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.

Happy Birthday, Dear Diary! Seattle Parks Lied Again!

Dear Diary,

I'm sorry for neglecting you for so long, and especially given that I left you on a cliffhanger, not knowing whether I'd become homeless over a month ago or had gotten a job at long last.

Well, it was the latter.  I've spent years of my life preparing people's taxes, and got a job by being willing to keep a tax office open the entirety of its open hours.  Which left me only one day off per week.

So I spent those days off hiking, but didn't even get around to uploading the photos to Google Drive timely, much less telling you, Dear Diary, about the hikes, with all the maps and other paraphernalia we've gotten used to.

Now that tax season is over, mirabile dictu, I still have a job, but with considerably fewer hours.  And I wanted to congratulate you on your third birthday, Dear Diary, with a preview of those hikes' results.

I'd told you before about the announcement by Christina Hirsch in November 2022 of which park restrooms would be open this winter.  It's her second such announcement, the first having appeared in 2019.  The 2019 list turned out to be a much better guide to which park restrooms in North Seattle were open during the winter of 2020-2021 than the map the city was then promoting as answering that question.  But by now, things have changed.  The 2022 list omits a few restrooms the 2019 list included:  Ballard Commons (which was fenced closed until March 12 of this year); Cal Anderson Park (sort of:  it's listed this time as having had "portables", but the 2019 list had no such note); Discovery Park's beach restrooms; Green Lake Park's Bathhouse restrooms (which I nevertheless found open).

And it adds a ton of others, eighteen, near as I can count.  Only four of these are in North Seattle, and in my own November 2022 discussion I expressed surprise about three of these.  I didn't find any of the four actually open.

On Sunday, February 19th, at 3:08 P.M., Little Brook Park's restroom (yes, only one) was closed with a seasonal closure sign posted:

At 4:17 P.M. that day, I found University Playground's restrooms not only closed, but welded closed:

On Sunday, February 26th at 6:33 P.M., I found Salmon Bay Park's restrooms closed.  I didn't think they looked like they'd been used recently, but the thing is, park restroom hours are 7 A.M. to 7 P.M. most times of the year, and I was trying, in these hikes, to be extremely fair to Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation, by limiting my hikes to 8 A.M. to 6 P.M.  So I went back to Salmon Bay Park on Sunday, March 12th at 5:47 P.M.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, March 5th, I'd reached Sandel Playground at 6:06 P.M., technically outside my limits, but I mean, really.  Of the many lies I caught the parks department in during the winter of 2020-2021, the only one that took Ms. Hirsch's colleague Rachel Schulkin by surprise was that Sandel Playground's restrooms were closed.  They hadn't been in the 2019 list, but in 2020-2021 they were supposed to have been open, and weren't.  The same happened in 2022-2023:

I wasn't able to get back to Sandel Playground before 6 P.M. until Wednesday, March 22nd, and having already found Greenwood Park's restroom, a twin to Little Brook Park's, open that day, was unsurprised to find Sandel Playground's restrooms open too.

Basically, I think none of the four additions in North Seattle was real, and three were outright lies.  The question I had, though, was whether that was Ms. Hirsch's little joke on you, dear Diary, and me, or whether the parks department was really inflating its winter restroom numbers city-wide.  I thought if those four were the only additions, that would be a give-away, but actually there were fourteen other additions, none of which I got a chance to visit.  Dear Diary, you've been visited a lot ever since I signed up at an active job-hunting site, but I'm not sure how many of those visits have been by actual human beings.  But if anyone who reads this can comment on whether restrooms were open this past winter in the following parks, I'd be very grateful:

1. Alki Beach - Was listed only once in 2019, but with three locations in 2022.  So two of 63rd, 57th and Bath House should've been open besides the one that was open then.
2. Alki Beach - The other new one.
3. Beer Sheva Park.
4. Dr. Blanche Lavizzo Park.
5. Hiawatha.
6. Magnolia Community Center.  The 2019 list included only Community Centers which had restrooms with doors that open to the outside, which are more obviously park restrooms than other Community Center restrooms.  I don't know that all the Community Centers in the 2022 list have such outside-opening restrooms, though.
7. Montlake Community Center.
8. Mount Baker Park.
9. Pratt Park.  This park's restrooms were definitely under construction when I first visited the place in winter 2021-2022.  It's at least plausible that the old ones didn't have heat while the new ones do.  (It's thoroughly implausible that Cal Anderson Park's restrooms went from having heat to not having it.)
   
