A Requiem for Seventy-Seven Bus Stops, part VI: The Route 73

Dear Diary,

Next in seniority to streetcar coverage of some of the route 20, in 1908, is bus coverage of most of the route 73, by 1965, among the areas losing bus stops.  (Blanchard's Street Railway Era in Seattle, page 114, says streetcar service along 15th Ave NE reached NE 80th St sometime between 1912 and 1925, but the route 73 currently has no bus stops that far south on 15th.)  Also, I want to talk a little more about the Northwest Puppet Center.  So let's start, shall we?

[Updated on September 23 with corrected competing bus route number and a note on dubious stops.]

All of the route 73 stops being closed are either on 15th Ave NE, or are shared with the route 322, and are covered under that route instead.  So no need for street headings this time.

I followed this route Saturday evening, and then went back today because I'd found that I'd made two mistakes - missing one stop, and mis-identifying another stop on Open Street Map.  So I had to go back over half the distance.

Again, links in the lists below go to my Google Drive, to photos of each stop.

Northbound, seven stops:

• Stop #39210, just north of NE 115th Street.
• Stop #39190, just north of NE Northgate Way.  Not far south of this, on the same side of the street, is the mural of the cat that I showed you, dear Diary, in part I of this page.
  
• Stop #39170, just north of NE 103rd Street.
• Stop #39160, just south of NE 100th Street.
• Stop #39140, just north of NE 95th Street.
• Stop #39120, just north of NE 90th Street.  This is the closest northbound stop to the NW Puppet Center, which is two blocks north and across the street.
  
• Stop #39100, north of NE 85th Street, a block from Maple Leaf Reservoir Park, and across the street from Waldo Woods.
  

I was going to say that none of these have any amenities except pavement, but then noticed that my photo of stop #39100 appears to show the top of a trash can attached to the pole:

So I dunno.

Southbound, seven much more interesting stops:

• Stop #38950, north of NE 115th Street.  Has all the amenities.
• Stop #38970, just south of NE Northgate Way.  Has a shelter with art and a bench.  The art may or may not be the best art on these shelters, but anyway this photo is the best one I took of these shelters.
  
  
  
  
• Stop #38990, south of NE 104th Street.  Has a shelter and a trash can.
• Stop #39010, just south of NE 98th Street.  Has a shelter with art and a bench:
• Stop #39030, just south of NE 94th Street.  Has all the amenities.  This is the nearest stop in this direction to the Puppet Center, which is a block to the south.
  
• Stop #39050, south of NE 89th Street.  Has a shelter.
• Stop #39070, south of NE 82nd Street.  Has a shelter with a bench and a trash can.  Maple Leaf Reservoir Park is a block west, although the route 67 stop at NE 85th Street is closer to the park.
  

I noticed today that some shelters I saw as not having art actually have it facing the street, away from the sidewalk.  The way I see it, that location makes the art available to drivers (including bus drivers) and passengers (including bus passengers), but not with any safety to pedestrians (including people waiting for the bus).  So I'm not sure it's a real amenity of a bus stop in the sense I'm using that word.

Anyway, Northwest Puppet Center!  I'd already looked up its bare-bones Web page, and noticed that that page describes as current an exhibit that, the same page says, closed in May.  So I got curious:  was it out of operation?  And today I went up the steps to the entrance.  Where I was gobsmacked to find, of all things, a small playground.

Now, Maple Leaf Hill is seriously under-parked, and certainly under-playgrounded in particular, but I didn't see any kids there.  Anyway, I looked at the door, where a sign announces a new exhibit in October:

So this left me curious.  Is this a private house that's also a museum?  Or is it really a public place where, for example, parents could bring small children to the playground?  A significant element is the "Carter Family Puppet Theater"; do the Carter family live there?

Not according to the King County Assessor.  But there's also an e-mail address on the bare-bones Web page, so careful parents can check for themselves.

The page's only other link is to the "World Encyclopedia of Puppetry Arts".  Sadly, this site doesn't return the favour:

You'll have noticed, dear Diary, that I've changed all the parts' titles.  Not until I was reasonably sure I had a complete list could I really count the stops closing, but I think the number now used is the final number.  The count of 77 excludes stop #17170 on the route 20, which [has been] acquired by the route 62, and stop #28680 on the route 28, which is already in use by the route D.  [In both cases I've now caught the relevant bus at the relevant stop.]  That count includes stop #23594 on the route 322, whose rider alert sign claims future service by the route 79, and stop #17570 on the route 20, whose rider alert sign claims future service by the route 45; neither of those buses currently serve or even pass those stops, and their promised schedules show no route changes enabling them to start doing so.

The stops will no longer be served by any buses as of September 14, which is this Saturday.  I have no idea how many people Metro devotes to stop demolition, so I can't begin to guess how long it'll take them to remove the physical stop elements.  However, most rider alert signs whose bottoms I photographed bear a note saying "Remove 10/1/24".  This implies that at least the poles the signs are mostly attached to will stay around that long, and perhaps other physical elements as well.

