Doorways I Have Known, part I: Broadway

Dear Diary,

It was too late for me to write the entire second page of this series last night, or even half the page, and that alone has wrecked my schedule.  I would be writing all Christmas day, except that I incurred an obligation last night, but obviously I want all this done so I can spend at least some time at home.

My family all live far away.  I have aunts in West Coast cities, but have never known them well.  My siblings are all in the Midwest, and I haven't seen any of them, nor their children, face to face since I came here fifteen years ago.  Although this December, thanks to Seattle's wonderful minimum wage, I have more money than I've had any of those previous fifteen Decembers, it isn't enough, nor is the COVID situation promising enough, to make travel doable.  So at this most sentimental of American holidays, sentimentality being one thing I like much better than many modern Americans, I don't actually have much to get sentimental about.

So yesterday morning I ate a Safeway deli salad bought with the last of my food stamps, and then ate tons of carbohydrates, just as I had while homeless.  Then I listened to the undeservedly unknown sad R&B songs of BGH4 (link in Korean).  Most of their best songs are at YouTube, but not all (link in Korean); in 2015, probably, I downloaded them from a since-departed illegal site, but in 2021 I was able to buy them lawfully.  I think BGH4 remain my favourite of the Korean idol girl groups I've encountered through Korean TV dramas, despite the competing claims of Melody Day, Bebop who went busking (the recorded version does have better sound), and even 4minute and their subgroup 2Yoon (17 min).  (Those groups' drama songs that led me to research them:  Melody Day, Bebop, 4minute.  I'm pretty sure I researched 4minute early in 2016, the others later that year or in 2017.  Some linked uploads have English translations, most don't.)

Anyway, after the BGH4 albums, fully stoked with sentiment, I shaved, showered and changed - something I'm guessing most homeless people in Seattle didn't get the chance to do yesterday - and went hiking back to the places I slept while homeless.  It had occurred to me that the evening of Christmas Eve offered an ideal chance to visit and photograph those doorways without staying up too late, and without worrying about the businesses still being open.  (Only three, in fact, were, in the whole catalogue.)  Or for that matter about homeless people already being in possession.  (Only one, actually in a doorway of one of the open businesses, at that.)  It had also occurred to me, dear Diary, that you deserved more details about my homelessness than the "eight years" (actually eight and a half) with which I usually dismiss most of it.

So while I listen to the also undeservedly forgotten hard rock of The Swimmin' Fish, whom I researched in 2015 before even finding BGH4, only a few of whose best songs are at YouTube (a counter-example, link in Korean), and who actually recorded a Christmas album I now legally own, let's stroll down memory lane...

To start, I should note that I was both homeless (which has a more capacious meaning) and actually on the streets for a month or three of 2003, in the autumn, in Madison, Wisconsin.  I was really bad at it.  At the beginning, I spent much of my remaining money on a one-week stay at a legal campsite on the outskirsts of Stoughton, which small town turned out to have no jobs.  Then, back in Madison, I spent most nights wandering aimlessly, trying to convince myself that this doorway or that would serve for sleep.  In Madison I actually visited a shelter, only to flee in horror.  The second time I was caught sleeping in a university library, I was punished by being denied permission to enter without a lot of rigmarole.  Fortunately, my social network wasn't then the wrecked thing it is now, and I stayed with two friends for a month each (still within many definitions of "homeless", but definitely not on the streets) before going back home to Mom.

So when I realised I was going back to the streets in August 2012, I was determined to do a better job.  For example, among the first places I went were DSHS for food stamps, and the Urban Rest Stop to find out how I could shower.  I was just too tired at first to figure out how to do what I hadn't planned ahead.  I knew people weren't allowed to sleep in parks, but anyway crashed on a hill in Cal Anderson for a few minutes before being woken.  I tried sleeping on the stairway in the Streissguth Gardens, which may not then have been an official city park, but anyway was a stupid place to try to sleep, since people, against my expectation, actually do use those stairs all night.  I'm not sure how long I stayed confused, but the first place I remember going more than one night was on Broadway, and on Broadway I stayed thereafter, as long as I stayed on Capitol Hill.