10. Queen Anne Bowl.
11. Riverview Playfield.
12. Seward Park Picnic Shelters.
13. South Park Community Center.
14. Volunteer Park Bandstand.

Anyway, parks in North Seattle whose restrooms' openness I didn't check in winter 2022-2023:  I didn't visit Meadowbrook Playfield or Laurelhurst Community Center at all; I didn't visit Ross Park, Maple Leaf Reservoir Park (which Hirsch's lists call Maple Leaf Playground), Dahl Playfield, Licton Springs Park, Greenwood Park, or Sandel Playground, within the hours I'd limited myself to, before the spring openings.  Of these, Laurelhurst, Maple Leaf, Dahl and Sandel were supposed to be open, and I'm guessing the first three of those actually were open, though Maple Leaf is often closed on Sundays both in winter and at other times of year.  Ross, Meadowbrook, Licton Springs and Greenwood weren't supposed to be open, and of those, only Meadowbrook could reasonably have been opened.  (Licton Springs's restrooms, of course, have been torn down.)

I also in November called attention to Matthews Beach, which is consistently supposed to have open restrooms in winter, but I never found them so in 2020-2021.  I did find them open this time.  They're two single-stall all-gender rooms, one of which had been boarded over in 2020-2021; both were open on February 19th.

This time I only paid attention to water fountains conveniently near restrooms, but also to the street fountains.  I found four park water fountains running.  Three were attached to heated buildings - one of the golf buildings at Jackson Park, the cloverleaf restrooms of Woodland Park and the beach restrooms of Magnuson Park.  The fourth is free-standing, and I'm frankly amazed it was still running on February 19th, at Magnuson Park's central restrooms.  I don't remember what I found re street fountains - I think, one running, one not, but no idea which.

All for now, and pedants would say I've missed your birthday anyhow, but here's to a good year ahead for you, dear Diary!

Today's hike: Most fountains running in southern NW

Dear Diary,

I'm writing this page on my phone using the app, which means I can't do much with it, so will keep this brief.

Today I went to Golden Gardens Park, Loyal Heights Community Center and Playfield, Salmon Bay Park, Webster Park, Ballard Playground, Ballard Commons, the parts of the Burke-Gilman Trail that include both the actual and the published locations of its western water fountain, NW 60th St Viewpoint (which is near the published location), Gilman Playground, Ross Park, and Sunset Place.  So I went to every park water fountain known to me in "NW" south of 85th (but not to the imaginary one at Baker Park on Crown Hill), every park restroom ditto, and here's what I found:

All fountains were running except the southern one at Golden Gardens Park.  I drank from those at Ballard Playground and on the Burke-Gilman Trail, and found their water OK.

All restrooms were open except Gilman Playground's (still posted), and Ross Park's, but that was at 8:40 P.M.  Even if park restrooms are keeping their advertised hours for summer - 7 A.M. to 9 P.M. - that's within a reasonable amount of leeway.

I'm beginning to hope that year two of the Durkan Drought is finally over, at least in North Seattle.

All for tonight, dear Diary.  Tomorrow I'd hoped to hike again, but I hurt too much, so should have plenty of time to tell you whatever else needs telling about the two latest hikes.

NW finished; one more water fountain; one more closed restroom pair

Dear Diary,

Are you bored with the titles of recent pages?  So am I, but there'll be two or three more like that.  Today I didn't get to NE, but did finish NW, with what's become the usual need to go back to one site to see whether its restrooms are really closed or not.

I visited nine city parks today, in six hours - street grids are such wonderful conveniences for hiking!  Predictably, all the slow parts were when I went off grid, to find the Burke-Gilman Trail's western water fountain and to investigate whether water fountains were running in the place I will, here, just call the Ballard Locks.  (About two of those hours went to that, with two city parks involved.  So the other seven took just four hours.)

Let me start, again, by function, then go by park.  As on previous of these hikes, most of the photos of restroom doors and water fountains are at a public folder on my Google Drive, URL:

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

but most of the photos in this page aren't in that folder.

