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.

Few Restrooms Closed, Only One Water Fountain Running in Today's Hike

Dear Diary,

Today I visited eight parks.  I only walked through the Wallingford Steps, but in each of the others there's a water fountain or (more usually) both a fountain and restrooms, and I took pictures of these with today's newspaper in each one.

I'm not going to spend the rest of the night uploading those pictures to Blogspot.  I've just uploaded them all to my Google Drive account, and it appears that the following link enables anyone who wishes to see those photos to see them.

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

Aside from not boring you and anyone who reads you with endless door shots, this has the great advantage that the date and time information that is the bulk of each photo's meta-information is preserved intact.  On top of which, each photo has tonight as its last-modified date, and each photo has today's newspaper in it.  I finally have redundantly dated photos for you, dear Diary, only I can't show them to you directly in your pages to accomplish that.  Sorry!

Anyway, then, as of this afternoon and early evening, here's a summary of the results by function:

Water fountain running at Sunset Place, which is in Northwest.  All the other parks I got to are in North, and no water fountain known to me was running in any of those.  They are:  Meridian Playground, Wallingford Playfield, Gas Works Park, B. F. Day Playground, Woodland Park and Green Lake Park.

Restrooms closed at Woodland Park (Citywide Athletics Building, which the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation nicknames "Rio") and at Green Lake Park (Community Center, women's room only).  Both closures had explanations posted, and were not simply the result of negligence.  All the other restrooms I visited were open, including ones in Meridian Playground, Wallingford Playfield, Gas Works Park, Woodland Park and Green Lake Park.

Results by park:

Meridian Playground - restrooms open (as usual, except that they close in winter), water fountain hopelessly damaged in a way that suggests metal thievery, as it has been since I first saw it last year.  I also decided to take notes on men's rooms on this series of hikes, and the men's room at Meridian has one toilet, one urinal, one sink, one dryer, and one soap dispenser.  I tried at least one sink for each men's room this kind of note is attached to, found it not of the kind that mostly sprays users' clothes, and found any dryer mentioned working.

Street fountain on N 45th St near Wallingford Ave N - still not running, as it has been since late March; before that, as far as I knew, it ran throughout the pandemic, incuding winter.  I took a picture, but either it didn't actually get taken, or I deleted it accidentally from my phone.  (My phone's camera has recently eliminated a feature that helped me know whether it really took a picture, so I periodically have to go through deleting duplicate and triplicate photos.)  When I take another photo of it, there'll be a folder at Google Drive for that photo.

Wallingford Playfield - restrooms open (as usual), water fountain recently repaired but still not running; last year it was hopelessly damaged.  The men's room at Wallingford has the same things as the one at Meridian.  I did not note, this time, at either of these parks, whether the toilet stalls had doors.

Gas Works Park - restrooms open (they're officially open 24 hours at least during the pandemic), water fountain not running; it still shows no sign of damage, but hasn't, as far as I know, run since the pandemic began.  The men's room has two toilets without stall doors, one urinal, one sink, and one soap dispenser.

B. F. Day Playground - water fountain not running.  It gave a trickle last spring and was running last autumn.

Sunset Place - water fountain running.  It ran both last spring and last autumn.

Woodland Park - By region:

• Northwest - There's a single water fountain near the entrance to the park at Phinney Ave N and N 59th St.  It's too damaged to use, as it has been since I found it last autumn, but the style of the damage suggests that it may have been disabled by parks staff rather than by metal thieves.
• Lawn bowling - A restroom building is right next to one of the lawn bowling greens near the park entrance at Aurora Ave N and West Green Lake Way N; its restrooms were limitedly open in winter, but last year were unpredictably 24 hours.  The men's room has two toilets without stall doors, one urinal, one sink, no dryer, and one soap dispenser.  One water fountain is under its eaves, within the usually locked bowling green; it wasn't running last autumn.  Another is some distance away, near shelter 6; it ran last autumn, but isn't running now.  Neither looks damaged.
  