Broadway E

611

Then:  Under renovation

Now:  Ishoni Yakiniku

Like many homeless people, I figured a vacant business site was more likely to tolerate a sleeper than an occupied one.  In this case, I wasn't even actually sleeping in the doorway proper, which I already knew wouldn't work for me.  Instead, I was sleeping on a ledge south of the doorway.  This one:

As best I remember, during that renovation, it wasn't quite that narrow, but it was still a preposterously narrow place to sleep.  However, note something important in that photo, dear Diary:  the dry.  "Dry pavement" is too long to think, every time I had occasion to think it, those eight years, and is anyway slightly imprecise, since some of the dry I've used has been bricks, a little bit, not included in either half of this page, a mat, and so on; in this case, not even pavement, but a ledge above the pavement.  Anyway, in that photo you see some genuine dry, but far too little of it.  I kept falling off, which was problematic even though it wasn't raining then.

Another illustration of dry, or why Seattle bus shelters are actually pretty bad places to shelter from rain.  This, on the UW campus, is unusually sheltering.

 

To this day, I try to avoid walking with wet shoes on dry.

I no longer remember which came first, the new restaurant (Galerias, a Mexican place) opening, or the rain starting.  I do remember that the new restaurant did something or other that actually narrowed the effective ledge; I doubt now whatever that was has been reversed.

My chronology is hopelessly confused here, because I'm positive I remember becoming homeless August 23, 2012, but I remember waking up after a very loud graduation night, at this location, and finding five $20s under my head.  Makes no sense, but there you go.  My best guess is that I came back here briefly after leaving the next place, and the graduation coincided with that return.  Or maybe I've confused "graduation" with "Halloween"; I may have stayed there that late.

This is the first of the three businesses I found still open, unsurprising since it's where I started last night.

201

Then and Now:  Rite Aid

I never slept here, or anywhere else besides 611 on the west side of Broadway, as best I can remember.  I found the people who did sleep here, whom I usually categorised as "Wendy and Lucys", rather disorganised.  I'm sure Rite Aid has, over the years, taken various measures against those people, but it hasn't, so far as I know, made any architectural moves, or anything comparably drastic.  They don't actually sleep in the doorway anyhow, but in a large paved area off to one side of it, under a projection of the building.

Oh, also, I suspect Rite Aid was still open then last night, but I wasn't actually interested in their doorway any more than campers are.

Rather, my focus was a water fountain that, when working, ran at all seasons.

It isn't working now.

200

Then:  American Apparel

Now:  Kitanda Espresso and Acai

Broadway was pretty crowded with homeless people then.  This had some comforts - in my process of learning how to be homeless, I could learn from others' experience - but also some drawbacks, one of which was competition for doorways.  So I figured I was doing my bit by sleeping here.  It's a very short doorway, actually short enough that even though I'm a very short man, I had to curl up in sleep to make it work.

Also, I don't know who else in town remembers this, but American Apparel stayed open late and often had workers stay after.  So when I could sleep was unpredictable.  As a result, I became one of those homeless people who would park on the benches in front of the Capitol Hill branch library for some time in the evening, leading to those benches' removal.  Finally, although there's normally a fair amount of dry here, a sufficiently windy rain from the west reduces that, and would keep me up waiting for the space to dry.  But I was doing my part in relieving the door shortage, and didn't leave until after some tagger included an image of a sleeper in his etching on the store's wall.  (That wall has been replaced.)

People I saw sleeping there last summer followed a strategy I don't understand, but will explain as best I can with reference to the next doorway.

Nobody can sleep there now.  Kitanda apparently decided it was bad for business.

202

Then:  Vacant, then some tea shop

Now:  Hi Tea Cafe

I never slept here, but the "courteous veteran" I mentioned in Stealing from the Homeless", a man rather taller than me?  He slept here, but only in summer, when dry is abundant everywhere.  At most, maybe he could fit his upper torso in there, as well as his head.  This posture is how I saw people sleeping in what is now Kitanda's doorway, probably in summer 2020 when I was writing about Cal Anderson Park.

This would've been after I'd already moved north on Broadway, in summer 2014.  He told me he normally lived housed elsewhere, but had decided to come visit his home town without bothering with a hotel.