Restrooms - Ballard Community Center's restrooms with doors that open to the outside, which are two gendered single-user stalls, weren't open around 3:50 P.M. today.  Also, at about 4:07 P.M., the restrooms at the Seattle Public Library's Ballard branch were unavailable due to a staff break.  The Portland Loo at Ballard Commons was available, but we'll get to that.  Gilman Playground's restrooms are still closed.  All other restrooms were open, including all those at the Locks.

As on previous of these hikes, I've been counting major items at men's and all-gender restrooms.  For each restroom for which I indicate such a count, unless I say otherwise, I tried the sink, it did not splash my clothes, and the dryer, if any, worked.

Water fountains - I've yet to find the water fountain at Ballard Commons not running; it ran today.  Gilman Playground's still runs.  Every single water fountain I found at the Locks was running, even though the Locks still have a mask rule applied both outside and inside.  I found no other running water fountains; the one on the Burke-Gilman Trail, eviscerated by metal thieves last year, and one at Loyal Heights Playfield, damaged last year, have both been removed.

Now by park.

Loyal Heights Community Center and Playfield

All three water fountains ran last October, but the north one (near the basketball area and the playground) was damaged.  Last January the baseball field was a construction site, and the water fountain attached to the Community Center was running; I couldn't find the northern or southern free-standing fountains.  In the case of the southern one, that's because it isn't as far south as I looked; it's closer to the ballfield's third base than to its home plate.  The northern one was within a construction site in January, and still is, but this time I was able to see through the fence that it had been removed, whether because it was damaged, or in order to prevent more damage, or what, I don't know.

The men's room in the Community Center with a door that opens outside has one toilet [EDIT 5/24:  with a stall door], one urinal, one sink, no dryer, and one soap dispenser.

The Loyal Heights Community Center is not yet swayed by the siren call of re-opening:

The schedules on the left are for the first quarter of 2020.

Salmon Bay Park

This park is nowhere near Salmon Bay, or any body of water; some developer had boats on the brain, naming streets north and south of this park "Canoe" and "Sloop", and the park itself wound up with a name that confuses even park staffers.  (I called once about the restrooms here being closed, and it took a while before they'd believe me as to the park's location.)

Anyway, its restrooms were open and the attached water fountain isn't running.  The dryer in the men's room is not the usual no-touch thing found in most park restrooms that have dryers:

 

Privacy in the men's toilet here is not much better than at Dahl Playfield.  There, someone walking in has to turn in such a way that he'll then see anyone on the toilet unless he makes an effort not to.  At Salmon Bay, someone walking briskly probably won't notice someone on the toilet, but otherwise...

That's intended as the view from the doorway.  Note the thing on the left; that's the toilet.

Also, Salmon Bay Park's men's room has no urinal.  One toilet without a stall door, one sink, one touch-driven dryer, one soap dispenser.  I did not look for yellow spots on the toilet seat, but because this park has no sports facilities, it wouldn't have been a fair test.

Webster Park

I then cut hard west to get to this park which just has a water fountain (which only trickled last year, both in June and in October).  Now it isn't even trickling.

On going south, I found myself at the Locks, and figured it was already late enough (1:19 P.M. for my first photo there) that I was unlikely to make it to "NE" by 7 P.M.  So I might as well spend my spare time exploring the place.

Hiram M. Chittenden Locks

None of the photos in this section are in the Google Drive folder.

The first place I went was the Visitor Center.  Now, strictly speaking, this is outside your remit, dear Diary, seeing as how it's a building whose doors opening to the outside don't, far as I know, include restroom doors.  But I wanted to find out how open the Locks actually were.

This was partly because CDC or no CDC, the Locks still have a mask requirement:

and I figured, what's the point (to a housed person) of turning on water fountains in a place where nobody can drink from them?  But I hadn't reckoned with the no-nonsense nature of the federal government, and in particular its squarest single institution, the U.S. Army, a post of whose this place actually is.  (Really.  See its website if you don't believe me, dear Diary.)  So although the website doesn't deign to mention water fountains...

That's the Visitor Center's.  I decided not to try to photograph restroom doors this trip, partly because the Visitor Center was pretty crowded, partly because the whole place was thronged.  I also didn't take tourist photos, not even when an adjacent teenager pointed out a seal to her parents, but I sure photographed a whole lot of working water fountains.  The men's room in the Visitor's Center has one toilet, one urinal, one sink, one dryer, and one soap dispenser.  I don't think I tested the sink and dryer.  The Visitor Center is currently open only Friday through Sunday, 10 A.M. to 6 P.M., so is not a major factor in a homeless person's decision about where to live, but I have some reason to think that might change soon.

