Under Construction, part III: A.B. Ernst Park Before

Dear Diary,

Please inform any reader of this part who really loves A.B. Ernst Park, and who is reading before sunset on April 2nd, that they should stop reading right now and go make some last memories in the park they love.  Because on April 3rd, trees are going to start being taken out.

So at this point, your readers, dear Diary, are either people who don't love that park, or are reading after sunset, right?

This reminds me that I don't know, and haven't known for a long time, who reads you, dear Diary.  Strictly speaking, I don't even know that anyone reads you; for all I know, the numbers I see are all artificial intelligences being trained.  But even if that's not so, I mustn't assume any baseline level of familiarity with the work I've done with your excellent help.

So.  Dear Diary, you are a blog about public amenities, and especially about public restrooms whose doors open to the outside, and public water fountains that are outside.  Most of these things are in parks, and because variety is the spice of life, sometimes, as now, I just do some park appreciation without talking about plumbing at all.  The area we've focused on is the northern part, a sort of peninsula, of the City of Seattle, in a northern border state of the United States.

At one of the peninsula's southern tips, towards the middle east-west, is a neighbourhood called Fremont that likes to call itself the centre of the universe.  Parts of Fremont and its more staid eastern neighbour Wallingford are pretty hilly, and possibly as a result, three of their parks have as their raisons d'etre that they allow people to traverse those hills.

The Wallingford Steps are the flashy sibling, made of concrete but with spectacular artistic adornment, plus, yes, some plants.  They're the most successful as stairs, too, linking N 34th St with N Northlake Way, and, across that perilous street, with Gas Works Park and the Burke-Gilman Trail.

Troll's Knoll Park is the plain, friendly sibling; challenged to praise it, Seattle Parks calls it "sustainable".  It connects N 36th St with N 38th St adjacent to Aurora Ave N.  Just east of its bottom is the Fremont Troll; at its top is the Troll's Knoll P-Patch.

But A. B. Ernst Park almost ignores its stairs, which unimpressively go from N 35th St to the next alley south.  Instead it focuses on being a quite beautiful park, one worth spending time in. 

But tomorrow, motivated mainly by access and activation, Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation will start changing A. B. Ernst Park.  I would be pretty shocked if the result of the changes isn't loved, by some, within a year or three - Seattle Parks generally knows what it's doing.  But that doesn't mean I can't celebrate the old version.

I learnt on my second recent visit that what I see as this park's signature element is not what everyone sees.  I went across the street and discovered that what drivers see is mostly a couple of giant street trees.  But if, like me, you walk west from the Fremont branch library (soon to close itself for construction), there's no doubt at all that A. B. Ernst Park is mainly about these spectacular pillar-like trees.

These are arborvitae (Thuja occidentalis).  Another species that's prominent in the park is bald cypress (Taxodium distichum).  And how, you may ask, dear Diary, do I know these things, having never displayed any botanical knowledge before?  Alas, this is how:

There are many signs like that attached to specific trees; there are also quite a few on the ground.  Other trees bear different symbols:

Well, as I mentioned not too long ago, dear Diary, I'm having technical difficulties.  Let me describe the planned work, and then close with two more photos.

Most people, I think, understand this park as a winding path with a weird structure in the middle, sort of a crude theatre.  The occasion for the work is that Parks acquired a bit of land east of the park.  So they're moving the path eastward, and widening it, because even though the park's current page says it "provides wheelchair access", paths can never be too wide when considering Access.

And then they're giving the space thus created at the west end of the park to Activation.  A picnic table will be where the park entrance now is, and south of the table will be an "embankment slide" with "hillside loops".  That area will rejoin the main path at the head of the stairs.

If I'm reading the plans right, it's a goal to keep the theatre-like area, and the artwork that surrounds it (Water Mover by Jenny Heishman) more or less intact.  But they're planning to remove half of the arborvitae, so I expect it to be a long time before the park feels right to me.

Well, dear Diary, writing this part in you on my phone has been horribly time-consuming, so I'm going to have to find a better way soon.  Until then, happy days and nights.  The first photo below shows arborvitae, theatre and Water Mover, while the second shows the stairs at the bottom of the park.

 

 

 

Six Hikes in Brooklyn, part VI: Southeast

Dear Diary,

I'm sorry it's so late.  I've been reading UW's planning documents and lost track of time.

This part concerns the hikes of December 22nd, 2020 (except for Fritz Hedges Waterway Park, my photos of which from that date already appeared in "Canalwards, Foolish Mortal", January 2021); October 8th, 2022 (Fritz Hedges and Sakuma Viewpoint only); and October 29th (the other two only).

Anyway, here's the map:

I took the opportunity to make a few corrections.

Let's get started!

