Building a Baseline, part I: Introduction

Dear Diary,

While we can do lots of fun things together, including the current page "Under Construction", your core topic is public restrooms whose doors open to the outside, and outdoor water fountains, public or private.

As I told you two years ago, I categorise the hikes in which I document that core topic:  "everything", "water fountain" or "restroom".  Something I didn't mention two years ago is that in the hikes of January 2021, which were restroom hikes, I tried to take "postcard shots", photos making these mostly pretty pedestrian buildings look as good as I could.  This hasn't been much of an issue since then, because I haven't had occasion to introduce any new restrooms to you, dear Diary.  However, in "Under Construction" and in this page, that will finally change.  So postcard shots will come back.

The hikes I started in July are intended to be everything hikes.  This part of this page has four remaining topics:

1. Why bother?
2. What's everything? (sources of information)
3. What will I do? (photographic practice)
4. What will I write? (organisation of this page)

Why bother?

Your friend and mine, Anna Patrick, formerly of The Seattle Times's Project Homeless, asked me in summer 2023 why I'd continued writing you, dear Diary, after getting housed in March 2021.  The easy part of the answer was that I hadn't then even finished writing up the January 2021 hikes, and then there was the second Durkan Drought that year, by which I mean then-mayor Jenny Durkan's decision to misread CDC guidance on public water fountains to justify leaving park water fountains turned off.

The hard part is, why after that?  I mean, dear Diary, you were obviously born of a pandemic that's now been over for years.  Why continue you?

Because if park restrooms and water fountains ever matter again, it'll be easier to pay attention to them if you, and the tools I've accumulated to write you, are still around.

There are three obvious contexts in which those things could matter.

• The Big One.
• Another pandemic.
• A scandal.

I'm pretty sure most park plumbing is not earthquake-safe.  I don't actually think, dear Diary, you'll be able to help much after the Big One.

I don't much like to think about scandals, but it's less likely that one will happen involving park restrooms in North Seattle if you exist.  You've already been part of the pressure on Seattle's leaders to address the scandalous lack of public restrooms downtown.

But the main reason to keep you going, dear Diary, is that another pandemic could come.  It's true that this country went about a century without any, so this would seem to be a long shot.  But the more certain politicians try to criminalise the practice of public health, the more chance there is for the next pandemic to come a great deal sooner, and when it does, it will probably come in the five months of the year when about half of Seattle's park restrooms are closed.

Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation has a plan to make its restrooms winter-safe, but it sure doesn't talk much about that plan.  What I found in January 2021 was that Parks claimed to be doing things differently because of the pandemic, and in some important ways those claims were true.  But they'd opened no additional restrooms, and diseases like cholera briefly returned to Seattle.  That plan is important, and you, dear Diary, and I, can help cover it.

What's everything?

Why do an everything hike?

Because I don't have a reliable list of water fountains.

Your frenemy Rachel Schulkin is now, according to LinkedIn, an Executive Operations Manager for the city; according to PubliCola, she oversees "parks, libraries, Seattle Center, and the waterfront".

So I wrote to Christina Hirsch, the remaining "media contact" for Parks.  I heard back from a general public questions address.  Fine.  I have to prove myself again. I can do that.

They sent me to two GIS/data analytics pages.

The one for restrooms is pretty good, and I've found it reliable so far.  My main concern with it is that I couldn't find a way to download the dataset.

The one for water fountains, however, while easily downloaded, is disturbingly familiar.  It not only resembles the list I got in 2020, it could be that list.  It also claims all water fountains in North Seattle are working, and although an awful lot really are, that claim turns out not to be true in detail.

So, about existence, there are false negatives (Soundview Playfield now has multiple water fountains) and false positives (Licton Springs Park now has no water fountain).  And, yes, it lists Baker Park on Crown Hill, which, the last time I went there, I was told has never had a water fountain.

There are no false negatives about function, because the map doesn't admit any fountains aren't working.  Well, I've actually been impressed at the fountains I've found operating, the parks department does deserve to brag, but there are exceptions.

So if I have to go to Baker Park, why not go to all of them?

Concretely, as I mentioned in your first page, dear Diary, parks are pretty fun.  The weeks coming up are all that's left of the summer I was supposed to have no classes; why not spend them visiting parks?