The rest of the place, however...  Its hours are 7 A.M. to 9 P.M. seven days per week, and although the restrooms might well open later or close earlier, I saw no reason to think so.

The city's employees might reasonably object that the Army can provide a lot of effectively free labour, but how much of that labour is plumbers?  I was impressed.

These show a double fountain near the main restrooms.  Those have - prepare to stay calm, dear Diary - two toilets, four urinals, three sinks, two dryers, and three soap dispensers.  I did not try all the sinks and dryers; the one of each I tried worked fine.  One of the soap dispensers did appear to be low on soap.  Now, this is the kind of thing where more or less free labour makes a big difference - cleaning and maintaining a monstrosity of this size.

This is a water fountain by what appears to be the Locks' main tourist attraction, the chance to watch boats actually locking one way or the other.  As a result, it's hard to get to while observing social distancing; patience is an asset to those who wish to drink from this fountain.

These are the two attached to the southern restrooms, which actually, dear Diary, aren't in North Seattle at all, but they're such a short hike from North Seattle that I decided to tell you what's in the men's room anyway:  two toilets, two urinals, two sinks, two dryers, and yes, we're in a very square place indeed, two soap dispensers.  But there turn out to be limits to free labour, and these photos show that:  both these fountains are badly overshooting their bowls.  I would be reluctant to fill a bottle at either, and the second one, the one on the right as one faces the building, also back-splashes enough to give my newspaper its first water damage of the day.

Still, wow.  Don't you wish we lived in a city that worked this well, dear Diary?

Carl S. English, Jr. Botanical Garden

Has no restrooms open to the public nor water fountains available to the public, at least not along any of the paved or the more obvious of the gravel trails.  Does have many attractive and interesting plants.

Some day, dear Diary, when we have time for park appreciation again, I'll tell you as much as I reasonably can about the whole place, but right now, a drought's on, everywhere except downtown and the Ballard Locks, so it'll have to wait.

The Burke-Gilman Trail

Somehow recently I'd convinced myself that the western water fountain on this trail was way east of what I've previously told you, dear Diary.  So I walked all the way to, I think, 26th Ave NW looking for it, eating lunch on a bench outside the Nordic Museum again on the way, before realising my mistake and turning back.  Then I walked all the way to the NW 60th St Viewpoint (which is today's extra, no plumbing, park) without seeing the fountain.  Finally I had to consult your old pages that mentioned it - "The Ballard Seacoast" part I and "The Water Fountains of Ballard" - to find it, and even blow up the photos.

This is the current state of the BGT's western water fountain:

In case anyone reading you goes looking for it and even that much is gone, the clue I found it by is that it's at the NW 57th Street Street End, left of the entrance as one faces the water, near a yellow fire hydrant.  (And no doubt that's why there's water there available for a fountain.)

Ballard Community Center and Playground

I couldn't get close to the building, because the front was crowded and the back was taped off, so I couldn't ask its opinion of the "re-opening" concept.

However, its outside-facing restrooms were closed.  I think this is the first time I've found them so.  I will, of course, go back to see whether they stay that way, but my guess right now is that, thanks to where homeless people are nearby, they probably will.  Still, today was Sunday, the day when people outside are expected to fast, so there is another explanation, and I'll just have to add it to my list of things to investigate.

The water fountain was also off.  Nope, nothing for homeless people here, now just move along...

Ballard Commons

As noted above, I've never found the water fountain here off, and that includes today.  This park also has water on the side of the "Portland Loo", and in a hand-washing station, but the SPU sink I found here in January has been removed:

Also, the dryer on the side of the "Portland Loo" has been fixed and now delivers air.  However, I've yet to get results from the soap dispenser, either January or today around 4:03 P.M.

The "Portland Loo" has one toilet, no urinal, no sink, no dryer, and no soap dispenser.  Outside its door is a microscopic analogue to a sink with water, plus an old-fashioned dryer, plus an empty or broken soap dispenser.