206

Then:  Castle Megastore and The Highline

Now:  Blade & Timber and The Highline

There were usually multiple homeless people hanging around this very large, complex dry, waiting for the bar to close.  Sometimes there were conflicts between them and musical performers' roadies.  Unsurprisingly, this was the result:

212

Then:  Newly built and vacant

Now:  Post Pike Bar

I'd expected, in this middle part of this series, to complain about how builders have adapted to the rise of the "new homeless" (that is, unhoused people; the "old homeless" were usually housed in poverty housing that's no longer allowed to exist).  Adapted primarily by eliminating old-fashioned doorways.  And there are examples in the areas I discuss; for example, the new building at the northeast corner of University Way NE and NE 50th St.  But there are also counter-examples.  In Sound Transit's new construction at both the Capitol Hill and the U-District stops, there are doorways, and the one H Mart plans to move into looks promising:

Well, years earlier, there was a new building at the southeast corner of Broadway E and E Thomas St, it was built with one vast and several large doorways, and according to a man I first met in the vast doorway and mentioned several times in "Sleepless", a man I now haven't seen for years, the owner would, then, even let homeless people sleep in the heated garage out back.

Times have changed.  There are certainly lots of barriers to all the merely large doorways.  There's also been a gate at that vast doorway for some time now.  I found it open, but then I found the bar open too.  This is the first (southernmost, basically) of three places I went back to this morning to re-photograph.

I can't photograph it for this page, dear Diary, because I never slept, or noticed anyone who slept, in the medium-sized doorway at 224, now the doorway of Rondo Japanese Kitchen, but I can certainly express my approval of that ungated, reasonable-sized patch of dry.

300

Then and Now:  Julia's

My first Christmas homeless, I fasted as much as I could, but by evening still needed to find a restroom.  I found one here, and my money was refused.  So I was disappointed, though not surprised, to find this:

"Bathroom for Customers Only".  Well, at least it isn't as stereotypical as "No Public Restrooms".  Julia's is far less a presence on Broadway than it was a decade ago, but even now it can do tired cliches with a little flair.

312

Then:  Red Light Vintage

Now:  Lifelong Thrift Store

I never slept at the main entrance, that I recall, though I think I tried to sleep once at the side door.  I never got the impression that it was a place people could sleep the night through (on occasions when I didn't sleep much, and there were people there at, say, midnight, they wouldn't be there at 6 A.M.), and the main entrance didn't meet my evolving criteria, notably for a right angle into which I could nestle myself.  But anyway, with Lifelong's arrival came gates.

No address

No shop

At the northeast corner of Broadway E and E Harrison St stands a shelterish-looking thing that has confused many naive homeless people:

However, dear Diary, that narrow patch of dry you see in back is all anyone gets.  This is strictly a summertime place.

400

Then:  Not sure

Now:  Mattress Firm

At the time I'm thinking of, 2013-2014, this was definitely a mattress store, but I think the name was different.

Homeless women who sleep in doorways normally make efforts to make their sex indiscernible.  So I tend to assume that any doorway sleeper whose sex is indiscernible, such as the only person I ever saw sleeping at this doorway, is a woman.  But I never saw anyone enter or leave that sleeping bag, so have no way to be sure.

412

Then:  Samurai Noodle

Now:  Due' Cucina Italiana

This is where I slept for over a year, my last continuous stretch on Capitol Hill.  It had so much to recommend it.  It was deep, and almost always mostly dry.  (It sloped downward, so the mortar between the tiles channeled water, for example from customers' boots, back toward the street.)  It had an overhead light allowing me good light to set up my bed by, but that consistently shut off, at 11 P.M. I think.  I was able to work - paid employment - from this doorway from January to April 2014.  For the first year I slept there, nobody stole anything from me.

I remember that once in my homeless life, someone asked to sleep adjacent to me, a pretty young woman.  I think it was here, but just possibly I'm wrong, and it was much earlier, at 212.  I think it was here because 212 was always lit, and I think it was dark when she arrived.  She had left by the time I woke.

After the first year, things started going downhill.  My glasses did get stolen, in July 2014.  This prompted "Stealing from the Homeless", which, months later, got my storage in Milwaukee (I then had two units) out of hock.  But by then I'd started staying at the University of Washington all the time, partly to enable the mountain of criminological research that went into "Stealing".  So when I came back in January 2015 to start another tax season, I was upset to find that someone with a key had taken to holding after-parties in the restaurant - after bartime, that is.  Well, he had more right than I to be there, but I needed my sleep.  So I moved north.