• Pink Palace - Some way south of the lawn bowling restrooms this quite pink building is at the top of a hill.  It has two water fountains attached to it which haven't run since the pandemic began and still don't; they don't look damaged.  The restrooms have been open most nights I've been near them since the pandemic began.  The men's room has two toilet stalls with doors, one urinal, two sinks, one dryer, and one soap dispenser.
  
• 50th - Northwest of Woodland Park Ave N and N 50th St there's a restroom building which has been open 24 hours somewhat less reliably than the Pink Palace.  The men's room has two toilets without stall doors, one urinal, two sinks, one dryer, and would have a soap dispenser except that someone has stolen it.  Right out front of the men's room is a really old-fashioned water fountain which hasn't run since the pandemic began, but has been disabled since at least last autumn in a way reminiscent of the northwest fountain.  The same is true of a water fountain directly north of Woodland Park Ave N, which is of the same make as the northwest fountain and disabled in the same ways.
• Citywide Athletics Building (again, "Rio") - Two water fountains are on either side of the home plate of the big baseball diamond at the park's southeast corner.  They have both been hopelessly disabled, probably by metal thieves and maybe by the same bunch as at Meridian Playground, since the pandemic began.  North of the baseball diamond is the Citywide Athletics Building.  It has restrooms that open to the outside, and are normally open in winter, but since January have been posted as closed due to vandalism, which forced the parks department to do some juggling.
• Cloverleaf - With the big baseball diamond as field #1, the four Leo Lassen Fields are #3-#6, vaguely resembling a four-leafed clover.  A building with the address 5427 East Green Lake Way N in the middle of the cloverleaf holds two restrooms with doors that open to the outside.  These normally close in winter, but this winter were open with limited hours.  They were open today.  The water fountain attached to the building gave a trickle last May, and ran last October - that's only two in the park, the other being near shelter 6 - but isn't running now.  A girls' game was going on, resulting in a real crowd near this building, so I didn't take notes on the men's room, and thereafter stopped partly from forgetting, partly from rain.
  

Green Lake Park - By region; all restrooms can be open all year:

• Small Craft Center (nicknamed "Shellhouse" by the parks department), near the southern end of the lake.  Most of last year, I think these restrooms were open 24 hours, but the people who work there were unhappy with the results, and as of winter, it closes, though later than most park restrooms.  Two water fountains attached to two buildings ran last year (in spring as well as fall), but haven't been started yet this year.
• 64th St (nicknamed "65th St" by the parks department).  These restrooms were usually open 24 hours last year, and are now the designated 24 hour restrooms of this park.  I've never found a water fountain near them.  On the way there I saw geese escorting their goslings:
  
  
  
• Community Center.  The Green Lake Community Center and Evans Pool have been undergoing inscrutable construction work that got a lot more scrutable sometime between January and now with the erection of a sign that explains that they're doing "stabilization" work now, with the hope to buy time until mid-decade, to allow a more thorough planning of the replacement.
  
  The restrooms have been unpredictably open, but in recent visits ("Hikes 12 and 14" and today) the men's room has been open but not the women's.  Today the men's room had both warm and cold water, but it's a good idea to make sure it at least has cold running water before using it.  The water fountain trailward of the building ran last fall, but doesn't run now.
  
• Wading pool, at the north end of the park.  These restrooms have usually been the official 24 hour restrooms of the park, and are still usually open 24 hours.  Two water fountains attached to the building ran last fall, but not now; I didn't find the free-standing double fountain not far away then, so haven't observed it running.
• Theatre, the building known as the Bathhouse or Bath House Theater, the company inside it the Seattle Public Theater (parks department nickname "Bath House" or "Bathhouse").   I didn't find these restrooms open last May or October; they're supposed to open in summer for the theatre season, and by different people expected to open in winter too.  I first found them open in January and had to eat some crow about it; they're open now too, which they definitely oughtn't normally be.  So much as I complain about the parks department ignoring the pandemic in their decision-making, this is a notable exception.  Anyway, there's a free-standing double fountain in front of the men's room, and two fountains attached in back of the women's room; I'm pretty sure all ran last October, but none run now.