Many of the parks in North Seattle don't especially welcome visitors.  Most, but not all, such parks are called "Natural Area"s.  I've long used a heuristic to deal with this:  if a water fountain (let alone restroom) can't be found, if no trail leads to it, it probably doesn't exist at all, and certainly doesn't matter. So all I have to do in the Natural Areas and their ilk is follow all the trails.  In reality, I don't expect to find a water fountain in any of these parks.

Anyway, to get back to the question up above, "what's everything?"

I plan to rely on my past lists, plus four sources of information.

The one I've used the longest, going back to May 2020, is the parks department website.  This has individual pages for many parks, most but not all of which are linked to in the official list of all parks.  These pages have symbols for parks with restrooms and water fountains, and these symbols are usually reliable.  No new North Seattle parks were in the official list in July.

Almost as long, back to June 2020, I've used the City of Seattle's real property reports.  These are reports from the city's Real Estate Services office to the chair of the City Council's Finance committee.  The link currently only gets the 2025 and 2026 reports, but at the Internet Archive, the chain goes back to 2013.  The 2013 report begins with explanatory text that suggests to me that it may have been a new thing then, or at least that any previous versions had been forgotten.  These real property reports have two parts, a text introduction, and a spreadsheet.  As now downloadable, all except 2014 and 2018 actually have the intro; all except 2023 and 2026 actually have the spreadsheet, but the 2022 spreadsheet has changes that make its listings hard to correlate with the rest.  The spreadsheet usually lists department, Property Management Area (PMA) number, name, location or address, classification (Fully Utilized, Excess, etc.), current use, and land area; it usually has more columns than that, but what they are varies.  Between 30% and 40% of each spreadsheet is the parks department.

The third source of information, on which I've relied since May 2021 , is OpenStreetMap.  OpenStreetMap is an invaluable resource for many purposes, of course, but specifically for our purposes, dear Diary, it's often just Too Much, and that has probably contributed to my failures to finish my grander projects since getting housed.

Which is why I'm very glad to report the last major source, which has been familiar to me since I started working as a tax preparer in 2007, but which I've barely used for you, dear Diary, before.  The current version of the King County Parcel Viewer offers a map drawn by property lines, and identifies each "parcel"'s owner.  As a result, if what OpenStreetMap presents as green space is really a bunch of private back yards, I can find that out from the parcel viewer.  (The parcel viewer also colours parks green, but only if they're owned by an official parks agency, so, for example, the parks of Seattle Public Utilities aren't coloured.). Each pop-up in the map for a parcel links to assessor's reports, which often include a photo, and tax reports, which go back about 30 years.

What will I do?

Hiking for you, dear Diary, essentially consists of visiting geographical features, in this and most cases parks, and photographing things of interest, usually, in parks, restroom doorways, and water fountains, the former open or held open, the latter in action dispensing water, if all is well.

In Seattle, park restrooms are usually promised to be open 7 am to 7 pm; in reality, because a limited number of staff unlock and lock the doors, the times vary considerably (please refer your readers, dear Diary, to the series "My Book of Hours" in August 2020), but I try to time my visits between 8 am and 6 pm.

In summer, the restrooms are supposed to stay open later, until 9 pm; that was the point of that series, to find out whether the parks department was doing that during the pandemic.  (It wasn't.  So that was something they did differently because of the pandemic, shortening park restroom hours.)  Near as I can tell, now the pandemic is over, 9 pm closings are back. 

Soon after getting housed, I learnt that Blogspot renames the photos I upload, which each of the phones with which I've taken these photos titles with date and time.  So starting with the May 2021 hikes, I made a point of including a daily newspaper in each restroom door shot and in each water fountain action shot.  And also of uploading the photos to my Google Drive the same day.  Theoretically I was also supposed to upload to Google Drive a close-up of the front page, to help in identifying the newspaper in the photos, but I was never very good about that.

Anyway, it turns out that if someone downloads a photo, Blogspot gives it its original name back.  By that time, also, I only uploaded occasional door and fountain shots to Blogspot, and at Google Drive they weren't renamed.  And, to be blunt, I can't afford daily newspapers right now.  So in most photos for these hikes, there's no newspaper.

