Another RUNNING street fountain in today's hike

Dear Diary,

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

I went to:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ballard Community Center

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

Here's a detail:

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

Ballard Community Center, again

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

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

Northacres Park

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

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

Virgil Flaim Park

I have to eat a whole lot of crow here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Burke-Gilman Trail

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

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

Ravenna Boulevard

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

The street fountain at 85th & Greenwood

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Last Hike: More open restrooms, fewer running fountains

Dear Diary,

Well, today was my last hike this month for you.  I went to twelve parks.  All have water fountains, and six also have restrooms:

• Matthews Beach (both)
• Meadowbrook Playfield (both)
• Victory Heights Playground (fountain)
• Maple Leaf Reservoir Park (both)
• Licton Springs Park (both)
• Northgate Park (fountain)
• Pinehurst Playground (fountain)
• Jackson Park (both)
• Little Brook Park (both)
• Cedar Park (fountain)
• Albert Davis Park (fountain)
• Virgil Flaim Park (fountain)

I also went back to the street fountain on N 45th St.

My object was to complete the Google Drive folder in which I keep the boring door shots and such from the hikes I just finished.  I hadn't re-visited the parks from the third region I hiked earlier in May, as I had the parks from the first two, and so didn't have photos of them at Google Drive.  That is now fixed, as is my lack of a photo of that street fountain (which still isn't running).

Two major changes among those parks, plus some minor ones I'll cover below.  The first major one is that I found the restroom open at Little Brook Park, and the lock placed in such a way that it would not prevent latching the door.  I think that's the first time I've seen it like that, and expand on that a bit below.  The second major change is that while the water is still running to the water fountain at Virgil Flaim Park, some enterprising person has vandalised the fountain such that it's probably now easier to fill bottles there, but certainly harder to drink from the fountain.

I have nothing to say about some of the parks listed above, so don't say anything about them in this page, except what I just said:  there are now photos at Google Drive showing whether the restrooms were open or the water fountains running as of my last visit.

Matthews Beach

As in every one of my visits to date - none of which have taken place in calendrical summer - I found the shower restrooms on the lake side of the restroom building closed.  As in most of my visits to date, I also found one of the single-user stalls on the other side boarded up.  The remaining single-user stall has one toilet, no urinal, one sink which splashed me when I used it, but not as badly as the south-facing sink at Soundview Playfield, one dryer, and one soap dispenser.

The water fountain was not running.

Meadowbrook Community Center, Playfield and Pool

This is the sign I photographed by night on "Hike 9C", this time by day so it can be read:

The mural is signed "Miller" as is another adjacent; I don't know more.

The people staffing the pool as a shower and restroom provider have been busily posting updates:

unlike most of the Community Centers, including this one, although this one has at least taken down its sign saying it would close for the inauguration:

Meadowbrook Playfield's restrooms were open, as expected (even the hopelessly outdated - well, hmmm, some things on the map offered by the Seattle Department of Human Services that I hiked last January to check, some things have been updated, for example Meridian Playground's restrooms are now mapped as open, other things haven't, such as the U-District location of the Urban Rest Stop still shown as open - but anyway, my point was, that until today that map was very out of date, but even it showed Meadowbrook Playfield's restrooms as having re-opened).

Um, yeah, so the Meadowbrook Playfield men's room has two toilets with stall doors, one urinal, one sink, one dryer, and one soap dispenser.

I found all three of Meadowbrook Playfield's water fountains this time, exactly where I'd found them before.  Two ran in October, but none are running now.

Maple Leaf Reservoir Park

The restrooms were open, and there was even an employee of the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation there cleaning them.  When I update the maps tomorrow, I'll change this park's restrooms to half red, half blue.

Licton Springs Park

Unlike most of the restrooms closed in Ballard and southern "NE", but like University Playground and Little Brook, this park's restrooms have no sign on their doors announcing why they're closed.  The men's room's stuff is mostly around a bend from the door, but I could see most of the women's room - the stalls have doors, in both rooms, but one of the women's stall doors had swung open - and I saw no damage.  I've heard there's damage at University Playground but not heard a convincing explanation why that was the only restroom damage not fixed last year in North Seattle, and I've also heard a completely different reason for why those restrooms haven't opened.  I figure without even a half-assed sign like those at Ravenna Park's "upper" restrooms, there's no reason I should assume a park restroom is closed because it has to be.

Anyway.  Licton Springs's water fountains are still running.