When Due' Minuti, now Due' Cucina, moved in, in 2016, I tried again, but Due' had arranged for deliveries from Charlie's Produce, which just happened to absolutely have to arrive at 3 A.M. when nobody from the restaurant was around.  Also, those helpful tiles had become worn, some were missing, and Due', or the owner, just removed them; no more wicking.  I had little reason left to be on Capitol Hill - I didn't know it then, but I wouldn't be employed again while homeless, wouldn't need to be close to the clothing in the Seattle storage unit I still have as I write this, on Capitol Hill.  Since the new place I'd found was basically unsatisfactory to sleep in, I just showered less, until I found out about the Urban Rest Stop's new U-District location; after that, I showered weekly as I had while south, but changed clothing less often.

This is the second one I had to go back to, because my original photo or photos didn't take.  I found that someone had moved a lot of stuff.

My guess is that the dumpsters were placed defensively, but whether by a camper or by the restaurant I couldn't say.  But the cardboard in back looks like a camper's leavings.  Probably someone's whom the Charlie's guy woke at 3.

414

Then and Now:  Seattle Cigar and Tobacco

Two stories I told years ago were about this doorway.  The guy next to me whose backpack had been stolen, in "Stealing", was sleeping here the night after the theft.  And in my Reddit AMA, I talked about a guy I was certain had been slumming, probably to prove something in some conversation, and who left me two days' worth of leftovers - this is where he was.  I never slept here because I never wanted my sleeping bag to come into contact with mats, carpeting, or anything else I figured was hard to clean.  (I put up with a mat at the only place I could find within a mile or two of Seattle Pacific University, once when I needed to spend several days in its library to catch up on Jeffrey Overstreet's Christian fantasy series, but not that I recall anywhere else.)

This morning I found someone sleeping there, covered in a blanket, but I'm pretty sure the person was a black man.  To find only one person sleeping on Broadway - admittedly as late as 7 A.M., but on Christmas, when there's nowhere to go and, in many cases, no reason to leave the doorway one's in - well, maybe there's been tremendous progress in housing the homeless in Seattle in the last few months, but I don't think so.  Anyway, my guess is that the person I found here had been at 412 until Charlie's arrived.

424

Then and Now:  Hardware Salon

This was a place I slept at least a few times when Samurai Noodle's doorway was unexpectedly unavailable.  I was always nervous about it because it was posted with some sort of "keep out" sign, unlike, then, any of the other places I slept, except, if I did ever sleep there, what is now Lifelong's side door.  Apparently they wanted me to be nervous, because they were the first store to put up a gate that I noticed.

It's still there.  I doubt, in fact, that any of these gates will go away before the buildings do.  After all, that would be wasteful.

This is the third place on Broadway I had to go back to this morning, because I'd confused the place next door with this one the first time round.

534

Then and Now:  Hour Eyes Optical

This was my last outpost on Capitol Hill, the neighbourhood I've still lived longest in, in Seattle.  I never stayed here full time; even during the tax season of 2015, I tried as hard as I could to get a schedule that would allow me to sleep north, then come in the morning to Capitol Hill and downtown to shower and change.  This is basically because, like American Apparel's doorway, this one's dry is unreliable.  Tonight I found it working fine:

But I remember one night (of, admittedly, epic rain) finding it flooded.

On the other hand, the employees of Espresso Vivace next door sometimes left leftovers behind for people like me, and one night when one of the employees of Hour Eyes Optical worked late, he actually apologised to me for having worried me about whether I could sleep that night.

538

Then:  A succession of restaurants

Now:  Star Fusion and Bar

The only real alternative I had to Hour Eyes Optical, an under-awning area north of the building, always disappointed me, probably for the same reason it's now disappointing the restaurant's employees:  it offers much less and less reliable dry than it looks like it should offer.

 

Well, dear Diary, that's my Broadway story, and all for now.  Happy hours until I can continue this page, let alone this series.

Things Forgotten, Hikes 3 and 7

Dear Diary,

On rainy days, even when there's no rain currently, it's problematic for me to take notes, so I've relied pretty exclusively on the photos for the hike narratives.  Which is a problem.  Here are some things I forgot to tell you about my hikes of January 9 (hike 3) and January 17 (hike 7), which only included Green Lake and Woodland Parks and only at night, so strictly speaking is still ahead.

You see, on January 17 I set off from the UW campus in late afternoon, and went far enough on NE 45th St to pass the encampments on I-5.  And I didn't see the hand-washing station.  Had it been stolen?  Removed?  I worried.

