Another Hike along Lake Union and the Fremont Cut

Dear Diary,

There are lots of places to tell you about in this page, and lots of photos to show you, and I think the ground rules are by now pretty clear, so let's get started, shall we?  This page includes the only bona fide park I found by doing this in the first region I hiked.

This page's predecessor is "While Strolling in the Parks One Day", part II.

EDIT 5/11:  Map (the new bona fide park is "C"):

Sunnyside Ave N Boat Ramp

Despite its omission from the 2021 real property report, this park, which is the one I forgot to visit last Saturday, is still there:

and still has a "sanican", presumably for the benefit not only of boaters but also of the vehicle campers still parked nearby:

Harbor Patrol and Shop

This is ostentatiously not open to the public, and also neither parklike nor photogenic, so I took no photos, but it would be silly not to mention it at all.

It's sort of within the western side of Gas Works Park, whose restrooms were still open and whose water fountain was still not running.

North Transfer Station

and its Playground

When I lived in an SRO, as a "hotel" it didn't have to comply with city trash rules, so it didn't.  I therefore trudged to the North Transfer Station fairly regularly to get rid of my recycling.  Then I became homeless; although recycling while I stayed on Capitol Hill and downtown was a bit of a challenge, once I lived at the University I saw no reason to go anywhere else to dispose of my trash.  Moreover, the station was closed from 2014 to 2016 for a complete rebuild.  So I hadn't come back since it re-opened, and it looks like a lot of other people haven't come back either.  I'd found Meridian Playground and Gilman Playfield both crowded both days, but didn't see another human being the entire time I toured this one.

Yes, really, there's now an actual playground at the North Transfer Station.  If approached from the south, the label "playground" might be a bit confusing, because while there are nice wooden benches:

and a proper half-court for basketball:

all there is for "play" equipment is these space-age-ish structures obviously for grown-ups:

(notice the instruction panel in the background).

It turns out that the playground proper is across N 35th St, between Carr Place N and Woodlawn Ave N:

and at 2:17 P.M. on a Wednesday, there were no children there.

Clearly something has gone wrong with this playground's publicity, but there may be another factor.  Wallingford Playfield has restrooms open all year.  Meridian Playground's are open anyway about seven months of the year.  This one?  In principle it has restrooms, in the building:

but we all know what happened to those:

Anyway.  There is also public art, by Jean Shin, using materials from the old building:

The business side of the site is apparently open to the public again after all, but that wasn't what the sign said:

I did glimpse an employee running to her car here.  Anyway, I figured if I wasn't welcome I should leave, and did so, but first took a picture of the promised "sanican", which would be in the left background if it were visible in the photo above:

3500 Interlake Ave N

This site across 35th from the station has a big fence around it, so I didn't take any pictures, but one of the signs on the fence explains that what's being built there is a tunnel for storage of storm water overflows.

The Burke-Gilman Trail

There's a "sanican" a little way south of where the trail intersects Stone Way N.  It evidently isn't city-funded, or they would've claimed credit for it in the map I hiked to check in January, but it's only locked so as to keep it from being locked, see:

 

Land under Fremont Bridge

I'm not actually sure this rather large site, with the notional address of 3101 Fremont Ave N, is actually in Fremont as opposed to Queen Anne, but if it is in Fremont, it's a parking lot.

Lake WA Ship Canal Tower 2

This is infrastructure, and has nothing to do with restrooms or homeless people, but it's very public, very photogenic, and in a park.  Everyone who traverses this part of the Burke-Gilman Trail passes under it.  So here's a photo:

Whew.  One more "another" hike, and after that most hikes will include both parks and other city stuff.  Until later, dear Diary.

Hike 8A: Near North

Dear Diary,

On January 19 I set off for Ballard.  My plan was always to visit the three parks in this page along the way, which is why I designated Wallingford Playfield and Meridian Playground, too far up the wrong hill, as "inconvenient" right from the start.

And although all these hikes were kind of predictable once I had decoded the map, from the city's Department of Human Services, of restrooms supposedly open this winter, the map these hikes were meant to check, a decoding described in "How to Lie to the Homeless" too many days ago - still they were part of the task.  They'll also get a bit more interesting after this page, which hasn't much story to it.  Sorry, dear Diary.