Northgate Community Center and Park

After I visited this park as part of the third region, I complained vigourously about the way the people working for Curative Inc at a COVID testing site at the south end of the park had blocked off large parts of it.  Whether because someone at the city actually read that page (something I haven't seen signs of in months), or because someone else complained effectively, or maybe because there's an actual considerate human being among Curative's local employees, their tape is now much more carefully placed.  In particular, although it runs for some distance alongside the playground and the Community Center's front, it leaves paved paths into both areas open.  I was in a hurry, however - this was only the hike's halfway point - and took only a water fountain photo (still not running), and no photos of the tape or the Center's front, at which I didn't even look.  Sorry, dear Diary.

Pinehurst Playground

As my photo shows, the water fountain here is running rather low.  I had decided to try the water of parks whose water I hadn't tried yet, so I drained the second bottle I was carrying, but it was so hard to fill a bottle (it only got halfway, actually) that I gave up on filling two.

 

Jackson Park

I owe an apology to the Jackson Park café, which I failed miserably to describe on the basis of vague, hurried impressions on my first visit earlier this month.  (All my previous visits to this park had been too early in the morning or too late in the evening for the place to be open.)  I basically conveyed my surprise that it isn't what one normally thinks of as a "café".  Well, duh, because even though they call it that at Jackson Park, it's actually much more like a bar and grill, or at least a rather unpretentious restaurant.  It does have a few pastries, and while they're definitely not Little Debbie, they also aren't the hand-crafted wonders most actual cafés take pride in.  I got a grilled cheese sandwich to go, trying to make up for many uses of their driving range men's room, and it was pretty good blocks later.

That men's room is a single-user stall with one toilet, no urinal, one sink, one dryer, and one soap dispenser.  Jackson Park is almost entirely devoted to a sport, so this is a fair test, and I did not see yellow spots on the toilet seat.  Score one against my argument that it's a bad idea to eliminate urinals from park restrooms.

I also looked carefully at the buildings, and Open Street Map hasn't left out a building, but it may have misplaced it.  Again, the map:

The building on the upper left could be the building by the driving range, but it can't be, because it doesn't really face the driving range, which is that big lighter green area on the top left.  It also isn't anywhere near wide enough.  I'm not sure I can learn enough to fix things like this in Open Street Map, but it needs fixed.  Anyway, though, I thought that was a building between the wide lower building and the unmapped driving range building, but there is no third building in that sequence; what I described as a "workshop" was actually a conflation in my memory of "employees only" doors in both buildings, the second of which (the one behind the part of the driving range building I'm familiar with) is rather workshoppish.

Little Brook Park

As noted above, I found the restroom not only open, but for the first time opened in such a way that the lock that closes it at night doesn't also keep users from latching it by day.

I don't know how much of this to attribute to the presence of a parks department employee, whose job it is to provide fun for people in neighbourhoods.  Someone, probably him, had set up a stereo providing music, and a portable basketball hoop, at which he was trying to teach a couple of teenagers some moves.  The parks department slogan is, I think, "Neighborhood Rec'n"; at least that's what's on their trucks.  However, a quick Google search on that turned up 0 results, so I just don't know.

Anyway, my point is, I don't know whether Little Brook's restroom has actually opened for the season or not, let alone whether its door will be reliably carefully arranged in future.

It has one toilet with no meaningful door, no urinal, one sink, one dryer, and a spot where someone had stolen one soap dispenser.

Cedar Park

Awkwardly, I found myself following a family that includes a teenaged girl for about half a dozen blocks on the way to this park.

It has a water fountain that ran last October, but isn't running now.

Albert Davis Park

This park was officially closed for one week after its May 6 sweep.  Supposedly that closure was to enable parks department employees to start restoring the park from the damage done by an encampment that was there for more than a year.  The parks department web page says nothing now about a closure, so presumably it hasn't been extended.

I visited this park twice during the closure, in prime daylight hours, and saw neither department employees nor their trucks.  Now it turns out they didn't even bother to show up to take down their closure materials.  For shame!

Virgil Flaim Park

As I walked to this park, a visibly homeless man saw the bottle in one of my satchel pockets and asked if I had any water to spare.  I didn't - for one thing, I've been drinking from that bottle for months, and for another, there were only a few sips in it - but I assured him that the water fountain in Virgil Flaim Park, just a block away, was running.  I had walked too far to hear his reply.