So that's a change.  Another, probably more important, change is that I'm no longer photographing the doorways of women's restrooms.  That was always socially problematic, and now that the pandemic is over, I just can't see an upside.  I'm trying to at least notice whether the women's rooms are open, but in a recent hike of Green Lake Park, I failed to do that with two out of five restroom pairs.  Back then, I imagined finding a woman to accompany me; now, I see how unlikely that is, but in the event that someone wants equal treatment, she'd have access to a good list, linked above.  (It does, however, omit the composting toilet at Picardo Farm.)

Things that haven't changed:  I try not to photograph people.  I also try not to photograph homes, particularly tents.

So this is as good a place as any to mention what I've been seeing with regard to homeless people.  I've long complained about what the King County Regional Homelessness Authority has done with the federally required point-in-time count.  However, what I've been seeing is that a majority of the parks I've visited have isolated tents, a few have people sleeping rough, a few have obviously inhabited RVs, and a considerable minority have these:

The KCRHA asserts that homelessness has sharply increased around here over the past four years, and however much I doubt their methods, I'm fairly confident, now, that they're right about that.  What I haven't seen yet is the kind of sprawling encampments that were present during the pandemic.

I've long felt uncomfortable with how freely I wrote about such things at the time.  I re-read some of those pages today, and seriously doubt that I actually did wrong, made any homeless people known to those who did them ill.  For example, almost every park encampment I wrote about was in a park with a restroom, which a staffer visited twice daily, and the I-5 encampments, and others remaining, had "sanican"s, which were visited less than daily. The I-5 ones had also already become a political issue.  So this isn't an apology, but is an announcement of another change.  I intend to notice homeless people much less this time.

Which brings us to this part's last main topic:

What will I write?

I recently suggested to you, dear Diary, an ultimate fate of holding a bunch of park-specific pages.  I'm pretty sure most parts of "Under Construction" will be park-specific.

Much though I'd like to make that my norm already, though, it's too much.  I'm increasingly leaning toward being fairer to the downtown parks, and North Seattle alone has over a hundred.  I can't justify adding one or two hundred pages every time I do an everything hike, even though those aren't that common.

So, for example, I currently have a lot of crow to eat concerning Beaver Pond Natural Area.  That'll get its own page.  But the rest of that day's hike near Northgate will be a single part of this page.

My current class isn't over, and won't be until August 26th.  I worked very hard last week to make time for you today, dear Diary, and can't predict when we'll meet again, but surely not later than August 27th.  Until then, happy days and happy nights. 

A Requiem for Seventy-Seven Bus Stops, part II: The routes

Dear Diary,

This part is still really more or less introductory, so let's get right to it, shall we?  I said in the last part that my focus in this page is on bus stops, but this part concentrates the things I really have to say about bus routes instead.

North Seattle routes or parts of routes to be deleted

According to this page, as of, um, today.  (That URL will almost certainly contain different contents starting not later than March 2025, and I have no idea where these contents will be from that point on, but the Internet Archive is probably the best bet.)

The ones that'll get their own parts, because they have stops getting closed, are asterisked*.

Route 16

The current route 16, slated for deletion, is not very old; the previous one only went away eight years ago, after all.  This one is an express version of the route 5, and it's a kind of bus that serves only a single purpose, a commuter bus.  That is, all the trips in the morning are in one direction, and all the trips in the evening are in the other direction, so the only purpose that can be accomplished with it is to go somewhere from some particular area and come back again to that area rather later.  Anyway, I know of no bus stops specific to it, and haven't gone there to look for any.  I might not have found them anyway, because it's been "suspended" for the past year, and it looks like suspended routes' bus stops might get demolished too (see route 304 below).

*Route 20

This is the route I live near, and I have more to say about it below, but the route 20 is, as I said, just three years old.

The old routes 16 and 26 were inheritances from the Seattle Transit System, a municipal bus service that operated 1941-1973.  Nearly all of the STS bus routes in North Seattle were more or less north-south commuter buses; STS bus maps actually reserved space to explain exactly where downtown each route stopped.  In the part of North Seattle between Green Lake and what's now I-5, the 16 took Meridian Ave N, the 26 Latona Ave NE.  Previously, the local streetcar had split the difference:  it took Meridian north to N/NE 56th St, then moved over to Latona.

As I said, the 16 died in March 2016.  It was replaced by two buses.  The 62 took over most of its route, but instead of continuing north from NE 65th Street, instead became also the NE 65th Street bus.  So the northernmost part of the 16 route, to North Seattle College and Northgate, got grafted onto the 26 (which had previously ended near Green Lake), until in 2021 Metro decided to kill the 26 too.