Sunnyside Ave N Boat Ramp

This small park is also presented as a street end by those who deal with those.  I've told you about it, therefore, dear Diary, in "At the Centre of the Universe, Does Gas Work?" on June 9, and again in "Street Ends:  North Lake Union" December 21.  But neither park nor street end brought me there on January 19; instead, the presence of a city-funded "sanican" did.

While I was there, for some reason I thought I hadn't photographed the view from the shore in October, so I took another photo.  I think it's slightly worse than the one in the street ends page, but anyhow:

In these hikes I'll take what beauty I can get.

Yes, this stop was kinda trivial, or so it seems.  But a lot of people appeared to be living, that day in January, in the parking areas across Northlake Way from this "sanican", and not all of them had RVs.  I really have no idea how much daily use the thing gets, but wouldn't be surprised if it were significant.

At this hour, today, the map correctly reports that this park hosts one "sanican", that it isn't ADA and doesn't offer hand-washing.  I think that map, all in all, represents a deliberate attempt to lie to Seattle's homeless, but it's so constructed that it also tells a fair bit of truth, and this is an example.

Gas Works Park

This is one of North Seattle's marquee parks, dear Diary, though the smallest of those.  So I've told you about it in plenty of pages.  See, besides "At the Centre":  June 21, "Past Work and Gas Works"; September 6, "Cal Anderson Park Is Not a Park"; October 8, "South of North Once More", part I; and November 23, "Standing Room Only", part III.

This park's restrooms have been announced as 24 hours, so it was no surprise at all to find them open in broad daylight:

The, um, least unattractive side of the restroom building:

From there I climbed up the right hill, by way of Troll's Knoll Park (stopping along the way to replace the photograph of the Troll my stolen phone had held) to 

B. F. Day Playground

This smallish park has figured in two of the same pages as Gas Works Park, "At the Centre" and "South of North".  And in the latter, dear Diary, I mocked it unfairly.  I showed photos of a sign saying the playground equipment was open and another saying the playground was closed, and made fun of the mixed message.  Problem is, the sign saying the playground is closed actually refers to a different playground, that of the school next door, which actually is closed.  Sorry!

To try to make up for that, I looked at the basketball court and got a pleasant surprise:  two baskets facing each other from a reasonable distance:

But the reason I was there was that the map had initially shown a "sanican" there, but then had retracted the claim, so I wanted to see for myself.  Well, here's where it used to be:

My guess is that with no ball games happening there, but COVID testing happening at Northgate Park, the city decided there was a greater need elsewhere.

Anyway, after that I went to Ballard, but I'm out of time to tell you about that tonight, dear Diary.

Street Ends: North Lake Union

Dear Diary,

This is the first page in this series whose street ends are all publicly accessible. Unfortunately, they aren't much to look at - in this area, the waterways beat the street ends hands down for enjoyment of the shore - but anyway here they are.

This page covers two to four street ends, depending how you count.  I introduced one of them, which is an official Seattle park, way back in June in "At the Centre of the Universe, Does Gas Work?", two more in "Lake Union's North Shore" in October (which is also the page anyone curious about the waterways should see), and one, the least impressive of all, is new.

These photos may not be good, but at least they're better than those in the other pages.

Latona Ave NE Street End

Photo 1 - The street that ends, photographed October 14

Photo 2 - The land the city appears to claim, photographed October 13

Photos 3 - Two views over the water, photographed October 13 (first) and 14

Sunnyside Ave N Street End, aka Sunnyside Ave N Boat Ramp

Photos 1 - photographed October 13

So wait a minute - the street that ends ends right at the shoreline!  There is no street end here!  I think there really isn't, but let's first finish with the photos, because there certainly is a view.

Photo 3 - photographed October 14

OK, now for the mystery.  The city's GIS tool says this is the Sunnyside Ave N street end, but the appendices to the Cheshiahud Loop plans tell (p. 90) a different story.  (For links to both see "Lake Union's North Shore".)  They correctly note that the boat ramp is a waterway (a place for boats to enter and leave the water), and since Lake Union waterways are owned by the state, they infer that this one is too.

Well, this would just be a weird fantasy on the part of the trail planners except that they offer as corroboration another location for the Sunnyside Ave N street end.

Sunnyside Ave N Street End

Photo 1 - photographed October 14

Yes, this is where the instance of Sunnyside north of the boat ramp ends, at N Pacific St.