This park had the only outdoor water fountain known to me running in Lake City.  (I visited the Fred Meyer in the area today, and it may have a water fountain that's running, but I didn't find one.  The Lake City branch of the Seattle Public Library, and the Lake City Community Center, are both open limited hours.)  It's still running, but no longer drinkable from.

Some clever and immoral person, probably a resident of one of the neighbouring RVs, has extracted the pipe that delivers water to the spigot, and routed it so it instead delivers water toward the ground.  I think it's probably turnable enough to be a great bottle-filler, but can't be made a useable drinking spout.  I was too disgusted - this really is the kind of vandalism homeless people are endlessly accused of, plain as day really our fault this time - to experiment, and far too disgusted to try to fill my own bottle as I'd planned.

[EDIT 6/11 - All wrong.  I went back June 8, and found that the water actually comes not from this detached pipe, but from a hole in the side of another pipe, which makes it useless for filling bottles as well as for drinking directly.  I'm pretty sure this was sabotage rather than metal theft, and the main victims are probably the nearby homeless, so the saboteur was probably someone housed who objects to the existence of homeless people.  I apologise for blaming the victims.]

And from there, or anyway a few blocks from there, I caught a bus away, got a picture of the still not running N 45th St water fountain, and went on.

I still have one project to do, which I hope to accomplish next week, but we'll see.  At any rate, I hope not to hike for you next month, dear Diary.  Tomorrow, I should be able to update the spreadsheet in the Google Drive folder, and also show you final May maps of open and closed restrooms and running and otherwise water fountains.  Until then good night.

A Hike in Downtown Lake City, part I

Dear Diary,

From Licorice Fern Natural Area on NE 130th St, I went south to NE 125th St, and then east.  My first stop was the only Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation park in North Seattle that I knew about but didn't visit last year.

Map:

Thornton Creek Addition

Google Maps is quite sure where this park's address - 2318 NE 125th St - is, and who's there:  the Food Distribution Center of Greater Seattle Cares.  Actually, as Google Search knows, that center's address is 2212 NE 125th St.  Google Maps doesn't have a clue who's at 2212, but knows it's the address of, well, this park.  Whatever.

Google Search is right, and Google Maps is wrong.

Although if the food distribution people were never here, I don't know why I found three abandoned shopping carts on the premises.

Regardless, the parks department didn't want this property for its building, which according to Redfin is a 3-bedroom house prone to flooding.  Rather, for its frontage on the North Fork of Thornton Creek:

Of course, it also comes with a lawn.

I hope they don't just tear down the building - if nothing else, it contains three restrooms - and kind of hope, given that Lake City is pretty under-parked, they don't turn this nearly-an-acre site into Yet Another Thornton Creek Natural Area.  But they only bought it in 2019; time will tell.

Virgil Flaim Park

The parks department website comes through again.  Virgil Flaim was a Lake City resident who ran the Lake City Community Center for twenty years.  I don't know when the community centers became parks department properties, so don't know whether he was a department employee, but anyway, good for them for naming this park for him.

Since I've shown you pictures of this park before, dear Diary, I didn't worry too much about taking more this time; also, it was fairly crowded.  It has a water fountain, which is running:

and I took a couple of pictures of the greensward to show that there isn't a restroom being built there yet:

Albert Davis Park

The parks department website gives Davis, who definitely wasn't an employee, a long paragraph as a Lake City civic leader.

This park was the site of an encampment from before I first saw it last May (when the campers appeared to me mostly black), on through January (when they were considerably more mixed in race), to Thursday, May 6, one week ago, when it was swept largely in response to incidents the previous Thursday (and Friday).  Two people were shot (but survived), one of them in his RV adjacent to the camp, the other at an unrevealed location; if the identity or identities of the shooter or shooters is or are known, it's news to me.  But the Friday incident was a fire sparked by propane use at the park itself, which makes associating it with the park rather more obvious.