Last night, in a failed attempt to return to a motel I haven't yet told you about, dear Diary, I went that way again.  And found this:

I'll have more to say about sinks like the one on the left in future, but for now let me just say that it worked, last night, and probably still does, and hooray for SPU.

So all's well, I guess, that ends well.

Next we return to Woodland Park, and to January 9.  Remember, dear Diary, that a man had given me $20 to pass on.

As I pushed my cart up the hill, I heard snatches of music, sounding vaguely good.

I ended up speaking with nobody on that visit to upper Lower Woodland Park.  Not even coming close to giving that $20 away.

Coming back down the hill, with my cart for the last time (on my subsequent eighty-four visits to Woodland Park, oh very well maybe only five, I parked it near the north end of the tennis courts) - anyway, coming downhill I heard that music again.  Sounded like a good band.

Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be just one guy - and his piano ?

Turns out Jonny Hahn has become mildly famous busking Pike Place Market with a succession of pianos, which seem surprisingly more durable than my carts, but not all that permanent in the busking life.  I don't know whether Green Lake Park is a substitute - is the Market COVID-closed? - or a supplement, but anyway I've seen him there again, probably January 21 when I again spent the day there.

Anyway, I did what I usually do when buskers I really like offer the option, and bought an album - in fact, feeling richer than I actually was, with that $20 burning a hole in my pocket, I bought two.  Turns out like most modern musicians he's all over the streaming media, YouTube, Spotify, Apple, Amazon...  The albums I bought are <Collage> and <Words Escape Me>, and I'll probably listen to them on YouTube before listening to the actual CDs.

Well, given that my next stop was Sandel Playground, and Fred Mayer was on the way, I stopped in with two goals.  I wanted to know whether this one had two-pound bottles of raspberry preserves (no, none do, these days), and I wanted, it being a Saturday, not just any old cream cookies, but their peanut butter cream cookies.  See, Safeway's cream cookies are significantly better made, and slightly more numerous, and they're easily within my budget so it doesn't really matter that they're more expensive - but Safeway doesn't have peanut butter flavour.

When I came out of Fred Mayer, then, with my cookies, there was a young woman holding up a cardboard sign.  It claimed she was in "a bad situation".  Now, back when I was younger and had an income, I was well aware of the impossibility of knowing whether money would help any particular beggar.  In this case, for example, her "bad situation" could be an abuser or a dealer who would get the money, or an over-strict but loving mother she'd use it to flee.  But maybe instead she'd use it to flee the abuser or dealer, and in any event, I'd reverted to my method when younger, made a fast decision and stuck with it.  So she got the $20, and had the grace to show gratitude.  And I'm left to contemplate the courage of all the strangers who've handed me money over the years, no clue where it'd go.  Thank you all.

And good night, dear Diary.

My Book of Hours, part III: July 29 to August 3

 Dear Diary,

Wonderful news!

It turns out the new whatever-it-is that Blogspot installed at the beginning of this month did not actually eliminate most of the site's useful features, it only hid them, and it only cost me $7 to find this out with the help of a rental computer.  So without paying any more, I can tell you all about the maniacal squirrel at far too long last.

July 29

At Laurelhurst Community Center, restroom opening happened from 7:02 to 7:04 A.M.  This is the day I observed the southernmost water fountain in Laurelhurst Playfield get turned on.

Eventually I dragged myself out of there, figuring I just had to observe closing at lower Ravenna Park, but visiting Cowen Park and University Playground first just in case their restrooms had been opened.

So at Cowen Park that evening restroom closing took from 7:05 to 7:07 P.M.

I picked that night my spot at Cowen Park, a bench from which I could sort of see the women's room door, but not at all that of the men's room.  This bench is in shade most of each summer day, a real rarity in Seattle parks and much of what made the ensuing days tolerable.  Since Cowen Park is hard for me to move my cart through, I tried to limit my trips away to daytime ones, and ideally times it seemed safe to leave the cart behind.  Unfortunately for this plan, Cowen Park's water fountain would not be turned on until sometime after the morning of August 3.

July 30

When I woke, it turned out I wasn't the only person who'd slept there.  A couple had slept on the spinner I've previously proffered as potential neat stuff.  That morning, the woman entertained herself using chalk on a sort of chalk permission floor in front of the restroom building.  When the sun came out, she took off most of her outer clothing, and from this, the complexity of the underwear thus revealed, and the things she chalked, of which I remember "Bad [Female Dogs] Only", I concluded that she probably belonged to some category that Palaeoliths like me would understand as "transgendered".  I didn't see this couple there again, but her chalk remained, right next to a playground.