One of my purposes in writing this page was to notify people of these stop closures in time that anyone who might have an emotional attachment of some kind to a particular stop - most obviously, who might have experienced a proposal there - could have a chance to visit it again.  Obviously the closer we get to September 14, let alone if I fail to get those parts written until later than that, the less likely that is.  But then, I'm not seeing much reason to think they could find out about the closures from you anyway, dear Diary, so few people seem to be reading this page.  Ah well.

Before I remembered the removal date, I still hoped to get part VII, about the route 28, written in you tonight, dear Diary, and part VIII, about the route 322, is relatively short, so maybe that too.  But there are other things I spend my time on, so now that I have remembered it, I'll do those things instead.  A good night, dear Diary; we'll probably meet again tomorrow.

A Hike in Maple Leaf

Dear Diary,

My next hike included three Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation parks, and three other sites which I hope you'll find interesting.  This hike was on various parts of Maple Leaf Hill, the biggest and tallest straightforward hill in North Seattle.  A map:

As you can see, dear Diary, Open Street Map shows plenty of woods in this area too that I wanted to explore that day, but I was running out of time, and it'll have to wait.

Sacajawea Playground

This is the only "Playground" in North Seattle that lacks actual playground equipment, which is at the school next door.  It's basically a lawn with one big tree in the low middle, with woods on the uplands to east and west.  I've shown you pictures before, dear Diary, and there were other people there, so I settled for a couple of transverse landscapes to demonstrate that no water fountain has arrived here:

Alley at 9012 12th Ave NE

This is an 896 square foot property that I couldn't quite identify, because there are two candidates.  See, there actually is an alley on the block in question, a neat and tidy place that I'm not good enough at estimating distances to assess against the stated size.  A photo:

However, there's also a weird little messy space between the hedges of two houses along 90th, and that space is more consistent with the address given, for whatever that's worth.  Just as I think the real alley might be too big, I think this space might be too small, but it also might not be.  A picture:

Anyway, at least one of these is city property, perhaps both.

Waldo Woods

I introduced this newer park to you relatively late, dear Diary, in "The Kingdom of the Winds" last November.  It's a conservation easement, in other words, a deal with a private land-owner to protect a large stand of Douglas firs.  The owner, Aegis Living, built a fence, but made a bay in it which allows public access to both one double-trunk fir (now busily spreading saplings) and an Aegis Living sign:

Maple Leaf Reservoir Park

This is the major park of Maple Leaf Hill, and so it has restrooms and a water fountain.  I had by that point needed restrooms, though only for Number One, for several hours, so it was deeply disappointing to arrive only to find this:

However, a woman approached me after I'd taken two shots of each door - the first without the newspaper - and mentioned that a parks employee had just locked them.  She and I talked for some time about you, dear Diary, about her complaints to the city that the restrooms closed too early, about the restrooms' history with fire, about my observations of this park's defenses against the homeless, and so forth.  After all that I really didn't have time to wander around the park, so I confined my attention to the water fountain, a double one that hasn't run since I first visited the park:

And then wandered around the park anyway, because it turned out my last two sites were in it:

Maple Leaf Reservoir

The park is the biggest of three parks in north Seattle built on reservoir land, the other two being Bitter Lake Reservoir Open Space, and Froula Playground, neither of which have plumbing of their own, so I haven't visited them as often.  But I knew from previous visits to Maple Leaf that most of the Seattle Public Utilities buildings that remain are dreary-looking and closed to the public:

However, this time I was specifically looking for the reservoir, and found this, which is actually in the background of a picture I've shown you before, dear Diary:

Northeast Radio Towers

I actually left the park looking for this, but it turned out to be adjacent to the water tower.  Duh.

Maple Leaf Reservoir Park Again

I went back yesterday, Saturday, morning, assuming I'd find the restrooms open and be able to ignore the photos from Wednesday of them shut.

It didn't quite work out that way.

A photo of the front page:

The restrooms:

These photos were taken at 10:16 A.M., and the park was crowded.

I'm used to the idea that during this epidemic, homeless people should just fast all Sunday because the already unreliable park restrooms become deeply unreliable, but now Saturdays too?  I'd visited three publicly managed and six privately managed park restrooms in this region.  The private ones, all at Jackson Park, had all been open; the public ones, at Little Brook and Maple Leaf Reservoir Parks, had all been closed, on two occasions each.  Is our city government really this incompetent after all?

That said, I didn't make any decisions on the spot, and one of my errands in this park was to photograph some of its neat stuff.  A garden there is named after a child who died, and he seems to have been a butterfly fan, so there are butterflies all around the playground.  Some examples:

I particularly like the use of butterflies to lighten up one of those dour SPU buildings:

Well, dear Diary, I may have time for one more page of park appreciation tonight, but although I have now made some decisions, I probably don't have time to tell you about the change of direction after that.

The Kingdom of the Winds

Dear Diary,

I hope you had a good holiday.  I did, in a way - I listened to music I'm fond of, and was able to do so sitting down, because the day before, I got renewed access to University Wi-Fi.  So you might ask, why is this the first you're hearing when I've had connection at my fingertips for two days?  Well, I spent the first charging stuff, and the second was the holiday.  But now, with all the shelters out of the way, I can carry on with the story of my early-October long hike for you, dear Diary, specifically continuing on October 11 from where I left it in "Lake City Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us".