Seattle has a pattern that I doubt is unique to it, but that I've observed more here than elsewhere perhaps because I've been homeless so long here.  That is, some location gets associated with a lot of issues - violence, fires, drug dealers, prostitution, loud arguments, litter, you name it.  The city responds by, essentially, blaming the location.  What I don't understand is why city leaders, who ought to be wiser than I am, can't grasp that some poor people have a lot of issues.  If they don't want such people's places to become problematic, they shouldn't concentrate those people in one place; but because nobody wants poor neighbours, for precisely this reason, and also because they can't pay for one-acre lots, poor people get concentrated.  And so in location after location, Something Must Be Done, or at least Shoved Off To Somewhere Else.  The problem of sweeps is by no means limited to the homeless.  The SRO I lived in for nearly six years is closed to this day because faulty wiring caused a fire over five years ago.  (Though an employee told me it was because an alcoholic fell asleep while smoking.)  The building appears to be fine (the fire was after I was evicted, so I'm only going by what I see from outside), but nearly forty housing units are lost.  And then there's the Everspring Inn, to coverage of whose closure (initiated by the Seattle Police Department) I've put links into you before, dear Diary, but here are some more:  Crosscut, The Seattle Times.  Even if all the homeless were shot down tomorrow, this pattern would persist, and because of it, there would be more homeless soon enough.

Anyway, there are two important differences between park sweeps conducted by the Navigation Team and those conducted by the parks department.  The parks department has consistently been giving notice, and it gets the places it sweeps clean.  These are not unconnected:  if notice is given, the sweeps have fewer campers to deal with, and less difficulty making the distinction between valuable property and trash, a distinction homeless people are always going to make differently from how housed city employees do.

But that cleanliness meant that for the first time, I could take pictures in Albert Davis Park, so that's what I did.  Only not in the park, because after I'd walked across it, I found this sign:

It took a deal of work to photograph the fine print there at the lower right corner, but I did it:

So I only took pictures from the sidewalk outside the park.

In all the excitement, I completely forgot this park's water fountain, so I came back Wednesday, and hope to tell you, dear Diary, about that tomorrow.  Today I still have a lot to tell and show you, starting with the rest of the block Albert Davis Park is in.

Almost done...

Dear Diary,

No, of course I'm not almost done hiking around testing water fountains and photographing parks.  I'm almost done with the single region, of the eleven into which I've divided North Seattle this time, that had the most sites to visit.  At this point I have reason to go back to three sometime soon.

Executive summary:

Twenty-four of the sites were official parks owned or managed by the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation.  None of the other sites had restrooms whose doors opened to the outdoors, "sanican"s, hand-washing stations, SPU sinks, or outdoor water fountains.  However, two of the other sites are buildings that have partly re-opened to the public, including restrooms whose doors open to the indoors and indoor water fountains.

Restrooms:

Jackson Park - Three pairs of restrooms.  Two pairs, multi-user and gendered, open to the indoors of buildings that have been open to the public since at least last May.  The third opens to the outdoors, and consists of gendered single-user stalls; this is the only one I've used.

Lake City Community Center - I know nothing about them but assume they exist.  The community center is open a few hours some days, staffed by staffers of the charity God's Lil' Acre.

Little Brook Park - One restroom (not a pair, not gendered, not lockable, very peepable).  I found it locked Monday at 1:54 P.M. but forgot to put the newspaper in the photo.  I found it locked today at 11:37 A.M. and did put today's newspaper into the photo.

Maple Leaf Reservoir Park - One pair of multi-user, gendered, restrooms.  I found them locked at 6:37 P.M. (though my photos with newspaper are a bit later); a woman who saw me photographing them spoke with me at some length and, in particular, informed me that they had been locked not long before I got there.  Since this is well within a reasonable time of 7 P.M., the official closing time, I have to get back there soon; this is the most important of the three parks I hope to re-visit before telling you, dear Diary, in more detail about them.

Park buildings that might offer restrooms under normal circumstances but aren't offering them now include the Northgate Community Center and the building on the grounds of the Thornton Creek Addition.

Non-park city-owned building that currently offers restrooms with doors that open indoors:

Seattle Public Library, Lake City branch.  I'm pretty sure I've used this branch's restrooms in the past, but don't remember anything about them.

Non-park buildings that normally offer restrooms with doors that open indoors, or that I presume do so, but aren't offering them now:  Lake City Neighborhood Service Center; Seattle Public Library, Northgate branch.

I deliberately haven't investigated other levels of government this time.

Various groceries, and probably at least some other businesses, also currently offer restrooms with doors that open indoors; a Dick's Drive-In location near downtown Lake City has restrooms with doors that open outdoors, and there may conceivably be other such businesses.

Water fountains

Albert Davis Park - One, off.  I've never found this one running.

Jackson Park - Two, running.  These have run each time I've visited (May and October; I skipped January because the map I was checking didn't include this park, but was told in October that they would run in January too).

Little Brook Park - One, off both days I visited.  This was running last May but off in October and January.

