle is just south of Ravenna Boulevard and west of 11th Ave NE.  It's very well kept, with a bunch of coniferous seedlings protected by flowerpots, short grass that those seedlings, when they get tall, will doom, and so on.

Ravenna Boulevard triangle 2 (E on map)

Huh.  I thought I'd complained about this one in the Ravenna Boulevard page, but evidently not.  Walking the south side of Ravenna Boulevard, as I do nowadays to get from where I live to this area, there's one place where one either has to cross a street in the middle of a block, or walk on dirt.  It's this triangle, separated by a street from the block south.

The third hike was tonight, a little too late for the photos I took; sorry, dear Diary, but I really want to get some pages out.  The hike's purpose was to walk both sides of I-5, the west just to get the map above right, the east to find these areas.

East of I-5, area 2 (B on map)

I've shown this as vast, but I really have no idea how far it goes, because it rises very steeply maybe a few dozen yards south of Ravenna Boulevard, and I have no way of guessing what it's like beyond that cliff.  For all I know the rest of it could actually be private houses.

Ravenna Boulevard triangle 3 (C on map)

This one is adjacent to a house, so I took its photo last because I wasn't sure it wasn't just their yard.  But no, it's actually public property, and dear Diary, I hope you can see something in this rather dark photo.  It isn't as neat as the 11th Ave one, but it also isn't as unkempt as the 12th Ave one.

East of I-5, area 3 (G on map)

Most of the west side of I-5 in this area is more or less accessible, with just one fenced-off section.  The east side is quite different.  People have built closer to it, and the fence is continuous from 65th to 55th at least.  But the area between I-5 (more precisely, the exit that debouches at 8th Ave NE and NE 62nd St) and the houses widens a bit south from 59th, and one can walk all the way around the Mormon church from there.  I saw reason to think the church at least did the landscaping of the part of the path adjacent to their parking lot, although I'm not sure they own it, so I coloured it in black as a private park (really, a landscaped path).  Anyway, here's the only real I-5 find between 65th and 55th in this area.

That's the northern end.  The landscaping consists mostly of the trees seen to the south.

And that's all I'm going to tell you from this map tonight, dear Diary; it's way into quiet time, but luckily I have no next-door neighbour at the moment.  Tomorrow I hope to hike some more and also tell you the rest of the Ravenna parts of the hikes.  Until then, sweet dreams, dear Diary.

Another RUNNING street fountain in today's hike

Dear Diary,

I went hiking for you today.  I don't have time to write for you today the page that occasioned that hike, but will try to get the stuff that I should write today so as to keep certain photos dated, that stuff I'll try to get written.

I went to:

• Ballard Community Center (restrooms) and Playground (water fountain)
• The Burke-Gilman Trail (no plumbing where I was then)
  
• The Broadview branch of the Seattle Public Library (both)
  
• Bitter Lake Playfield (both; I didn't look, today, at the Community Center there)
• Northacres Park (both)
  
• Virgil Flaim Park (water fountain)
  
• Albert Davis Park (water fountain)
  
• The Lake City branch of the Seattle Public Library (both)
  
• The Burke-Gilman Trail again (water fountain)
• Ravenna Park (both)
  
• Ravenna Boulevard (neither)
  
• Cowen Park (both)
  
• Greenwood Ave N just south of N 85th St (water fountain I hadn't previously known of)
• And back to N 45th St just east of Wallingford Ave N (water fountain)
  

I'll update the spreadsheet in the shared folder tomorrow - that is, this folder, dear Diary:

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

But I also set up another shared folder.  Community Centers and Pools are at least run by the same department as runs the parks, but libraries are a whole separate city department, so I set up a folder for libraries too:

<https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/10OrFusDTEySPSu7-Ophv35VCKZq-zAaF?usp=sharing>

In general, nothing has changed from what I previously told you, dear Diary (I want to emphasise that, in case there are new readers here), but here are the exceptions:

Ballard Community Center

You may remember that last time I went to this place, I considered its front doors too crowded to approach.  That wasn't the case this morning.