And since I got that far only after 7 P.M. (closing times for the Bathhouse, Community Center and Shellhouse restrooms seem to be between 8 and 9 P.M.), it was too late to go on to the parks of Greenwood, so that's as far as I got in "N" today.

More about the hikes I'm now trying to plan tomorrow, dear Diary; it's been quiet time for a quarter hour again.  Good night.

A Hike along Difficult Market Street

Dear Diary,

Yesterday I checked my lists of places to go, based on the 2020 Seattle real property report, versus the list of fire stations,  the map of libraries, and of course especially the list of P-Patches offered by the respective departments.  The only difference I found was the one that had triggered this check, Troll's Knoll P-Patch.  Thus fortified, I went to my next region without even checking the list of landmarks I'd been offered, let alone tackling the websites of Seattle Public Utilities or Seattle City Light.

This region consists of NW, that is, Seattle west of 1st Ave NW, between the Ship Canal and a northern border.  That northern border starts at 1st Ave NW and NW 50th St and continues along NW 50th St to the intersection with NW Market St.  It then continues along NW Market St to that street's end, and then along the same line to the coast.

So this is, roughly, southern Ballard.  Some people call the eastern part of it part of Fremont,

 

and I'll suggest another name for that area in the next page, but I think most people think all NW is Ballard, and even on a historical basis, most of this area (though I'm not sure about the area covered in the hike this page is about) is the southern part of the brief-lived separate city of Ballard annexed to Seattle in 1907.

It isn't easy to find via a Google search when the eastern parts of Market Street were built, but whenever it was, the builders had to solve the problem of traversing Phinney Ridge.  Their solution resulted in a lot of sheer slopes along the north side of the northern sidewalk.  In some cases the purchasers of houses purchased those sheer slopes too, but along a fairly high proportion of those blocks, the city ended up owning the slopes, noting that each of the parcels into which it divides them up is a "difficult building site".

And if these are typical of the "difficult building site"s, then I no longer wonder why they aren't used to house the homeless.

Most of these sites have amazingly low ID numbers - 62, 63, 64, 66, 68 and, um, 4593 - despite their relative unimportance to the city.

I clambered around a bunch of blocks for about forty-five minutes in order to locate these sites, and it was, all in all, a sorry display of my geographical incompetence.  I'll spare you all that, dear Diary, and just present the results in order from southeast to northwest, ending with one weird site that isn't difficult at all.

EDIT 5/11:  Map:

 

One reason I had trouble finding these is that whoever assigned these parcels street numbers exercised remarkable ingenuity giving them confusing ones.  Two, in fact, have such nonsensical street numbers that I thought they were properties claimed in the middle of Puget Sound:  5300 NW 53rd St and 4709 NW Market St.  What I should have done, what a more competent geographer would have done, with these and with the six photographed below, is assume that they all gravitated to the most obvious place and worked from there.  Anyway, those two are on the above map (approximately) as lower-case g and h, and I'll get to them someday.

The documents (5300, 4709) that located those two sites for me also said that the current version of Market Street was built in 1946.  I found those documents through a Google search that led me to this portal.

Parcel at 104 NW 47th

This one comes first in that real property report because its current use is given as "Excess right-of-way".  It's also first geographically, in this direction, but I didn't grasp that when planning the trip, and this was actually the last site covered in this page to which I went.  Its area is reputed to be 1,871 square feet.  Here's a picture:

Parcel at 180 NW Market St

Three of them are clustered near the bottom of page 3 of the report with the current use given as "Slope protection".  This one is 2,171 square feet.  A picture:

Parcel at 201 NW 50th St

Because I approached via 50th St, this is the first one I visited.  It's another of the three "Slope Protection" sites, area 1,468 square feet.  A picture:

Parcel at 5023 Baker Ave NW

This one's area is given as 1,013 square feet, its current use as "Landscaping".  A picture from across Market:

Parcel at 280 NW Market St

This is the last of the three "Slope protection" sites, area 3,867 square feet, making it much the biggest site on this page.  It's the only one of these six sites actually south of Market, even though its street number implies it's north (the property on the corner of 3rd Ave NW and NW Market St is 232 NW Market).  A picture from across Market:

Parcel at 400 NW Market St

This is a small area separated by a fence from the houses adjacent.  For some reason the city continues to own it, current use "Landscaping", although it isn't a difficult building site at all; I can't help imagining warring neighbours.  It's big enough for multiple tents - 3,651 square feet - and Gilman Playground was indeed recently swept, but I didn't find anyone there.  A picture, again, from across Market:

Three or four parks of similar size are in the small neighbourhood between roughly NW 55th St, NW Market St, and NW 50th St - Greenwood Triangle, Rainier Place, Sunset Place and the alleged Cascade Place.  Not much further north is Ballard Parkway, one of the parks so designated by the Seattle Department of Transportation but not by the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation.  And Sunset Place has a water fountain.  But I predict that that water fountain is on, because it was on during the spring and summer of last year, so it has little potential to affect my conclusions.  One name for the neighbourhood is West Woodland Park.  And I was fed up enough with hills, by the time I was done with difficult Market St, to be fully content to leave that area in the region north of this one.

All for now, dear Diary.  Next, but not immediately after this page, a hike in Ross.

The Water Fountains of Ballard, mid-October 2020

Dear Diary,

As mentioned in some earlier pages, and in a bit more detail in "Two Last Strays" yesterday, on October 16 I returned to Ballard.  My first trip to the parks of Ballard, in June, was reported in the pages "History and Parks, part I" and "part II" on June 25, pages that to this day hardly anyone has read, apparently inferring from the title that each page ends with a test.  Actually those pages are about the strong impression some of Ballard's parks gave me, that they were about history, indeed that Ballard is obsessed with certain parts of its history.  In part II I got to parks that at least concerned other parts of Ballard history.

This page also deals with the water fountains of areas sometimes seen as parts of Ballard, but which I think of as north of it, to wit the water fountains first mentioned in "A Lazy Day on Loyal Heights" June 28, and "What Can a Hill Do with a Crown?", July 1.

It was on this June trip that I finally allowed myself to take landscape and other such photos, so I took relatively few this time.  Therefore this page also has room to report on water fountains in Golden Gardens Park and on the Burke-Gilman Trail, which I first told you about, dear Diary, in "The Ballard Seacoast:  Parks Not Parks', part I" and "part II", June 30 and July 1, even though I didn't reach these until October 17 this time.

Enough introduction; let's get started.

In Gas Works Park the water fountain still wasn't running, as I already reported October 8 in "South of North Once More, Part I".

Ross Park

On June 22, as reported in "History and Parks" I, I found the restroom open and the water fountain not running.  On October 16, this was flipped.  As at Bitter Lake Playfield ("Top of the City, part III" November 12 and "Hygiene Is a Luxury I Can't Afford" November 18), the restroom was locked but the water fountain (free-standing, near the restrooms) was ON.

I was particularly annoyed by this situation because I'd wanted to take a picture of a mosaic between the restrooms.  I did anyway.

So you can see why I was annoyed.

I asked Rachel Schulkin, communications manager for the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation, about the locking, and she said the unlocker goofed.  Well, he must have, but we'll get to that.

Ross Park's restrooms are not year-round, so I won't be able to take that picture until next spring.

Sunset Place

This is a small park on one slope of a hill, where I managed to miss a water fountain on my first visit, so had to go back for it.  The advantage of nobody having read "History and Parks" I right away is that any future hypothetical readers will get the revised version.

The drama continued this time.  As I prepared to climb up to the bottom of the park, I had to adjust my mask.  Now, I told you, dear Diary, about my masks from Target that did such a good job of covering my eyes, in "Six Parks in Search of Another" November 30.  As I said there, on the long hike October 8 to 14, I wore a different sort of mask.  But for this shorter hike I reverted to a Target one; those were, after all, the majority of my masks.  