Maple Leaf Reservoir Park - One, off.  I've never found this one running.

Northgate Park - One, off.  I've never found this one running.

Pinehurst Playground - One, running.  This ran last May and October but not in January.

Victory Heights Playground - Two, off.  I've never found these running.  (I didn't visit in January because there were no restrooms or "sanican"s there).

Virgil Flaim Park - One, running.  This was off last May but running last October.  (I didn't visit in January.)

I assume the situation for indoors water fountains is similar to that for restrooms summarised above.  I have yet to find outdoor water fountains in this region other than in Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation parks.

"Sanican"s and related things

I can't summarise these parks' whole histories with these, only what I know basically from writing you, dear Diary.  There are unlocked "sanican"s more or less all over town outside the parks, but I pay them limited attention since I don't consider a "sanican" without even a hand-washing station an acceptable thing to use except in emergencies.

Albert Davis Park (and/or other nearby city institutions) - Was swept last Thursday, May 6.  As of Monday, May 10, the "sanican"s, hand-washing station, and SPU sink I had seen in January were gone.  I think the "sanican"s and hand-washing station, but not the SPU sink, went to Lake City Mini-Park.

Jackson Park - Removed "sanican"s from the golf links early in the pandemic, according to two employees with whom I spoke last year; I haven't asked whether they've been brought back yet.  I don't know there to have been hand-washing stations.

Lake City Mini-Park - Had more "sanican"s and one more hand-washing station than it had in January.  Both hand-washing stations worked on Monday.

Maple Leaf Reservoir Park - The woman with whom I spoke today said that a few years ago, someone lit a fire in at least one of the restrooms, so the parks department brought in a "sanican" until they could fix the restroom(s).  Then someone burned the "sanican".  I've never seen one there.

Northgate Park - The one I found in January is still there (so evidently it hadn't been borrowed from B. F. Day Playground, whose "sanican" has returned, after all).  However, it's now locked.

Pinehurst Playground - Still has one.

Parks

Albert Davis Park - Only photos of the "sanican"s (etc.) before.

Beaver Pond Natural Area - No photos before.

Flicker Haven Natural Area - No photos before.

Homewood Natural Area

Hubbard Homestead

Jackson Park - No photos before.

Kingfisher Natural Area - No photos before, and not much this time; this is the least urgent of the three I hope to re-visit before telling you, dear Diary, about them in detail.

Lake City Community Center - I only took photos of signs this time.

Lake City Mini-Park - Only photos of the "sanican"s (etc.) in the past and this time.

Licorice Fern Natural Area - No photos before.

Little Brook Park

Maple Leaf Community Garden

Maple Leaf Reservoir Park - So far this time, only photos of the restrooms and fountain.

Northgate Community Center - Wasn't able to approach closely this time.

Northgate Park

Pinehurst Playground

Pinehurst Pocket Park - No photos before.

Rainbow Point - No photos before.  I took today, among others, view photos, but they were towards the sun, so this is the medium-importance park to re-visit.

Sacajawea Playground

Thornton Creek Addition - No photos before (first visit).

Victory Creek Confluence Natural Area - I have a hypothesis, with photo, as to its location, but if my hypothesis is right, it's more or less inaccessible to the public.

Victory Creek Park

Victory Heights Playground - This time I was finally able to photograph the coloured shadows the playground equipment casts.  Yay!

Virgil Flaim Park

Waldo Woods - This time I photographed the small area that isn't walled off from the public.

I have to get these photos off my phone and into you, dear Diary, before I can usefully hike again, so expect at least eight pages (heck, just from the number of photos, more like sixteen) in the next two or three days.  Until then, happy times...

A Tale of Three Lake Cities

Dear Diary,

I just got home from visiting a bunch of sites, including twelve parks, half of which I'd never photographed before.  So I'd tell you all about it, except that it's late and my house has quiet time starting quite a few minutes ago, which isn't really consistent with showing you a bunch of photos.

Instead, I'll summarise.

EDIT 5/11:  Map of the region, courtesy of the Open Street Map project.

Hike 1:  Northern Lake City.  One park:  Little Brook Park, photographed before.  Restroom closed, water fountain not running.  That water fountain ran in May of last year, but not in October.  I've always assumed it was turned off in summer, like the fountain in Burke-Gilman Playground Park, but then never turned back on.  However, it's possible that it's broken somewhere that doesn't show.  Or it really was forgotten last summer, but it's on the same water supply as the restroom, and the reason it's off now is that that hasn't been turned back on.  My point is that while this is proof that the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation is not, in fact, re-enacting last year, it doesn't prove much else.