At this point I have to introduce yet another old route, the 41, on which it turns out English Wikipedia has a detailed article.  The 41, which started in 1970, was an express between Northgate and downtown, and then a local between Northgate and Lake City.  With the opening of light rail to Northgate in 2021, Metro decided there was no further need for the 41 express, but it had to continue running a shuttle between Lake City and Northgate, and since that isn't much of a route all by itself, what they've been doing ever since is trying to find a worthwhile continuation of it.

The actual 41 route through Lake City was taken by the new route 75.  But the 20 was apparently further compensation to Lake City for the 41's loss.  It takes a different local route from Lake City to Northgate, then the 26 route from Northgate to NE 45th St, and heads from there to UW.  What I've observed is that it's reasonably busy with UW students up to about 55th, but pretty deserted the rest of the way to Northgate.  (Now that I'm a North Seattle College student, I know one reason why that is:  North Seattle College is now overwhelmingly online.)  Below I suggest some other reasons the 20 might be unpopular, but anyway, I never felt confident that the route would succeed.  And now it hasn't.  In the ongoing reduction of usefulness Lake City residents are getting in the counter-balances to their shuttle, the new route 61 will go from the Lake City Fred Meyer to the Greenwood Fred Meyer.

As a result, twenty-eight bus stops are due for demolition, on 1st Ave NE, Woodlawn Ave NE and Latona Ave NE.

*Route 28 north of somewhere around NW 95th St

No, no, dear Diary, please re-assure any reader who's panicking, the route 28 is not being deleted!!  Only its northward extension, into that part of the city that's merely belonged to Seattle for seventy years.  Only that.  And that extension, as far back as I've been able to trace it, has been commuter-only; when I hiked it Saturday morning, I was already too late to catch the last bus, having arrived at 9:30 a.m.  (Of course, it doesn't run on Saturdays anyway, but let's not quibble.)

The 28 was another of the inheritances from Seattle Transit System.  It's actually the second-strongest surviving inheritance in North Seattle, still running a reasonably full schedule on weekdays (but only hourly on weekends, as I learnt to my sorrow).  It was extended to NW 145th St sometime not long before 1973.

Problem is, because of obstacles like Carkeek Park, the extension runs mostly on 3rd Ave NW, not 8th Ave NW like the main route 28.  And that puts it way too close, as I think Metro sees things, to the strongest inheritance in North Seattle, the route 5.  So the extension is getting the axe.

I think this is where the largest single group of bus stops due for demolition is, thirty-one, but I only got photos of twenty-eight, so I have to go back.  I hope to tell you tonight, dear Diary, about the route 20 stops, but can't yet about these.  These stops are mostly on 3rd Ave NW, of course, but also on NW 132nd St, 8th Ave NW, NW 125th St, and a few more streets at the extension's southern end.  (How many, I'm not sure.  The new schedule disagrees with the facts on the ground.)

Route 64

Not terribly long ago, dear Diary, there was a profusion of buses running through NE with numbers in the 60s and 70s.  I always thought they were mostly University of Washington-directed.  But in the oldest route 64 schedule I have, from mid-2021, it instead ran from a corner of Jackson Park, on NE 145th St, down 30th and 35th Aves NE through Lake City and Wedgwood, then made way too many stops for a supposed express on NE 65th St, and caught I-5 to South Lake Union and First Hill.  Oh, and it was a commuter bus, though with lots of runs.  For some reason the coming of light rail, or more likely the waning of COVID-19, led it to lose its northernmost stops.  Then it started getting fewer and fewer runs, and now there won't be any more.  But none of its stops in North Seattle, as far as I know, are unique to it.

*Route 73

The route 73 is yet another one that was re-routed in September 2021; I'm beginning to detect a pattern here.  It used to run arrow-straight on 15th Ave NE from Ravenna Park to Jackson Park.  But when the Roosevelt light rail station opened, it was diverted to meet that.  So now it enters and leaves 15th via Lake City Way NE, close to NE 75th St.

But that's only half the story.  Most of the 73's runs were actually runs of route 373, a bus between Aurora Village and UW.  And the 373 was deleted in October 2021, when other service from Aurora Village was added.