On my way away I took a look at the Ballard branch of the Seattle Public Library.  The sign announcing that the restrooms were open was clearly visible:

but it was one of the two days off "curbside services" (well, that's better than "pickup" anyway) currently have at that location, so wasn't a real test.

Gilman Playground

Kitty-corner from this park's northwest corner I saw an unexpected sign:

Let me translate for you, dear Diary:  Someone's trying to build an SRO.  In Seattle.  In the 21st century.  I can hardly believe it, but am awfully glad they're trying.

It would take about a hundred of those or more, to bring every homeless person in Seattle inside.  The entire time I was homeless here, I figured Seattle would only be serious about housing the homeless when it started talking in thousands, the number there actually are, rather than hundreds, the number it's convenient to build for every year.  One SRO is not the answer, but adding SROs back to the city's toolkit is an important step toward the day in the 22nd or possibly 42nd century when Seattle might be ready to consider the answer.

I can't tell you, dear Diary, what's in Gilman Playground's men's room, because it's still closed.  The park's water fountain is still running.

Ross Park

The restrooms are open, the water fountain not running.

The men's room, which I had to use, since I hadn't been near an open men's room since the Locks and hadn't used any since leaving home, has one toilet with a stall door, one urinal, one sink, one dryer, and one soap dispenser.

I used to enjoy swinging on University Playground's swings, when I slept near there, until there were so many uncertain people around every time I went there that I wasn't willing to leave my stuff unprotected while I did so.  Well, there were no visibly homeless people at Ross Park this early evening, and no families using the swingset to annoy, so I swang away.  Yes, I share the bias against homeless people, and did even when I was homeless, but that doesn't mean I wanted everyone denied water.  There's a difference between bias and hatred.

Whew.  I've managed to tell you about this hike the same day, dear Diary.  I have no reason to expect the NE hikes to be like that, but they might be.  Anyway, I expect to spend tomorrow on other stuff, including but not limited to updating (and correcting) the maps, and updating (and expanding) the spreadsheet that's in the public folder.  I'll probably show you the updated maps when I'm done.  But until then, good night and a good day, dear Diary.

Hike 15: Northwest

Dear Diary,

Wonder of wonders!  The map actually told the truth about at least nine restrooms!  Let me explain.

This morning I checked the map the hikes in January were checking on, and found six parks whose restrooms were clearly announced as re-opened.  (There may have been others hidden by the lying setup whereby a "sanican" is mapped the same as an open restroom; I didn't spend long enough with the map to investigate.)  The six:

1. Ballard Community Center.  Previously covered April 4 in "Hike 8C".
2. Loyal Heights Community Center.  Previously covered February 8 in "Hike 4B".
3. Meadowbrook Playfield.  Still to be covered in hike 9C.
4. Ross Park.  Previously covered March 23 in "Hike 8B".
5. Sandel Playground.  Previously covered January 25 in "Hikes 3C and 6A".
6. Soundview Playfield.  Previously covered February 13 in "Hike 5A".

Well, I had an errand in Ballard today, so I figured I should check on the five in Northwest.  Then realised this left only two parks there with regular restrooms to look at, and they were both convenient, so why not?  (This omits, of course, Golden Gardens and Carkeek Parks, which aren't on Ballard's street grid, are way downhill from the rest of Ballard, are time sinks, and were open all winter anyway.)

So here goes:  Which park restrooms on Ballard's street grid opened today?  Wonder of wonders, the map was almost entirely truthful.

Sandel Playground

This is the only place where the map was off.

So far so good, but...

Soundview Playfield

I'd gotten a newspaper before starting, but forgot to use it at Sandel.  Here's its front page, for easier recognition:

So.  Soundview has two effectively all gender single user stalls.

I used the one shown with door open.  It turns out to have the kind of sink that sends water mainly horizontally to soak the user's clothing, a kind of sink I've noticed more of recently.  That one is the one that faces south towards NW 90th St.  (I didn't try the other sink, which may or may not do the same.)

Loyal Heights Community Center

No, the map didn't announce that the Community Center had re-opened.  Both Community Centers in Northwest have restrooms that open to the outside, and are effectively the restrooms for their parks, in this case Loyal Heights Playfield.