Hike 2:  Jackson Park and vicinity.  Three parks:  Flicker Haven Natural Area, Jackson Park and Licorice Fern Natural Area, none of which I'd shown you photographs of before, dear Diary.  Jackson Park has six restrooms (three pairs), all of which I found open (this is both the first time I've photographed the doors, and the first time I've seen one pair, because before today I'd only visited Jackson Park early, and the café doesn't open until later), and two water fountains, both of which I found running.

Little Brook Park is in a black neighbourhood, Jackson Park a white one, and their users reflect this.  On the other hand, Little Brook is publicly managed, Jackson privately.  So I wondered, is this an instance of racism or one of public incompetence and private competence?  It certainly seemed a straightforward tale of two more-or-less Lake Cities.  But then:

Hike 3:  Downtown Lake City (west of Lake City Way), whose population, both homeless and housed, is mixed in race.  Four parks:  Albert Davis Park, Lake City Mini Park, Thornton Creek Addition and Virgil Flaim Park.  I've photographed only "sanican"s and other plumbing in Albert Davis (and/or the Lake City Community Center) and Lake City Mini, and hadn't visited Thornton Creek Addition at all before today.  Albert Davis has a water fountain I didn't remember to check; it didn't run last year.  Albert Davis was swept a few days ago, and is now officially closed through Thursday; its SPU sink is no longer in a Lake City park, but its "sanican"s went to Lake City Mini, which also now has two working hand-washing stations.  Virgil Flaim has a water fountain that ran last October, and is running now.  The pair of park restrooms downtown Lake City badly needs to get before The Big One strikes has not yet been built in Virgil Flaim.  But also, the Lake City Community Center is keeping a few open hours thanks to the people from the charity God's Lil' Acre, and the Lake City branch of the Seattle Public Library has re-opened in the limited way a few libraries outside North Seattle had already done.

So at this point I didn't know what to think.  To complete the story, though:

Hike 4:  Across Pinehurst plateau.  Four parks:  Homewood Natural Area, Hubbard Homestead, Pinehurst Playground and Pinehurst Pocket Park.  I'd shown you photographs of all but the last, dear Diary.  Pinehurst Playground has a water fountain, which I found running (as it had last May and October), and a "sanican", but no hand-washing station.

All for now, dear Diary; some food for thought, and of course an incomplete summary of four or more upcoming pages in you.  Good night!

Lake City Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us!

Dear Diary,

From Jackson Park I took 135th St to Lake City.  And this is how, for the first time, I found a mistake in my physical map (Rand McNally, 2016) that Google Maps doesn't copy:  Google Maps knows about the blocking of 135th between 27th and 28th Avenues, but my map doesn't.

Anyway, in the fullness of time I reached

Little Brook Park

Introduced May 28 in "Top of the City, Part I".

As I arrived, the single restroom was occupied, as evidenced by the man in there singing while using the sink, but I was able to verify that the water fountain, which had been running in the dark days when few were, was no longer doing so.  Maybe it was out of order, but given that this is a neighbourhood that only gets one park restroom - not even the usual two - I can't help but wonder if maybe there's water rationing in Lake City, such that the two fountains I found had been turned on farther south required this one to be turned off.

Anyway, I then decided to find out whether the park's namesake brook really is at the bottom of its lawn, and yes, it is:

Returning to the park's entrance, I took a picture of the park from there:

and then got antsy.  Surely that man had been in the restroom for at least ten minutes since I arrived?  Well, maybe, but the time stamps on those two photos differ by only 3.5 minutes, so probably not.  Anyway, I walked up to the door and called out "Excuse me, please".  All I needed to do was check whether there was a dryer, after all, and I could leave him in peace.

Or maybe not.  As soon as I spoke, he switched from singing to a torrent of obscenity focused on his not being allowed to do Number Two in peace.  He came out of the restroom shortly, shepherding a child's bike.  (Maybe he was psyching himself up for a family birthday party?)  He was probably two decades younger than me, somewhat taller, and much more muscular; he was obviously dying to pound me into the pavement, but had enough decency or fear of the law to wait for me to attack first.  So he rammed the bike into my cart and walked away, still ranting as obscenely and insultingly as he could.