You may remember way back to "To a Land of Water and Honey" that I went from Lake City to Northgate via Pinehurst Playground, which is covered in the latter page.  It took me a while to get over my conviction that leaving Pinehurst should be easy and actually consult a map, which of course showed it would be easy if I just knew which turns to make.  At any rate, although the hike to Northgate wasn't prolonged that much by this, the sun was setting by the time it ended.

I had meant to take the astonishing wealth I'd gotten, and told you about in "To a Land of Water and Honey", and splurge at Target.  I was also looking forward to Target because I badly needed to do Number One.  So of course the elevators weren't working, and a disturbing individual was standing near them, so I didn't even consider leaving my cart to take the stairs.  Also, after I'd instead done Number One into some bushes in Hubbard Homestead, I found that I'd done a terrible job of scouting for places to sleep.

Now, I had to climb Maple Leaf Hill again, to photograph the shelter the last page discussed, to check on the same park's water fountain, and to visit a new park (not one of the "last seven" I'd visited in June).  I just hadn't figured out how to fit it into the hike.  So why not make lemonade out of this situation, and climb the hill just then?  I bought a flashlight first, just in case.

Maple Leaf Reservoir Park

Introduced May 29 in "South to and from Northgate".

The climb up Roosevelt was uneventful, and I checked places along the way to sleep if the shelter didn't pan out.  Of course I didn't actually need the flashlight.  The shelter was easy to find, but was, as you know, dear Diary, from the previous page, totally unsuitable for sleeping.  Nevertheless it was useful, for two reasons I forgot to mention.

First, it had rained that day, from about the time I left Little Brook Park for at least half an hour.  Not a very big deal, but I had to dry my stuff.

Second, given its location on the southwest slope of a tall hill, this park gets amazing winds.  So its shelter, while therefore even worse for sleeping in, was a great place to dry that stuff, as long as I could keep it all from blowing away.

So I set up the drying, and then opened the foil packet the generous woman near Jackson Park had given me.  It was indeed steak, and I happily started to eat.

While I did so, a young man, probably not over 30, approached.  He looked and sounded East African.  He told me, again and again, "You have to leave."  He said I could finish eating first.  Then when I had finished and had started packing up my stuff, he asked me if I had any money.  "I sure do!", I replied.  He asked for some.  I figured the last thing I should do that day was be greedy, so I reached into my pocket.

It turned out the $500 I'd been given had sunk to the bottom of that pocket, churning everything else as it went.  It took me forever to find a bill, and of course when I did it was a $20.  Well, I didn't want to be greedy, so I handed it to him.  He asked if I had any more; I evaded by pointing out how long it had taken me to find that one.  He then claimed that $20 bills were weird, and he wanted something more conventional like a $1 or a $5.  I refused to dig into my pocket again, he, I am not making this up, handed me back the $20, and I left.

I didn't sleep much that night, but what little sleep I did get was in a dry patch in a doorway a few blocks away.  (It didn't help that the local 7-Eleven wasn't open when I went.)  An old and fancy building seemed about to come down across the street, but in the morning it turned out to be well along to demolition, and swarming with workers, so I took no photos.

When I returned to the park in the morning, it was to find the baby shelter, to photograph both, to check the water fountain attached to the restroom building (not running, as mentioned a few posts back), and, once again, to do Number One.  But of course my harasser returned and told me yet again, "You have to leave."  By 7:35 I gave up on waiting for the restroom to open, and obeyed him.

My main impression of the upper part of this park is that it's acres and acres of wind.  I took a couple of photos no doubt failing to evoke that.

I also took a photo to show that even though I hadn't actually entered it, the men's room really does have a dryer and a door.

So the question left is, who's the harasser?  He was neither dressed nor equipped as any remotely competent homeless man would have been even then.  He could be a local madman who's appointed himself protector of the park from all riffraff other than, um, himself.  He could be a local resident with the same self-appointed mission, and returned the money either to make me think him crazy, to avoid a conflict of interest, or both.  Or he could be in the employ of a local organisation who evidently haven't thought much about what homeless people want out of parks.  Beats me.

Waldo Woods

Anyway, I left the park and headed north on 15th Ave to 85th St and the address of the new park...

say what?

After some research on my phone (boy, am I grateful for that battery!), I discovered that what the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation actually obtained was a conservation easement, not an actual park.  Waldo Woods consists of several dozen Douglas firs.  Most are within the bounds of the new occupant, but can be seen just fine up there in the sky:

and they left a bay in the wall allowing access to a few complete trees.

Sacajawea Playground

Introduced May 29 in the same page as Maple Leaf Reservoir Park.

While on Maple Leaf Hill it seemed crazy not to check out the hill's remaining park and at least take one picture, so I continued along 15th Ave and did so:

In the process I noticed for the first time that the park is not just a greensward centred on a single tree.  Instead it has woods on each side, visible in this photo.  These woods turned out to be walkable, and so at last I was able to do Number One.

Sorry, dear Diary, for a page so focused on my bodily functions.  Tomorrow, seven of the many parks near Northgate.