Well, having walked the part of 15th Ave NE that the remainder of route 73 has covered since then, I think I can understand why that remaining route is being deleted.  There are lots of restaurants and bars, but I'm pretty sure people thinking of destination restaurants, for example, don't promptly think of 15th Ave NE.  I only found two clear destinations of interest to people other than those destinations' residents, and one of those is an artwork, not the kind of thing one visits all that often:

The other is the NW Puppet Center, which might bear more frequent visits.

Still, it's kind of a shame.  The STS didn't run buses on a bunch of really important roads, like Roosevelt Way NE, Aurora Ave N, or Leary Way NW, or ran them only on part of the length; the fact that major routes occupy all those streets in full now is to King County Metro's real, and mostly recent, credit.  So STS did run its route 7 on 15th Ave NE; in other words, another of the decades-old survivors, albeit under a different number, is biting the dust this year.

Seventeen route 73 stops are being closed, but two of those are also route 322 stops, so there are fifteen I'm going to cover under route 73.  And I only got photos of fourteen, so again, later, dear Diary.

Route 301

There's been a route 301 in Shoreline for at least twenty years, but I don't have as much information about Shoreline buses as I do about North Seattle ones; sorry, dear Diary.  In mid-2021 it was a commuter bus that ran from Aurora Village to enter I-5 at N 175th St.  But then it was re-configured to go to Northgate rather than downtown, which made it just barely a North Seattle bus.  It was one of four buses doing more or less similar things.  That's something King County Metro did a whole lot of, from the 1980s to the decade of the 2000s, but has been dialing back on, and I guess they decided that the arrival of light rail in Shoreline was the time to simplify this particular complex.  Actually, though, route 301 was suspended a year ago.

Route 302

The current route 302 was created in September 2021 like the current route 20, and they're also alike in having been found wanting.  It's a commuter bus that runs from Richmond Beach via NW Richmond Beach Road, 3rd Ave NW and N 200th St to Aurora Village, then down Meridian to I-5 at N 175th St.  Only a stop at Northgate makes it at all North Seattle.  Then it goes to First Hill.  Six months later the route 303 was created, which follows the same route but only starting from Aurora Village, and that's the one that's won the competition, and is being rewarded with a bunch of stops in downtown Seattle as well.

Route 304

This is another older Shoreline route.  In early 2021 it was a commuter bus, but had the longest local route, from Richmond Beach via Dayton Ave N to N 145th St.  It shares the same printed schedule with route 301, and was likewise suspended a year ago.  Which gave Metro the chance to do what I found when I walked N 145th St on Saturday very early:  A whole bunch of stops proclaiming that they were "new" stops.  Now, several of these stops appear in the old route 304 map as transfer points, which obviously means they were stops then.  Essentially, King County Metro is trying to even its score by counting the re-opening of stops it closed last year as brand new stops.  The shelter at Greenwood Ave N sure doesn't look brand-new; on the other hand, when I visited, its sign pole had been cut off at the ground.  ANYWAY, point is, King County Metro is, in fact, taking the best part of route 304 for North Seattle, that it covered half of 145th St, and making that part of the job of a new route 333.  So this deleted route, from North Seattle's perspective, is being fully replaced.

Route 320

This commuter bus that took Lake City Way NE across the city limits to Northgate was, like the 302, created in September 2021, and like the 301 and 304, suspended in September 2023.  And now it's gone.

*Route 322 south of Northgate

This is another Lake City Way NE commuter bus.  It's surviving, but where it used to go to the Roosevelt station, now it's going to the Northgate one.  As a result, six bus stops (two of which are shared with the 73) are being abandoned; I only currently have photos of four, so even this small group is delayed.  Sound Transit route 522 currently also serves LCW, and all day at that, but has only two stops (one on each side, not counted in my six) in the affected area, which is from NE 75th St to NE Ravenna Ave, where the 372 enters LCW.

The plan is that a new route 77 will be the wonderful LCW bus that the 65, 40, and E are on other busy streets.  But it's on hold, because Sound Transit is running the 522, even with few stops.  This is analogous to why Fritz Hedges Waterway Park doesn't have restrooms:  the University of Washington has promised to build some, some year this century.  Sound Transit has said it'll re-route the 522 from Roosevelt station to 130th St station once that station opens, in a year or two, and then Metro intends to dust off the 77 plans and see what it can do.  (Source, which may not say exactly what I have.)