At Cowen Park there seems not to be a single usual parking spot for those who lock and unlock the restrooms; not all of my observations featured new parking spots, but most did.  So I routinely missed arrival times.  On this day the women's room was unlocked at 7:34 and the unlocker drove away at 7:39 A.M.  Closing was 7:00 to 7:04 P.M.  I only needed one more day at Cowen Park - and one more closing at lower Ravenna - and I'd be done.  Piece of cake, right?

July 31

Not if I had to stay in the park all day verifying that the restrooms wouldn't be opened.  Running out of water, running low on food...  I actually went and bought a newspaper, because I figured not even you, dear Diary, would believe this little project of mine had stumbled onto a closed-restroom day without serious proof.  So:

Meanwhile, I wasn't the only hungry mammal around.  The squirrel in whose territory that bench is, understands the world thus:  all food within its territory belongs to it, regardless of other circumstances.  It was so fearless I worried it might be rabid.  While taking these photos, I found out that, unfortunately for squirrels, the sound they make when irritated sounds rather like a cat's purr.

But all bad things come to an end, and a parks employee did eventually notice the situation.  Opening from 4:21 to 4:36 P.M., leaving only the women's room unlocked; much of the extra time went to hosing down both rooms, and a first stab at removing the expressions of the elegantly dressed woman from two days ago.  Later a parks employee came by who recognised me - he's the one who'd given me food while closing the Laurelhurst rooms.  I asked him to open the men's room, which he did at 5:10 P.M.  As a result, I now understand the remark Erica Barnett made in early April, mentioning deep water on a floor; that can, it turns out, happen after hosedowns.  This gentleman came back to close at 8:04, leaving at 8:40 because of a long conversation with me.  He only locked the men's room, to accommodate a woman camping in the other.

I decided this day wouldn't count.  It would've been a pain to handle the men's and women's rooms separately, and I'd affected too many of the times directly.

August 1

At 10 A.M. I decided this day wouldn't count either; I wasn't prepared for another day of privation and combat with squirrels.  From Cowen Park I took the ravine path to lower Ravenna Park, only to find that the restrooms there were also locked - this time both of them.  I couldn't conveniently  buy a Sunday paper for proof, but anyway here are some door shots:

So I went to University Village and Safeway, but then figured Ravenna's restrooms were likelier than Cowen's to open, so maybe I could get that long-postponed closing time that day.

By 4 P.M. I was ready to give up, but as I was leaving my friend arrived, and unlocked the restrooms about 4:15.  We both noticed jazz coming from the bowl downstairs, so I went that way, and he decided to take a lunch break and went separately.  This turned out to be the same group I'd seen before, minus the guy who'd been most of the reason I didn't approve of their social distancing, and so didn't identify them, before.   If I understand correctly, this was the Parkswangers' last show of the summer before the bandleader returned to New York.

I wasn't sure how to observe closings now that I'd started making friends with the guy who did most of them, so didn't try that evening, but I did want to see what would happen with Cowen Park's women's room.  At around 7:30 P.M. I found Ravenna Park's upper restrooms open; at around 8:00 Cowen Park's were both locked.

August 2

Back to Cowen Park:  triumph at last!  I slept until 7:47 A.M., by which time two park employees had arrived separately, one of them unlocking both restrooms.  The other left at 7:48, the unlocker at 7:56, after hosing down everything; this is what mostly removed the contributions by the woman from July 30.

Long before closing time, the squirrel returned.  I'm not sure it had learned fear, but it had recalculated the cost of my food, and spent considerably less of its time not getting as close.  I considered giving it a cookie as a reward for making this page more entertaining, but forgot.

Closing that night featured locking taking one minute or less, finishing at 8:35 P.M., and departure at 8:38.  By this time it was close to sunset, and I had zero interest in trying to steer my cart out of the park in the dark, so I decided to take one more observation at Cowen Park, which would anyway result in equal numbers of openings and closings.

August 3

Cowen Park's restrooms were opened from 7:23 to 7:36 A.M.  This took so long because the opener also collected trash; the women's room was unlocked at 7:35.