Well, two blocks from the top of Sunset Place, I stopped to adjust that mask, when at last it achieved the goal it and its five siblings had sought since June:  by snapping away from my hand, it managed to flip my glasses off my ears and nose, I didn't manage to catch them, and, well, I haven't been able to wear my glasses much since.

So now I have fifteen masks.  Six from Target, waiting in my storage until I figure out what to do with them, and nine from Naturepedic.  All of those are gifts.  I tried to buy a pack, but they only ship Fed Ex, which my address can't accept.  So I called them, and they decided the best solution was to send me a free pack.  Anyway, those have never fought my glasses as assiduously as the Target ones did, but I'm still not planning to get new glasses until mask time is over, at least if it does end.

ANYWAY.  At Sunset Place, the water fountain was ON, as it had been in June.  I decided it was time, at a park so obviously created for its view, to photograph that view:

Gilman Playfield

The official names of the parks named for Ross and Gilman, per the parks department website, are both "Playground".  My theory is that they aren't allowed to outshine Ballard Playground.  In my opinion Ross is obviously a Park, Gilman a Playfield, and I'll go by that until and unless someone gives me a good reason not to.

Anyway, as I reported euphorically in "History and Parks" I, Gilman's free-standing water fountain near its restrooms was ON.  It still was in October.  On the other hand, those restrooms were open in June, but not in October.  I asked Rachel Schulkin about this too, but she never got back to me.

Now, the obvious assumption is that the same unlocker screwed up twice, but it isn't that simple.  You see, in June I observed a bunch of homeless people's tents at Gilman Playfield.  I considered their occupants well-behaved.  Those tents were gone this time.  Some trash, however, remained:

So, dear Diary, doesn't this remind you of Licton Springs Park?  ("Bad Apples in the Bonny Green Wood", October 29.)  A park whose campers were induced to leave by the locking of the restrooms?  Except that those campers were abominable neighbours, while, from my admittedly brief observation, it looked like Gilman's were good neighbours.  It sends a very bad message to us unsheltered homeless if our behaviour has no effect on the treatment we get.

So I hope it was just an unlocker's screwup, but I don't know whether we'll ever know.  Of course, those doors would be locked now anyway, since Gilman Playfield's restrooms are not year-round.

Ballard Commons

Of course people were still camped here.  I still couldn't find the restrooms, the only ones in Ballard proper listed on the 2019 list of year-round restrooms.  Rachel Schulkin finally ended my suspense; it turns out the parks department sees fit to claim the "Portland Loo" as a restroom.

Triple free-standing water fountain ON both in June and in October.

As a precaution, I went to the Ballard branch library to use its restroom before proceeding, but I needn't have.

Ballard Playground and Community Center

The single-user restrooms at the Community Center both have dryers, and that afternoon both still had toilet cleaner in their bowls.  The only explanation I can think of for why these restrooms, built into a heated building, are not open year-round is that neighbours are afraid we homeless will use them, when the other park restrooms are closed.  Well, October 16 was a kind of experiment in that regard, and on its showing such fears would be overblown.  Dear Diary, if anyone in Ballard reads this page, I hope they'll be kind enough to check whether those restrooms are really locked, and report back in a comment.

The free-standing water fountain nearby but technically in the Playground had not been running in June, but was ON in October.

Webster Park

Free-standing water fountain mid-park:  TRICKLE, as in June.

Salmon Bay Park

The restrooms were open.  The men's room has a dryer but no stall door.  These are not year-round restrooms.

Attached water fountain, men's side:  ON (it had been off in June).

Loyal Heights Community Center and Playfield

The restrooms were open.  Weirdly, these have stall doors but no dryer.  They're also the first year-round restrooms mentioned in this page, unless there really is a mistake about the Ballard Community Center ones.  The attached water fountain, off in June, was ON in October.