Photos 2 - photographed October 14

The Cheshiahud Loop people say that compensation for the actual street end was made in the form of a "planted median".  Now, you can see there's no planted median in Sunnyside or Pacific here.  But the Burke-Gilman Trail runs south of Pacific, it's split between pedestrians and cyclists there, and as it happens there are plantings between the two.  Those plantings extend well beyond any reasonable size for the compensation, I basically think this theory is as lunatic as the boat ramp one, but I took photos just in case.

The Burke-Gilman Trail and the Sunnyside Ave N Boat Ramp both exist, and both are public parks.  Both appear, from the city's real property report, to have title complexities, but unless there's some legal need to involve the street end laws in resolving those, I don't see any point in calling anything near Sunnyside Ave N a street end.

Fremont Bridge (Fremont Ave N) Street End

I'm pretty sure I did the street end research that underlies the introduction to this series on October 15, before setting out for Ballard.  On the way there, I saw another bridge split above me:

And I took pictures of the Fremont Bridge street end.  There's no street that ends - nothing analogous to Eastlake Place here for me to fantasise about - so no photo 1.

The GIS tool says this street end is incorporated into the Burke-Gilman Trail.

Photo 2 - photographed October 16

Photo 3 - photographed October 16

Well, the Fremont Bridge is at the far northwest corner of Lake Union, and this street end faces west, so that's actually a view of the ship canal.

Next stop Salmon Bay, but it's raining so hard where I am that I'm going to wait before trying to write it.  Until then, dear Diary.

Lake Union's North Shore: Waterways and Street Ends

 Dear Diary,

I began today what I intended as a really long hike, but convinced myself I had some free time today to backtrack and visit a bunch of parks not Parks' (that is, not owned or managed by Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation).  I didn't have that time, as it turns out; that and other things are forcing me to reconsider the whole idea of this (and perhaps another) long hike, given the weather we can soon expect for months. But meanwhile I do have all these pictures of obscure places, and might as well show them to you.

Cheshiahud Loop

Most of these places were brought to public attention at least partly by the efforts that went into the creation, early in this century, of a trail called "Cheshiahud Lake Union Loop" at the departmental website, but just Cheshiahud Loop on its profuse but relatively inconspicuous signs.

(Cheshiahud was a Duwamish Indian; without serious research I'm unequipped to say more.)  At some point I should figure out where this loop actually goes in North Seattle, go there, and tell you, dear Diary, all about it, but today I'm just giving credit where it's due.  I don't owe these folks just for the research that brought these sites to light, but also for a map (PDF) that allowed me to plan the hike, and for signs, similar to the above, that physically confirm many of the locations.

Weird Law:  Waterways and Street Ends

Most of these sites, and all the photos, exist thanks to two legal quirks.

Back When - this is the older quirk - people who lived around the lake often travelled by boat.  Waterways were places to launch or land them.  At some point the state took ownership, but then, as the waterways lost importance, forgot about them.  Now regulations require that in leasing them out, the state prioritise public access.  The nine on the north shore (other shores have fourteen more) vary greatly both in public access and in public amenities.  A good introduction, focused on the six in Wallingford, and especially the least accessible, Waterway 20, is a September 2020 article by Mandy Godwin for Crosscut.  All 23 are shown on the Cheshiahud Loop map.

The newer quirk is a decision by a Seattle City Council of the good old days when they didn't have tons of crazy ideas.  (Accounts I've read disagree about which council, but it was more than fifteen years ago.)  This decision was, seems to me, a land grab.  The new law declared that the land between the end of a public street and the water would be public land.  The city then set to work identifying sites and negotiating with people who were using them.  Some of these people agreed to pay fees to go on using these spaces.  These fees support a small staff who have slowly added amenities to the rest, and who have produced a kind of hard to use and at least somewhat misleading GIS interactive map of the rest.  Eli Sanders of The Stranger wrote half an article in 2015 about them, which I forgot at the time, but re-found when investigating all those places in Ballard called "street end".  (If my link for the map doesn't work for you, use his, which takes you to Seattle's Department of Transportation, these street ends' owner and the source for map links.)  Only two of these are on Lake Union's north shore.  The state is apparently also in the street end game, but I know, so far, much less about that.