Sakuma Viewpoint (W on map)

I already introduced this place in "Street Ends: North Union and Portage Bays" in December 2020, but even though I already had a lot more photos of it by then, restrained myself to the three appropriate to that series.  So five of the photos in this part are of Sakuma Viewpoint as of 23 months ago.

Sakuma Viewpoint is in a tangled ownership state.  In my oldest map of UW, dated October 2017, the one I used in making all these hikes, it's coloured in as part of West Campus.  But when I visited the Husky Union Building for the buildings of UW project, I found two more recent maps, one from September 2019, and one from February 2021 (inside a Visitors Guide 2022).  And neither of those shows Sakuma Viewpoint coloured in as part of any campus.  The current UW Seattle Campus Master Plan (327-page PDF), however, on page 27, which lists property owned by others within the campus, notes that only the part of Sakuma Viewpoint which is also the Brooklyn Ave NE Street End is not owned by the UW (because of the 1990s land grab which the street end program basically is).

Anyway, Sakuma Viewpoint is one of the nicest campus parks.  It and Olympic Vista (which is not one of the nicest campus parks) are the only West Campus parks the master plan commits the UW to preserving (page 41; and it reserves the right to make Olympic Vista better).  So that December I took lots of photos.  If Sakuma Viewpoint were all Brooklyn Street End, it would be hands-down the best street end in North Seattle, but since I don't know where the property lines are, I simply left it out of candidacy for that honour.

First of all, I should give credit where it's due to Agua Verde Café next door.  In December 2020, lockdowns still everywhere, I found this sign:

Unfortunately, my jubilation at finding this out was immediately tempered by another sign:

I don't remember now when I first found the current "No Public Restrooms" sign; that part of campus was never a high priority for me.

Anyway, here are my December 2020 photos of, and, since it is a viewpoint, from Sakuma Viewpoint:

At the time I was under the misapprehension that Fritz Hedges Waterway Park, next door, didn't have wooden benches, so I was very pleased to find so many at this place.  It also has great views; of course, so does Fritz Hedges, but (given that I rarely visit that park either, when I do visit) often other people have beaten me to the places those views can be seen from.

Also, because for years I used UW's restrooms, and had just found a set theoretically open to me even during the lockdowns, I was prepared to forgive Sakuma Viewpoint not having any; but I already knew by then that the City of Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation had been urged to include restrooms in Fritz Hedges Waterway Park and had refused.  (Which made the hike of December 22, 2020 rather painful, eventually.)

On October 8, knowing I had all these, and finding the place fairly crowded, I settled for a single achievable landscape:

Isn't it weird, dear Diary, how much greener Seattle is in late December than in early October?

Fritz Hedges Waterway Park (X on map)

Knowing that I'd already shown you, dear Diary, lots of photos of this bona fide Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation park, I settled for one this time too:

No, correction, two:  I also photographed the parking lot this park so urgently needed even though it didn't need any restrooms:

Fishery Sciences Courtyard (Y on map)

What got me started reading planning documents today was that I was looking for a reference in one of them to this courtyard for an official name.  But in the master plan Final Environmental Impact Statement, Volume 1 (819-page PDF), page 230, it only refers to it loosely and under a name that doesn't sound right:  "the Aquatic and Fishery Sciences courtyard".  That's not what that building's signage calls it.  So I used this name.

Open Street Map calls it "Tikvah's Garden", and thereon hangs a tale.  Tikvah Weiner, 1978-2013, was dying of cancer when she enunciated a wish to see a garden established, from which students in her department (Environmental Studies) and other departments could learn.  She wanted this garden to be built north of John M. Wallace Hall, where she'd worked.  After her death, somewhere along the way the project was moved to the larger space of the courtyard under discussion here.

Money was raised for it, and in 2017 a request for funds was made to the Campus Sustainability Fund, which awarded about half the amount requested and reports to the world that the project is in "post-implementation phase".  Indeed, in September 2017 Weiner's department announced it themselves, with lots of photos.

Here are my photos from December 2020:

Notice those weirdly curved benches on the paved area.  I've been reluctant to sit on them, but I sure think they look neat.  They turn out to be the work of students in the Department of Landscape Architecture.

That's Fishery Sciences, specifically the seductive series of eight doors on its southern east wall, in the background.

Here I'm looking east toward parking lot W35.  This must be the planted part of Tikvah's Garden.

And here I'm looking a bit north of east, toward Fishery Sciences' southern end, at what remained of the original lawn.  I'm reasonably sure I wouldn't have considered this courtyard a park at all without the work done on the garden.

Now, the public part of the courtyard is boxed in between three things.  In 2021, the Haring Center, in the South Campus, got a big donation to enable renovations.  This matters because the building basically houses a school largely (though not entirely) for disabled kids, but parts of it weren't ADA-compliant.  So the school's staff were ecstatic about the prospect of renovations, but had to move the school out while the work is done.