At lower Ravenna Park, the man who'd introduced himself as an Eskimo found me.  He said his partner had left him, planning to return to heretofore unmentioned wife and children.  Also, his phone had disappeared, possibly with the partner.  Nobody answered the phone; eventually I left a message at a number the Eskimo said was his aunt's.  The closer arrived while we were still talking, 7:47 to 7:56 P.M. close.  (Some of this time went to my telling him about issues in the lower Ravenna and Cowen Parks' men's rooms.)

Days later, I found that while I'd been photographing the squirrel on July 31, it had gotten further than I'd thought, chewing through the plastic bag holding my bread, and getting several bites.  It had taken care of its own reward.

Whew.  All done, dear Diary.  I'll probably write a page of analysis (sorry, no squirrel photos) tomorrow.

Our Main Characters

Dear Diary,

By the time I finished exploring Magnuson Park yesterday I was pretty thirsty, since I hadn't found a single water fountain in the park providing water.  (It's a huge place; there may have been such a fountain that I didn't find, but actually I doubt that.)

The thing to do, of course, was to go to Burke-Gilman Playground Park, where I so often start my days.

Burke-Gilman Playground Park

This park's main current claim to fame is that it's the only park in a large part of Seattle with a working drinking fountain.  While that should change any day now - heck, the water in Cal Anderson, Volunteer and Roanoke Parks has been on for some time already - yesterday none of the others worked.  The fountain is built into the wall of the restroom, which doubtless helped keep the pipes from freezing over the winter, but there's a fountain built into the wall of Magnuson Park's warm-water restroom, and that fountain was off yesterday.

The other thing that makes BGPP so appealing these days is that it has two sinks, at least in its men's room, which means that at least early in the morning there's no reason at all to worry about the actual shortage of sinks; I can wash my hands and dishes in peace.

Anyway, yesterday around noon the restrooms were open:

These rooms are way off at one end of this small but long park, much easier to reach from Sand Point Way than from the Burke-Gilman Trail.

Laurelhurst Community Center

This isn't actually a major character in you, dear Diary, because although it's much closer to where I sleep than any of the others, it's a nightmare to get to.  You have to approach it through the steep hills of 41st St, and it's down another steep hill from the community center proper.  But if you manage to get there, what you get is exceptionally nice:  two separate lockable stalls, with everything working in the one I tried.  Unfortunately I found this out sort of the hard way yesterday:  as I tested the sink my middle-aged bladder snuck up on me and made me do Number One in my pants, two feet from a toilet.  Photo (no, not of that):

I don't know if you can see it, but the sinks have two taps, one of which gives warm water right away.  Sadly, at least the nearest water fountain to these rooms isn't running, or it'd almost be worth the arduous journey.

Ravenna Park

Since this is much the closest park to campus, I have some history with it.  The main restrooms, a block or two east of Ravenna Boulevard, are usually open and work fine:

Unfortunately, the restrooms north of 20th Ave are "seasonal", which yesterday still meant "not yet".

See that lock on the door?  The women's room didn't have such a visible symbol but was also locked.

Cowen Park

This isn't going to be a major character either, because its restrooms can only be reached across a whole lot of gravel, or some gravel and a whole lot of stairs.  (They're what's down the stairs from where Cowen Pl meets 15th Ave.)  That said, a photo I took earlier but deleted showed the actual announcement of seasonal closure as litter on the men's room floor.  That's been removed, but the locks remain:

The water fountain near these wasn't running yesterday.

University Playground

Last comes the one I used to know best.  I slept on Roosevelt for years, making this parklet at 50th St and 8th Ave practically next door; before my aging bladder forced me to make peace with doing Number One outside, I used the "sanican" here many times.

Not so much the restroom proper.  It was preferable, though creepy, for the chance it offered to wash hands; but I usually wasn't around during its open hours.  Except that once a year, for a few weeks, the restroom was left open 24/7.

It's been too long for me to describe the amenities, because this is yet another "seasonal" restroom not open as of yesterday:

So that was my tour.  I'd meant to go to a gas station and get a more up-to-date map of Seattle than the one I carry, but instead had to hurry back to Ravenna Park.  Then I ate supper there - that last photo is from around 5:30 P.M. - and that kept me there long enough to find something new and different:  a jazz performance in the green bowl at the park's eastern end, a socially distanced concert.  No pictures, because it wasn't quite as socially distanced as it probably should've been, but a very nice end to a day in the parks.