Free-standing water fountain in the Playfield's southwest, near the baseball diamond:  ON (previously off)

Free-standing water fountain upstairs:  ON BUT VISIBLY DAMAGED (previously off)

Baker Park on Crown Hill

The parks department website offers a set of symbols under the heading 'Amenities' on most parks' individual pages.  A symbol I've interpreted as meaning "water fountain" has indeed pointed to a water fountain very reliably - this is how, for example, I found out about the one at Sunset Place.

But that symbol is on the page for this park to this day, and I still couldn't find the water fountain.  Nobody I asked at the park knew anything about one, but they all said they hadn't been visiting it long.  The page talks about an expansion opened in 2020; maybe a water fountain was removed due to that, or as at View Ridge Playfield for fear of COVID-19.  Or maybe the page is wrong, or I've misunderstood the symbol.  I asked Rachel Schulkin, but she never got back to me.

Crown Hill Park

Free-standing double water fountain ON, both bowls' flow low but probably useable

You'll remember, dear Diary, that one of the first parks I visited at the beginning of my October hikes showed the official re-opening of the playgrounds.  But the one adjoining this park, not parks department property, was still locked in the evening of October 16.

Soundview Playfield

The restrooms were closed, but it was 7:20 P.M. and I didn't expect any different.

Free-standing water fountain near the water play area:  OFF, as in June

Water play areas didn't open this year.  It seems likely that this water fountain is on the same pipe as the water play area, and there may not be separate shutoffs.  Rachel Schulkin has told me that all the working water fountains were turned on this year, but I'd find it quite plausible if this one were an exception.

Golden Gardens Park

That night, rain was expected, and so tempting though the benches at Soundview were, I knew I had to reach a shelter.  You already know, dear Diary, from "Standing Room Only" V, that the shelters at this park are very, well, un-sheltering, but I didn't know that as I careened fearfully down Golden Gardens Drive, where no sign survived of its time as a "Stay Healthy" street.  It was full dark, so I didn't turn aside to look for water fountains near the upper restrooms, which I hadn't found in June.

There was a ton of traffic at the bottom.  Most seemed to be for the 24-hour Eddie Vine Boat Ramp, but there were more than a handful in the park as I clambered along looking for the shelters.

Rain had already begun too, occasioning the remarks I used as an epigraph for "Standing Room Only" I from a loud young woman in a party of young people who eventually coalesced at the south end of the beach around a fire.  As I understand it, the city plans to evict all the homeless from Cal Anderson Park because, among other things, of two illegal fires.  Will the city eject half the young people from Golden Gardens because of one?

Anyway, I spent a miserable night in that shelter, and in the morning apparently I was careless.  I had reported, in "The Ballard Seacoast" II, a water fountain near the restrooms and another at the south end of the beach, both off.  This time I only noted

Double free-standing water fountain near the restrooms:  ON, both bowls a bit low flow

The restrooms were opened between 7:49 and 8:30 A.M.

The Burke-Gilman Trail

In my October hikes, I walked all but about two miles of the trail, but largely without my glasses.  I think it's unlikely, but not quite impossible, that there's another water fountain on the trail besides the one on 30th Ave NE and this one at 37th Ave NW.

Well, that's a sad photo, but "NW" actually did considerably better, this year, water fountain-wise, than "N".

Tomorrow, starting the street ends.  None have restrooms or water fountains, and none of those we can visit have lockable doors, so the photos, much more numerous, may also be more interesting.  Good night, dear Diary.

History and Parks, part I

Dear Diary,

Monday June 22 I went from Fremont, which treasures quirk, to Ballard, which treasures history.  Ballard used to be a separate city (for 18 years) until it agreed to annexation by Seattle, and it never lets the visitor to its parks forget it.  (To be fair, though, most of this insistence is in parks I don't get to until the next page.)

Anyway, I've been very liberal with photos this trip, and I was worried some would disappear, as they sometimes do when my camera gets crowded, so I tried to post that night.  Unfortunately, the Ballard public library turned out to treat internet access the way many public buildings treat electricity - free inside, but forbidden out.  So here I am at the Greenwood branch days later with a huge backlog, and I'll just have to see how far I can get.  I probably won't fully catch up for days to come.