None of the street ends in North Seattle is said to have restrooms or water fountains, so I've been meaning to get to them, just not right now.  None of the waterways have public-facing plumbing either, but I was figuring this would be my last hike past Lake Union for you, dear Diary, and I should get them done.  I took lots of photos because all the descriptions I found were words.

The Parks (etc.)

Waterway 15

At the end of 4th Ave NE.

This is perhaps tied with Waterway 18 for "best north shore waterway park".  Credit usually goes to neighbour Ivar's, but a Cheshiahud planners' report (long PDF; see page 89) says the work was done by (or paid for by?) King County Metro.  Anyway, whereas 18 is pure park, 15 is gussied up for us city folks; not only does it have picnic tables and what sure looks like a fire circle:

but the rocks separating the circles have historical documents

and photos

baked into them.  And of course, like most of these, it has a view:

Latona Avenue NE Street End

This didn't really stick well in my memory, but does provide direct access to the water too:

Waterway 16

At the end of 2nd Ave NE.

I hope that crane, though unoccupied around 3:30 P.M., represents a brighter future for this one.

Don't be misled by these current and former plants; I very much doubt there's some safe sea strand on the other side of the rocks.

Waterway 17

At the end of Eastern Ave N.  If you're on the Burke-Gilman Trail, you'll see a stairway continuing Eastern; look across Northlake Way from it.  If you're on foot on Northlake, you might see the thin blue sign. But if you're driving on Northlake, turn south into the parking lot of a building whose signage says "Westward", the name of the ground floor restaurant.  The waterway can only be reached through the "No Parking" space in that lot.

It's a quite nice micro-park:

with, of course, a view:

Sunnyside Avenue N Boat Ramp

Apparently this is a street end turned into a Real Park. Which means it isn't listed on that interactive GIS thingie.  (EDIT 10/19 - Yes, it is listed there.)

Introduced, with a photo, June 9 in "At the Centre of the Universe, Does Gas Work?"

Waterway 18

Mentioned in the abovementioned page but properly introduced, with photos, June 21 in "Past Work and Gas Works".

A park apparently belonging to Gas Works Park Marina

This is a small area with grass, trees and picnic tables, just east of Waterway 19.  It's certainly privately owned, but I'm not sure to what extent the public is welcome (as opposed to residents of the marina's houseboats), so I took no photos.

Waterway 19

Just east of Gas Works Park.

Introduced in the same manner as Waterway 18 and in the same pages.

Godwin says this is closed due to toxic waste.  Maybe she means closed to boating? It's just as open to hiking as it was in June.

Gas Works Park

Introduced in the same pages as Waterways 18 and 19, with photos in the June 21 page.

Waterway 20

Not just west of Gas Works Park.  I'm not sure how big it is, but it has to be between the Seattle Police Harbor Patrol building and the Center for Wooden Boats building.  This area, adjacent to the latter, most closely fit the description in Godwin's article:

Anyway, that's south of Gas Works's western tip.

Waterway 21

This has a Cheshiahud Loop-style sign, and is reputed to line up with a street called Carr Place, but the most reliable way to find it in the short term is that it's west of a gray building home to the Northlake Shipyard, and east of a blue and white building home to the Divers' Institute of Technology.

It's a nice one, a deck with two benches to take in the view, greenery on either side:

Waterway 22

This is just east of Stone Way.  It's also easy to find because, coming from the east, for some distance, there's good sidewalk, that abruptly ends where this waterway begins.

On the other hand, its view makes it worth seeking out:

Waterway 23

You've actually seen this one before, if you've used the part of the Burke-Gilman Trail that's directly under the Aurora Bridge.  It's got a very good view of its own:

which unfortunately isn't what you see from the benches:

on which, however, I found an indifferent cat:

Fremont Bridge Street End

This is the only street end on that GIS thing that has its address in "N" rather than "NE" or "NW".  (EDIT 10/19 - That depends.  The GIS thing claims Sunnyside Ave is "NE". So its address there isn't "N", but in other contexts, such as reality, it is, which makes two "N" street ends.)  I think a "street end" for a bridge is obvious nonsense, and what we're told of it - that, as with Waterway 23, it's incorporated into the Burke-Gilman Trail - is just as implausible.  Tell me, is this part of the trail?

Or this?

I'm pretty sure the idea is that people who actually believe in a street end for a bridge and demand to see it should see this:

but I don't buy it.

Sorry to end on such a grumpy note, dear Diary, when there was some fun along the way.