The restroom at Little Brook Park does have a dryer; I've already written voluminously about its lack of a meaningful door; I found that the soap was stolen.

This page's title has more meaning than just "two guys who deserved each other barely avoided fighting".  When it comes to park restrooms, Lake City doesn't have room for any "both".  And any time now, or perhaps already, since that restroom is seasonal, it won't have room for anyone at all.

Cedar Park

Introduced in the same page.

This is one of the two parks whose water fountains had been turned on.

It's a school playground, so its basketball "court" is even more problematic than might be the case in another park:

Again, I tried to take a general picture of the park.  As I'll someday explain, I hope, dear Diary, I've gotten less concerned, since the visit to Woodland Park earlier in this hike, about people being included in my photos if they're far enough away.

Lake City Hub Urban Village Acquisition

This was the first of the 'last seven' parks I visited June 27, and again October 11.  It's on 33rd Ave, north of 125th St.  It didn't look like much on either visit, but in June a poster was up announcing a contest to name the park.  Not so in October:

I can't predict the park's name when it gets one, but can predict two other things.  It won't have restrooms.  And it won't have wooden benches; any furniture it gets will be metal, to remind visitors that parks should never be visited in the rain or cold.

I'm pretty sure that it was after this that, fumbling my cart near a bus stop, a gentleman I wouldn't have hesitated to call "older" five years ago offered me his seat in a bus shelter.  I happily refused, but it got me thinking some more about what Lake City's big enough for.

Little Brook Creek Natural Area

This second of the last seven is a substantial area on 35th Ave, roughly filling the east side of the bend between, on the west, 33rd Place and 34th Ave.  Much is wooded, and a sign in a part that isn't promises, as in so very many places in North Seattle, "another future healthy forest".  There is no other signage.

Homewood Natural Area

The third of the last seven is halfway between 117th and 120th on Lake City Way.  It's a much more established Natural Area.  It has one of those Thornton Creek signs:

and also actually has, well along its only trail, Thornton Creek:

Virgil Flaim Park

Introduced in the same page as Little Brook and Cedar Parks.

Its water fountain had been turned on.

I took a picture of the park.  I wanted to photograph the basketball area specifically - it has two hoops facing each other, though with lines around only one.  But it was too crowded.  So only this:

in which you can barely see the backboards.

As I returned to downtown Lake City, I found part of how the area gets by with such neglect of park plumbing.  I did my first splurge from the $500 I'd been given that morning, a meal at the Dick's Drive-In at 123rd, and found that they have not just a "sanican" but actual restrooms, just out of reach of sustained employee observation, and keeping more or less park hours.  Isn't it wonderful when private citizens step up to fulfill neglected public responsibilities?

Albert Davis Park

I didn't pay much attention to the huge encampments in the downtown Lake City parks (introduced in the same page) this time, but did verify that the water fountain at this one remains off.

Then I had to go all the way back to Cedar Park for a stupid reason, after which Pinehurst Playground, already covered in the last page, was the last park I had time to visit on October 11.

All for now, dear Diary.  Good night.

Top of the City, Part I

Dear Diary,

Exciting but old news for you, I'm afraid.  There are three more parks in northeastern Seattle with both open restrooms and running water fountains, but they're all really far away, and they've all been that way for weeks; I don't know of any newer examples.  So I think I've sort of found the northern boundary of the water fountain desert, but not the eastern boundary.

I visited all the parks between the water, the city limits, I-5, Lake City Way, and 110th St on the 14th and 15th, then re-visited those with restrooms and/or water fountains on the 26th and 27th.  This page covers the ten parks visited on the 14th and, where relevant, the 26th.  I ended up stopping at the same point in each hike, so tomorrow's page will cover the remaining four parks in the northernmost parts of Seattle's northeast.  Finally, Friday I'll talk about ten parks further south in the area.

Outlying Lake City

University Lake Shore Place

Visited only May 14.  (I had to get directions, because both my map and Google Maps make grievous errors around here.)  No plumbing.

Near as I can tell, this is simply a stretch of wooded slope over the Burke-Gilman Trail, just south of 125th St.  There's a bench, but it might belong to the trail rather than this, um, park.  Speaking as someone who's gone through the entire official list of parks, I'm extremely grateful Seattle doesn't own, and separately name, all the wooded slopes over the trail.

NE 130th Street End

Visited only May 14 (same set of directions).  No plumbing.