After the Fremont Canal Park below, everything address-wise is "NW" for pages and days to come.  Other things I encountered less constantly, but still many times every day:  crows that disapproved of my existence, and would chase me for a block or two to tell me about it; and winds that disapproved of my taking notes on paper, and scattered those notes so many times that last night (June 24) my inseam split on my 854th retrieval dive.  Finally, until I say otherwise, you have to assume that I saw my peers, at and between many of the "NW" parks; it would be invidious to call out all the campers, so I only mention my fellow homeless when I have a point to make.

I EDITED this page Sunday June 28 on looking at my receipts and finding I'd misreported my grocery shopping.

I EDITED it again Monday June 29 on revisiting Sunset Place and probably Cascade Place.

First a leftover from Sunday night.

The Burke-Gilman Trail

It didn't occur to me until I experienced it that because the trail goes under bridges, it offers the chance to watch them split from below.  Not actually as impressive a sight as watching that mountain of bridge rise in front of you when you're on it, but maybe interesting still.

A. B. Ernst Park

This hasn't closed for its expansion construction yet, but the writing is literally on the wall:

The fence shown there doesn't block the trail yet, but it will - construction is planned for August.  The sign includes a map:

This makes it clear that the existing park's dubious main attraction, some Brutalist concrete benches, will not survive in its present form.  Now, I've never seen that thing as "neat stuff", but I have no objection to documenting something soon to go, so:

Apparently when they're done the trail will go all the way down, no stairs needed, so I'm altogether happy.

The non-Jurassic parts of Fremont Canal Park

Apparently they squeeze the Fremont Fair into here every year, so talking about this park is probably coals to Newcastle, but anyway there's something sort of neat.  There are four odd pieces of furniture along the park's length, at least one in the "NW" part.  Three of them, including the "NW" one, are surrounded by bushes, as if to disguise them as incipient topiary.

And one is a chess bench.  I have something of a soft spot for chess benches; one of my last student newspaper stories was about them.  More precisely, about what proved a successful attempt to destroy a chess community by splitting its benches up, so it's kind of perverse of me to highlight this solitary one, but anyway, a chess bench disguised as topiary:

Fremont Canal Park gives every sign of abandoning parkness for trailness well before its notional end at 3rd Ave NW, but if you stick it out that far, you can go straight up 3rd to:

Ross Park

This park is three blocks west of Fremont Peak Park, and probably about three blocks down from it.  It's the only park in this page that isn't open 4 A.M. to 11:30 P.M.; Ross keeps the less common 6 A.M. to 10 P.M. schedule.  There's some dispute about the name.  The Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation website calls it "Ross Playground".  The park's scoreboard calls it "Ross Playfield":

But I'm going with the park's main sign:

Anyway, this was my first stop with a restroom.  The water fountain wasn't working, of course, but the restroom worked fine.  (I won't be saying that about most "NW" park restrooms.)

One bit of neat stuff is in the playground, which sort of successfully carries through the spider theme suggested:

But there's something neater between the restrooms, a mosaic whose makers' names I haven't found:

From there I continued on 3rd to...

A small neighbourhood with four very small parks

The neighbourhood is one I'd glimpsed, because it's just west of Woodland Park Zoo.  The first park I reached is

Sunset Place

This is a triangle, a rather tall one with some benches at the top to take in whatever view can be had at 1st Ave and 52nd St.  My first reaction on seeing it was "What a good use of space!", and I stand by that.  But I didn't climb up to the benches, which was apparently foolish of me, because the parks department website seems to say there's a water fountain there.  Sorry!