Route 330

This route goes from Lake City mostly through Shoreline to Shoreline Community College.  It runs all day, but only once per hour for the most part.  It isn't in the 2002 transit map but is in the 2003 one, which means it was created too long ago for coverage in some of my sources.  Nor do I know the reason it's being deleted, and I think that deletion is especially peculiar because Sound Transit is ballyhooing its devotion to creating east-west routes in this whole change.

None of route 330's stops in North Seattle are unique to it.

Route 347

This is another paired route like the 301/304 and 302/303 (and for that matter, long ago, the 26/28).  The 347 and 348 both start from Northgate and go north.  They do a complicated dance as far as the Crest Cinema and the Shoreline branch of the King County Library System, but after that the 347 goes north and the 348 goes west.  Unfortunately for the 347's longevity, where it has gone north to is the Mountlake Terrace Transit Center, where there's now a brand-spanking-new light rail station, so good-bye 347.  Both routes follow the same path in North Seattle (in fact, up 15th Ave NE, providing the northern terminus of the 73's bus stop demolitions), so the 347's deletion doesn't add any stop demolitions of its own.

Whew, it's getting late, dear Diary, and I have a lot of work to do to get the next part written.  Until we meet again, happy hours.

On Release

Dear Diary,

Now that I'm fully vaccinated, in principle it's simple.

People still in masks might be vaccine-hesitant, for which they might have good reasons; or they might be vaccinated but scared anyway, for which they might have good reasons.  I worry about how long those people will feel the need to mask up, but in any event, it's common courtesy to continue to stay away from these people.

People unmasked like me might be fully vaccinated like me, or might be Trumpian never-maskers, never-vaxxers.  The former are unlikely to catch COVID-19 from me and the latter deserve to.  So I shouldn't need any of what's now called social distancing (I used to call it hygiene discipline as I practised it at UW when homeless and smelly) with these people.

But it's all kinds of more complicated than that in practise.

I never seriously considered staying masked on my hikes.  (Except when walking into the restrooms, or running hike-unrelated errands.)  I currently own three pairs of glasses.  I think I had two pairs when I came to Seattle in 2006.  One was broken sometime beyond memory, one lens split into two, so although I still have it, it really can't be worn.  The other, also broken but only in the frame, was stolen in mid-2014, as narrated in  "Stealing from the Homeless".  As also narrated there, this resulted in Sound Eye and Laser giving me a pair, the second pair I now own.  In late 2016, I went to one of the giant United Way-sponsored medical events at Seattle Center, and got a pair of bifocals, which came in a wonderfully sturdy glasses case.  The bifocals encountered an angry drunk fairly early in 2017, and can only hold together with tape.  So the 2012 pair went into the sturdy glasses case, and became my default glasses, until in late 2020 they encountered an angry mask.  By this point I'd forgotten that glasses have to be taped, so when Superglue failed, I just stuck them into the sturdy glasses case only to be removed on special occasions.

Anyway, though, in February I was in a carpeted motel room, and I experimented.  Both of my broken but whole pairs fogged up when worn with masks.  On top of that, one was broken by a mask, so I really don't trust masks with my glasses.  But I did re-learn how to tape glasses.

Since I value eyesight, then, I was never going to stay masked outside once the vaccine released me.

But it turns out I often have to get my glasses out of the way when taking photos on my phone.

And I have to mask up when going into restrooms, let alone when running errands, or taking buses at the beginning or end of the hike.  Which means handling the mask every freaking time.  And I also need to eat and drink while on those hikes.  I'm just choosing to ignore it, to assume that the outside of my current mask is not actually a foetid midden but an ordinary piece of cloth.  But what if I'm wrong?

And then there's the whole social distancing thing.  Avoid the masked, but not the unmasked?  But what if a masked woman stands three feet from the path I must take at Golden Gardens Park, as happened last night?  Should I have felt differently, as I in fact did, when I noticed that she is pregnant?  Unmasked people like me can block the masked in the same exact way, be it noted; this is an equal-opportunity way for people to inconvenience each other.

Also, while my principles may say I shouldn't socially distance myself from the unmasked, years of enforcing hygiene discipline on myself makes that a notion not much honoured in the breach.  It will take me a lot longer to get over this than to get over masks.  I find myself stepping into the street to avoid not only the masked but also the unmasked, much more than I did when I was masked.