In winter 2019-2020, Loyal Heights was announced as staying open for the winter, the only one of these so announced.  This winter, it was on the map as open, but closed anyway; I speculated that this might be because of construction nearby in the playfield.  The construction is now uphill from these restrooms, and this time they really are open when the map says so:

Salmon Bay Park

Previously covered February 8 in "Hike 4B".  Has yet to be shown as open on the map, and I've yet to find it open since October.

Yes, I forgot the newspaper again.

Ballard Playground

Obviously, one reason I came back to Northwest in such a big way today was embarrassment at having to say, over and over as I wrote three days ago, that I didn't know the current situation.

Well, these doors should have been open all winter, but they're open now:

One of the things I was unsure about was a "sanican" at the east side of 26th Ave NW, across that street from Ballard Playground.  It's gone now:

Ballard Commons

Previously covered April 4 in "Hike 8C" with some similar uncertainties; the other of the two places still to be covered in hike 11A, besides the Ballard branch of the Urban Rest Stop.

In the page from April 4 I made a mistake.  I said there were two buttons on the side of the "Portland Loo", for washing water and drying air, and neither worked.  This was inobservant of me in January.  Look:

I'd only noticed the left lower button, not the right lower one, which as you can see, dear Diary, in fact draws water.  The upper one, for air, and the lower left one, probably for soap, are the ones that didn't work in January nor today.

In fact Ballard Commons is overflowing with water.  It has a working water fountain, running now:

And on top of both those sources, I'd speculated it might have gotten an SPU sink.  Nope, but it does have a much bigger hand-washing station, and it was working today:

Notice all the wet pavement.  The green object in the corner is a bottle of hand soap.

Gilman Playground

Previously covered March 23 in "Hike 8B".

Apparently the restrooms here opened back up sometime when I wasn't looking and have already closed again:

I wonder who vandalised them.  There are again plenty of tents in Gilman Playground.  Oh, and yes, I forgot the newspaper again.

Gilman Playground does still have running water:

Ross Park

It only takes one picture to show both restrooms as open:

And yes, that's the mosaic I've complained to you, dear Diary, so many times, that I couldn't photograph.  So even before taking the shot above, I took this one:

This goes to show something important about recent photos I show you, dear Diary.  My phone has decided that the proper way to respond to sunlight is to get very dim.  As a result, when photographing by day, all I can do is point, pray, and shoot.  I'll have to go back to Ross Park with some other camera some day.

Meanwhile, I'd obviously better get on with telling you about hikes 8D through 11C, from January, before everything has re-opened.  But not tonight.  Good night, dear Diary.

Hike 4B: Mid-Northwest

Dear Diary,

Pushing my damaged cart, I proceeded on my hike.  I finally confirmed through Google Maps that I'd screwed up, misremembering NW 65th St rather than NW 85th St as the address of Golden Gardens Park.  This, of course, meant that the damage to the cart described in the previous page need never have happened.  The mistake, however, did enable me to cut a big chunk out of the Ballard hike.  So off I went.

Salmon Bay Park

This is a smallish, pleasant park, nowhere near Salmon Bay, which I first told you, dear Diary, about June 28 in "A Lazy Day on Loyal Heights", and have only discussed since then on December 16 in "The Water Fountains of Ballard, mid-October 2020".

This park's restrooms were not on last year's list of restrooms to keep open, and also weren't and still aren't on this year's map of open restrooms, the map I was hiking around North Seattle to check.  So in other words, the expected outcome was that these restrooms would be closed, and in contrast to all the surprises I'd found in and north of Woodland Park, that's exactly what I found.

The restroom building:

The closed doors:

I parked the cart by a bench to take those photos, and then ate breakfast there.  This gave me time to think.  I'd consciously skipped Ballard Pool, but if I really went on without it, I'd have to go much further north on the Ballard hike.  And Salmon Bay Park seemed pretty quiet and safe.  So I left my cart there and hurried back southeast.

Ballard Pool

This, being a building whose restrooms all open to the inside, wasn't on last year's list, and since it's a building that has yet to re-open, it isn't on this year's map either.  Well, it wasn't open, but there was something weird about that...

I'd introduced this to you, dear Diary, in "A Lazy Day", as the one pool which, when all the pools got renovated in winter 2019-2020, got delayed.  I found it in June still surrounded by construction fences.  So the visit last month was my first chance to look at its doors.