EDIT June 29:  OK, now I have.  And there is indeed a water fountain up there, a bizarrely familiar elementary school model, but it RUNS!  This means all three working water fountains in "NW" are south of 60th St.  Sorry, I didn't taste the water.  But here's a picture of the fountain and the park:

The Mystery of Cascade Place

This time I'll actually quote the parks department website, which in a single sentence:

This turnaround island at the end of Palmer Court NW is in Ballard just west of NW Market St at NW 52nd St.

manages to get at most two things right.  This park was the subject of the first question I addressed to Rachel Schulkin, Communications Manager for the department.  (I'd tried to reach her before but never gotten an answer; this turned out to be because I hadn't asked specific questions.)  Anyway, she answered but didn't sound certain; going by her answer, it does exist, it is at an end of Palmer Court, and it is technically in Ballard.  It is not, however, a turnaround island, near 52nd St, or just west of Market St.  I took a bunch of pictures.  First, the situation.  Palmer Court is a short gravel street that heads southeast from 2nd Ave some feet south of 52nd St.  The address given by the department, not that those are always reliable, puts Cascade Place at the interior end, where there's no turnaround island, but is a bunch of greenery.  This is where Google Maps and Ms. Schulkin say it is.  Presumably it's a different part of this greenery from this one:

I also took pictures of both ends of Palmer Court:

and of 52nd St just west of Market St (specifically, Baker Ave and 52nd)

just to show the absence of traffic islands.

EDIT 6/29:  On the premise that the park, if it exists, must be at the interior end of Palmer Court, I took a video of that end today.  I think the likeliest candidate for parkhood is whatever is at the top of the low steps seen in the video, but given the "PRIVATE PROPERTY" sign and a loudly barking large dog nearby, I thought there was too much chance someone with a shotgun was what's at the top of those steps.  Anyway, the video:

Rainier Place

This triangle is where 53rd St intersects with 54th St, I am not making this up.  The department website gets only one thing wrong, calling it "grassy".  It is dominated by a conifer tree whose generic name I should but don't know, and the needles discourage grass from most of the space.

Greenwood Triangle

This triangle is at 3rd Ave and 55th St, strictly speaking across the street from the weirdly laid out small neighbourhood, and actually is grassy.

Next west on Market up to 9th Ave.

Gilman Playground

This extends from 54th past 53rd, but private houses fill half the second block; it runs one long block from 9th to 11th Avenues.  At 4 acres it's bigger than Ross (2.35) let alone the others.  So it has a restroom and water fountain, but here's what's strange:  both work!  I was so gobsmacked I took pictures to establish a chain of evidence.  Working water fountain:

That water fountain is near this restroom:

And that restroom is in Gilman Playground:

You see, I'd gone on a quest for the hypothetical western boundary of the dry park water fountain problem, and I'd found it!  Admittedly, at the westernmost park water fountain in that part of town, but you can't have everything.  (Remember, I hadn't yet found the water fountain at Sunset Place.)

The men's room has a lockable door, but no dryer.

By far the neatest thing I saw Monday at Gilman Playground was an absence.  There were a lot of tents in the park, and some visibly homeless people (including me) outside them.  There were also a lot of visibly housed people there.  And they were all minding their own business.  It was such a refreshing change from the usual park interactions within either group or between the groups.  I concluded that when Ballard Commons was swept not long ago, all the best-behaved of my peers had come to Gilman Playground, but I sure don't know why the housed were behaving so well.

I eventually decided to photograph some drums in the playground.  Plastic, they aren't loud, just audible enough to get across the acoustics lesson of differently sized instruments:

From Gilman Playground I went to the nearby Safeway and got the day's groceries, about which I'll talk more when posting about the 23rd.  But then I headed south for one more park, dear Diary, after which I have to stop writing you for a while, but I'll try to return today.  This is the 14th Ave NW Boat Ramp, and isn't close to any other parks.  Unlike the Sunnyside Ave N Boat Ramp, it had no "sanican" that day.  I took a picture of its seascape:

Then, having done Number One at both Ross and Gilman, I discovered an urgent need to do Number Two.  So I went to Fred Meyer, and paid for the use of their restroom (which also lacked drying capacity at the time) by buying a map of the Eastside there.

Next page, today, I hope, covers downtown Ballard.