Here's a detail:

I doubt very much that the Community Centers are preparing to re-open to the general public, or at least those in North Seattle.  If they are, they're planning to surprise everyone.

Ballard Community Center, again

This time I found the restrooms at the back of the building, whose doors open outward, open.  I did not find yellow spots on the toilet seats.  However:

These are single-user stalls, each with one toilet, no urinal, one sink, one old-fashioned dryer that doesn't work, and one soap dispenser.  Neither sink splashed me, but one - the one with two buttons for calling the water - was under high enough pressure that it really wanted to.

Northacres Park

One of the single-user stalls there was closed for maintenance:

I remembered that I hadn't tested the sinks and dryers of those, so I washed my hands (I'd touched the toilet seats at Ballard Community Center, after all) and thus found that the dryer in the stall currently open (on the left as one faces the water fountains, north of the closed one) does work, but one has to push the button a few times to convince it to do so.

Virgil Flaim Park

I have to eat a whole lot of crow here.

I made a judgement last time I was at this park, that the damage to the water fountain was obviously the fault of homeless people who use bottles.  I was wrong, completely wrong.

I managed this time to take a photo that showed how the water now comes out.

Darn, no it doesn't, and I'll have to go back there.

Basically, the water comes from above the pipe I showed you last time, dear Diary, this pipe:

As a result, no, it isn't any better for filling bottles than it is for drinking from.  Turns out it comes from a hole in another pipe:

so no wonder it comes out diffusely.  I was unable to screw the pipe that's loose back into that hole, so I strongly suspect whoever sabotaged the water fountain removed something, anything from a washer on up.  Given how much other metal they left alone, I doubt this was a metal thief; I think the saboteur was someone who wanted to deny users of Virgil Flaim Park water, very probably specifically homeless users in the neighbourhood.  So I must apologise heartily to you, dear Diary, and to anyone who read the page I'll correct tomorrow:  I blamed the victim.

The Burke-Gilman Trail

This was, at the time, the only working water fountain I expected to encounter after Bitter Lake, it was hours later, I hadn't brought any bottles, and I was parched.  So I tried to drink from this fountain:

but found that the stream was so interrupted, whether by the wind or by something internal to the fountain, that I couldn't really drink from it.  At the time I wondered whether I was just out of the habit of drinking directly from water fountains.

Ravenna Boulevard

I will emphasise, again, dear Diary, that nothing has changed from what I previously told you unless I mention it here (or in a later embarrassed page).

The street fountain at 85th & Greenwood

One of the most frustrating aspects for me, dear Diary, of your readers never commenting, is that I get too many opportunities to be ignorant.  I spent a few days hiking past this intersection, in January, while I was at the Travelodge near there that saved my life (as recounted in "Escaping Green Lake Park", part II and "Fear of Rain"), and never noticed this fountain.  Unsurprising since at the time I couldn't wear glasses, but my point is, surely someone who's read you knew about that fountain and didn't tell us.  I have no idea how many more street fountains are scattered around North Seattle, running or otherwise, that I've missed; I only found this one because I happened to get off a bus there this evening.  So anyone who reads this now.  This is what a street water fountain in Seattle usually looks like:

Notice especially the stepped base.  This is something street fountains can do:

usually all year round when the city has a mayor who doesn't have some sort of personal hatred for homeless people.

So please, dear Diary, if you notice anyone reading you who knows of such fountains in North Seattle, beyond the former two, now one, on the Burke-Gilman Trail, the one on N 45th St out front of QFC, and this one I stumbled on today, could you please persuade them to say something?  Whether or not the fountains are currently running or the reader even knows one way or the other.  Thank you, very, very much.

On the strength of that (and two very long drinks from it) I went back to the one on 45th, but it's still off.

Good night, dear Diary.  I just signed a new lease that said I'd observe the quiet hours, and here I am typing in you during them again.  Good night.

 

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.