The postcard shot:

The closed door:

At Ballard Pool, in other words, COVID-19 hasn't happened yet.  It's stuck in a time warp.  Or more prosaically, nobody's thought to go update the signage.

Anyway, its doors were locked.

So I went back to Salmon Bay Park, retrieved my cart, and proceeded to 

Loyal Heights Community Center

This community center is in a playfield of the same name, and has restrooms whose doors open to the outdoors.  I told you about these places in the same pages, dear Diary, as Salmon Bay Park.  Now, Loyal Heights Community Center's restrooms were on last year's list, and at the time I visited were also on this year's map.  Yes, I know, dear Diary, if you look at the map today, it isn't there.  But it was.

So I was extremely surprised by what I found.

The postcard shot:

The closed doors:

The running water fountain:

I was in Topsy-Turvy Land.  I believe, however, that the water fountain has been shut off.  Now, this is an attached fountain, and on November 12 in "To a Land of Water and Honey" I suggested leaving it on, in the expectation that the building it's attached to would remain heated.  This is actually still the case, here, even though the restrooms are closed.  But notwithstanding the boasts of a Jackson Park employee in the page in question, one of the secrets to keeping outdoor water fountains running in winter is to know when to fold them, and although I was pleased to find that fountain running January 10, it has no business being on in the weather now expected for the next week.

As for the restrooms.  Only two restroom pairs in North Seattle are closed this winter that were on last year's list.  The Woodland Park pair called Rio has signs indicating vandalism as the reason, and a substitute nearby, the Cloverleaf rooms.  But the Loyal Heights signs just say "Seasonal Closure" as if this happened every year, and the obvious nearby substitute, Salmon Bay, is closed.

My best guess is that Topsy-Turvy Land was created for the benefit of people working on the playfield.  There's a major operation going on to replace artificial turf at a bunch of fields, mostly in North Seattle; we saw part of it at Magnuson Park, dear Diary, more is at Woodland Park, and one piece is at Loyal Heights.  Anyway, if the workers had keys to the restrooms, it would all make sense.  With the rooms locked, they'd get fewer annoying intruders; with the water fountain on, they'd get convenience.  This is, however, only my guess.

At any rate, these were the only park restrooms on the Northwest street grid open last winter, and this year they're closed.  Whatever the reason, it should be a good one.

Golden Gardens Park

Dear Diary, I've had four carts in the past three years, and they've all been gifts from the same person, who'd been keeping late hours in early January.  When this person had bought the damaged cart (#3), it turned out that two carts were almost the same price as one.  So there was a method to my madness, traipsing about northwest Seattle instead of hieing to my storage to lighten my load.  I was waiting until it was late enough to call and ask for cart #4.

While I waited for it, of course I took the photos of Golden Gardens Park.  Here there was another surprise.  Both pairs of restrooms in that park were on last year's list, and both were then on this year's map.  But the upper pair, the one near the off-leash area for dogs, was locked:

There was no sign, as there had been at Salmon Bay Park and Loyal Heights Community Center, and it dawned on me that it was a Sunday.  So on January 13 I went back, and found them open.

Now, dear Diary, I notify people who work on the map of what I find, by e-mail, before telling you about it.  This is so I can tell you as much as I want, but provide them the same information in a less wordy form.  I think those e-mails are why Sandel Playground and Loyal Heights Community Center have been removed from the map.  I greatly fear, however, that by telling the above story in an e-mail, I may have greatly inconvenienced a lot of dogs' people, because for some reason the upper restrooms at Golden Gardens Park have also been removed from the map.

Anyway, here's the restroom building:

I'm relieved to report that there were no surprises at the lower, beach, restrooms there.  The building (I had to back up almost to the water to get it all in):

The open doors:

The "sanican"s, just as indicated on the map:

Now, dear Diary, you may remember that January 10 was the day an atmospheric river began drenching us.  My plan was to wait it out in Carkeek Park's palatial shelter 2.  It took a while for my friend to bring cart #4, and then of course it had to be assembled, and, well, the days were a good deal shorter a month ago than they are now.  So I dropped one park after another from my itinerary, discarded cart #3 (a move I would later regret), and headed for shelter.

I need to take some more photos to write the next page, dear Diary, and also need to do things about my shelter today, so it'll probably be a few days before you hear from me again.  May they be happy ones.