There's a kick to this.  It turns out my vaccine, the Johnson and Johnson one, is only 2/3 effective at preventing COVID-19 infection.  Should I in fact not only continue social distancing, but resume masking?  Should I, at a time when India needs something like twenty billion vaccine doses, try to do better with a more efficacious vaccine?

This is not entirely off-topic, dear Diary, and not just on-topic in the sense that you are, after all, a Primary Source of the COVID Era.  Four days ago, I wrote:

| I've been comfortable, over the years, attributing a lot of 

| damage to water fountains to "vandalism".  Something 

| striking I've noticed today is that many of the "fountains" 

| I've mapped are really fountain locations, with two or as 

| many as four actual fountains either attached to one pillar, 

| in the majority case of free-standing fountains, or to one 

| building, in the minority case of attached fountains.  I 

| would think that both "vandalism" and wear and tear would 

| differentially affect these multiple fountains, but in reality, 

| the entire time I've been hiking for you, dear Diary, I've 

| never found one fountain working at a location, another not, 

| except to the minimal extent that flow differences might 

| make one harder to use than the other.  This makes it hard 

| for me to attribute the red list even primarily to user 

| misbehaviour. 

Well, there's a first time for everything, or to put it another way, in Bitter Lake Playfield yesterday I encountered the exception that proves the rule.  This is what it looks like when "vandalism" - actually, in this case, I'm pretty sure, metal thievery - differentially affects multiple fountains:

 

Not only is the spout missing, but so are the pipes one would expect to see through the hole it left.  Metal thievery is the most economical hypothesis.

But this is actually fairly uncommon, damage in this way to the spout, which allows access to the pipes.  I've much more often seen damage to the controls, so often that, considering the controls don't easily offer access to the pipes, I've come to doubt that it's really vandalism I'm seeing, as against deliberate disabling of the fountains by staffers of the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation.  Few examples are as extreme as the fountain at Green Lake Park that I noticed for my first time yesterday:

But even this could be a staffer's work, and I like to look on the bright side when I can; it's a help against depression.

So what will release mean to the parks department?  Will they bring the fountains back all at once, as they did last year when demanded by Public Health?  That seems a lot of work.  And remember, all those controls-damaged fountains in Woodland Park didn't come back last year.  Almost every fountain in Green Lake ran, but only two in all of Woodland.

The parks department has two maintenance crews in North Seattle, Northeast and Northwest.  Northeast is responsible for the parks from Gas Works Park to Woodland Park; Northwest is responsible for the parks from Green Lake Park north, including Northacres Park.

I've already looked, this month, at most of the water fountain locations for which Northwest has responsibility - 25 out of 32, at least assuming Northwest handles Sunset Place.  That and five others, six out of 25, are running.  Northwest has a head start on the end of the Durkan Drought.

I've looked at fewer than half of the locations Northeast is responsible for - 19 out of 44.  Only two of those 19 are running.  Also, Northeast has a lot of disabled controls in Woodland Park and elsewhere; Northwest has considerably fewer; so if I'm right that that's something the parks department will have to fix, Northeast has much more work ahead than Northwest.  Although all the people I've had friendly conversations with work for Northeast, their management seems to expect the Durkan Drought to continue.

And why shouldn't it?  The mayor has already shown willing to turn the fountains off; why shouldn't she keep them off until she's out of office?  It's not like she plans to answer to the voters.  Presumably once the governor releases us from the state of emergency, she'll feel free to sweep all the campers foolish enough to remain in the parks.  Maybe then she'll turn the fountains back on, or maybe, for fear that some homeless person somewhere might get free water, she'll keep them off right up to the end of her term.  I just don't know.

It's been striking how, after initial fumbles, the restrooms have mostly been open, and "sanican"s sprouted up not only at the beginning of the pandemic, but continue to appear - I saw a bunch in Green Lake Park, near the Small Craft Center, last time I went there.  Our mayor doesn't want cholera, which isn't much of a respecter of persons.

But it's also striking how she's been happy to limit access to clean drinking water.  Hepatitis, giardia, shigella, cryptosporidium, the list goes on.  As long as the majority of victims are homeless, the more the merrier, it seems, the housed victims just collateral damage from the hatred.