This is a tiny beach built for the kids of Lake City long ago.  Unfortunately it's now kind of hard for most of them to reach.  There's a stair from 42nd Ave, but 42nd is kind of a world unto itself, with no contact between it and the rest of Lake City between 123rd and 145th Streets.  So the beach is much easier to reach from outside Lake City, via the Burke-Gilman Trail.

Cedar Park

Visited May 14 and 26.  One water fountain, not running either time.

This is an elementary school's playground, on 135th St between 37th and 39th Avenues, open to the public as a park except during recesses.  It appears to work much better than the similar deal over Nathan Hale Playfield.  Most of the people present on my second, mid-afternoon, visit were of elementary school age.  It's basically a playground plus a grassy area, which turns out to be a common design.

Little Brook Park

Visited May 14 and 26.  One restroom, closed May 14, described to me as just reopened May 15, open May 26.  One water fountain, running May 14 but rather more strongly May 26.

Dear Diary, I didn't make a mistake there.  Little Brook Park (formerly known as Lake City Open Space, on 32nd Ave north of 140th St) doesn't have one men's room and one women's, or two all-gender, or two anything.  It has one restroom.  That room is lockable:

but unsurprisingly that deadbolt has been disabled:

This restroom's privacy issues don't end there.  It's ventilated by holes in the walls at top and bottom, and although it took me some work, I was able to take these pictures

of the then-closed room through a bottom hole.  A woman would have to be pretty desperate or pretty stupid to use this room.  I was uncomfortable using it myself yesterday.

The rest of the park seems to be playground plus grassy area, but I didn't look for the namesake creek in or beyond the grass.

Downtown Lake City

Albert Davis Park

Visited May 14th and 26th.  One water fountain, not running either time.

This is a small park sandwiched between the Lake City Community Center (in which I detected no signs of life) and the Lake City branch library.  On my first visit, it was dominated by an encampment of my peers, concentrated on the south side of the park; I saw mostly black people there.  Yesterday the tents were much more spread out (socially distanced) and I saw some white people as well as blacks.  The camp is equipped with two "sanicans" and a hand-washing station.

Lake City Mini Park

Visited May 14 and 26; no plumbing.

This is a sliver of land which on the 14th was dominated by an encampment in which I saw mostly white people.  Yesterday, though it was still crowded with tents, I thought it shrunken, but saw some black people among the whites.  This camp also has two "sanicans" and a hand-washing station.

I talked with one gentleman living there May 14.  He called Little Brook's working water fountain a "treasure" but admitted that the camp's main source of water (or at least his own) was neighbours' outdoor taps.

I want to emphasise this to you, dear Diary.  I often praise our wonderful mayor, but this may well be her masterstroke.  By leaving two water fountains turned off, she simultaneously saves the city money, and converts any number of private citizens into benefactors.  Isn't that heartwarming?

Lake City Memorial Triangle

Visited May 14 and briefly May 26; no plumbing.

If I've correctly identified this, it's a small triangle in front of some buildings, across the street from the previous park.  It's supposedly a memorial for some specific young men who died of violence, but I haven't found any plaques.  It's dominated instead by a gigantic ad for a bank, a very big ad for a VA clinic, and a big ad for a restaurant.

Virgil Flaim Park

Visited May 14 and 26; at least one water fountain, not running either time.

Yes, in case you've been keeping count, that's the other water fountain in downtown Lake City that our wise mayor is keeping off.  This park, probably bigger than the other three downtown parks put together, southwest of them, is largely grassy but includes, besides the playground, a skatepark.  I saw no tents, but many of the vehicles parked near there on the 14th, and some on the 26th, looked inhabited.

There's lots of room at this park for the restrooms Lake City ought to have, which won't fit at Little Brook.

Pinehurst

Pinehurst Pocket Park

Visited May 14; no plumbing.

This is a very pleasant park the size of a one-house lot, with various pieces of art.  It's at the corner of 117th St and 19th Ave.

Pinehurst Playfield

Visited May 14 and 26; one water fountain at least, running both times.

This park, on 14th Ave north of 120th St, isn't small, but because it's very steeply sloped, it doesn't feel as big as it actually is.  Besides the requisite baseball diamond it has a basketball half-court, a shelter house (which I doubt has ever included restrooms), and I don't know what-all else.  The water fountain gives good water.  This is where I spent yesterday evening.

I spent the nights of the 14th and 26th in the same bus shelter.

All for today (well, technically yesterday now), dear Diary.  Fewer parks, in more detail, tomorrow.