Dear Diary, I don't use with you the words that can most economically express the image that comes to mind:  We, the homeless, have been allowed to excrete during the epidemic, but not to drink.  Or maybe just not water.  "Let them drink brandy" - is it that, dear Mayor?

So Seattle, like me, isn't as ready for release as we like to think.

Momentous News

Dear Diary,

Burke-Gilman Playground Park's water fountain HAS STOPPED RUNNING.

The reason this is important is that it's the first time I've observed a water fountain in North Seattle change states this year.  I've seen the restrooms at Little Brook and upper Ravenna Parks open, and those at lower Ravenna Park and BGPP close unpredictably, but up to now water fountains had been unchanging.  The exceptions, in my experience of this year, are all south of the canal - Roanoke and Cal Anderson Parks' fountains have started, and the Capitol Hill street fountain stopped, in my observations.

So this is bad news for me in the short term - I think BGPP's water tastes a bit better than University Village's - and if the fountain stays shut off, probably for the duration.  But as evidence that the Department of Parks and Recreation hasn't forgotten that it has water fountains in North Seattle, and even remembers how to control their flow, it's wonderful news for the far-off day when they get turned back on.

A Thief

Dear Diary,

Before I went on the long trip I haven't finished telling you about, I received all the new wheels for my cart.  A few hours later one of the old rear wheels irretrievably broke.  I'd hoped, of course, to make the trip on the old wheels, but no, I changed them all that day instead.

During the trip, they were all on their best behaviour, but once I got back, they became concerned that I was used to trouble with my wheels, and here they were not giving me what I was used to.  So the right rear wheel started acting up in a very familiar, but temporarily manageable, way.  A few days later, the right front wheel discovered that it could make contact with the cart's basket, and that when it did so, it could only turn backward, as when pulling the cart, and not forward, as when pushing the cart.

So I stopped hiking as much as usual, spending more and more time in the particular place on campus to which I go on rainy days.  One of this place's drawbacks is that it has no place to sit comfortable for someone of my height.  On the other hand, it has a bench, outside the sheltered area where I spend most of my time, that's pretty comfortable to lie on, and however rainy most days recently have been, there's usually been a sunny spell in the afternoon.

On the Fourth of July, which was a Saturday, I got a big box of cream cookies as usual, but also had occasion to go to QFC, and got some day-old doughnuts.  Therefore, when I lay on that bench in the afternoon, I hadn't opened the cookies yet.

Well, when I got up, they'd been opened, by a human hand but not in my way, and seven or eight cookies taken.  What's more, both my water bottles had been drunk from.  Now, I'd drunk some from one myself, but not both.  So "out of an abundance of caution", as most inconveniences are explained these days, I discarded both bottles.

The only place around here that sells the bottles I prefer (20 oz Gatorade) individually is the Chevron station at Roosevelt and 45th.  So this thief was clearly sent to get me up off my behind to check Ravenna, Cowen and Christie Parks and University Playground.  Which I did the next day.

Momentous news, dear Diary.  See, I found no changes, but that's now four days ago.  So by now the water fountains in lower Ravenna Park and University Playground could have been turned back on.  By now the restrooms at Cowen Park and University Playground could have been opened.  (The new lights I mentioned at Cowen Park's restrooms have now been lit a long time.  The one in the women's room has burned out; that in the men's is sadly dimmed.)

By now Christie Park could have opened to the public.  For that matter, by now thieves could have finished disabling the water fountain on 15th Ave.

And that's all leaving aside Cowen Park's water fountain, which I forgot to check yet again.  The possibilities are endless!

I can't keep you going indefinitely just because hope springs eternal, dear Diary.  But keep that in mind.  Sure, peak park season is well under way without the changes it's supposed to bring, but there's always next year.  Or next decade.

On the way between Ravenna and Cowen Parks the sidewalk of 62nd St offered me many chances to change my cart-pushing ways, but I heeded none of them.  Finally, fed up with the continued recalcitrance of the right front wheel, I was so mad I actually bought into the nonsensical idea that if I put all the cart's weight onto it, it would start turning again.  Oops.  It did respond dramatically, but by breaking the cart's front axle.

So no, dear Diary, I can't keep you going all the way until a vaccine returns us, or specifically Seattle's parks, to something like normal.  I'll try to finish what needs finishing, but I'm now pretty sure you won't ever contain a cheerful "All Clear!"  Sorry, dear Diary.