So parking lot W35 now holds a bunch of large sheds or small buildings which currently house the school.  A large planted area just west of parking lot W35 is fenced off with orange netting to protect several trees and one very long log.  And the paved area is fenced off with a real fence to hold the playground equipment.  What's left is a paved path from one end to the other, with a grassy area where those cool-looking benches now are on one side of it, and something like an incipient jungle on the other.  There's a gravel path through the growth, but I found that thorny sticks had fallen partway over it, so I couldn't pass unscathed.

I thought I'd found the tree I'd originally photographed:

Those hoardings are from the school; I think that tree is now surrounded by the playground.  What I'm less clear on is how I could've seen W35 from east of this tree.  Anyway, here's the would-be jungle:

And here's my best guess as to what's become of the lawn I photographed two years ago:

So I don't know much about Tikvah's Garden, but I've told you, dear Diary, everything I can currently figure out about the Fishery Sciences courtyard, which isn't much either.  Except what I'm saving for tomorrow's part of both this page and the buildings one.

The Burke-Gilman Trail (Z on map)

In counting Brooklyn's parks, I neglected the fact that this concerns two different areas.  Each is a big grassy sward adjacent to the trail, and each has picnic tables and benches.  I'm only using my photos from December 2020 here; the only change worth mentioning is poorly illustrated by my October photos.

The bigger one (mapped as Z2) is between University Way and Brooklyn Ave:

It has three of those picnic tables; I think that photo shows all of them (two very small).  The smaller is between Brooklyn and (on the north only) Cowlitz Road.  It has one picnic table and one bench.

This one is right next to the Brooklyn Trail Building, where the Center for Child and Family Well-Being used to be.  So I always figured it was more or less the back yard for the kids to play in, and tried to limit my use of that bench.

Unfortunately, this one is now going to seed.  In each of my visits to this area the past couple of months, I've found the same discarded items just lying there.  I don't know whether this is because UW (which owns the Burke-Gilman on campus, as I've already told you, dear Diary) is short of grounds keepers, or because the School Psychology Clinic now in the Center's former home doesn't get visits from kids who need the space any more, or what exactly.

So that's another sad ending, dear Diary.  I'll have to see whether I can contrive a happy one for tomorrow's page.  Until then, a good night and a good day.

Six Hikes in Brooklyn, part V: East

Dear Diary,

This part of this page concerns two hikes, on December 22nd, 2020, and on October 29th, 2022.  In a summary of the hikes two parts ago, I claimed that I'd also visited this area October 16th, and I indeed did walk past it, but the photo I thought was evidence of that visit turned out to be of an area covered one part ago.  (On the other hand, I went and took the photo I thought I'd taken, today.  So maybe not just two hikes after all.)

Since I visited and photographed all of these areas (except one) on each of the two hikes, this goes in the order I visited them in December 2020 (with that one at the end).  I was then pushing a cart, so moving a good bit slower than I currently walk.  So I find that order hard to explain now, but the photos' timestamps prove it's the order I hiked in.  The map:

I asked the person who does "communications" for UW's Facilities Services department for names for four of the parks this part covers.  I got a reply from someone in UW's main PR department, referring me to the university's standard map, which I'd been using for years; evidently he assumed I was eight years old.  Well, I've nevertheless found a name for one of the four.  I'm just calling the rest "courtyard".

That's a problematic name for me.  As you'll see when we get to Central Campus, dear Diary, the UW parkifies a whole lot of its land.  So when I set out to survey the parks of UW, I had to set standards.  And one of those standards was that a single-building courtyard generally had to do more than look good to qualify.

All four of those parks I wanted names for do the same something more:  they all offer seating.  Some do more than that, but they all do that.

We'll start with the one not on Campus Parkway.

Gould Park (Q on map)

This park's name comes from its makers, who were participants in a then nearly new class from the Department of Architecture, a class which is currently called the Howard S. Wright Neighborhood Design/Build Studio.  Inconveniently, the class's Web page is down right now (more precisely, the College of Built Environments' local domain name service in general seems to be down), so I've had to consult Google's cache, and am unable to see their photos of their work.  It's possible that more of the parks of UW, even the ones in this page, are on that list, and I just can't tell.  But anyway, the class started in 1988, took 1989 off, and in 1990 did two projects, the Danny Woo Community Garden in southeast downtown, and this.  (Or maybe one of the 1990 projects was actually the 1989 class's work, delayed.  They also missed 1992 and 1993, and also did two in 2005, but otherwise have one project every year through 2021.)

Again, this specific park's Web page is down too, and I'm going by the Google cache, which says, oddly, that "The benches photographed here have since been demolished."  And here I thought that was vandalism.  It also says this project involved not only architecture students, but also students from the departments of Construction Management and of Landscape Architecture.

Here's the proof that this park, adjacent to Gould Hall, really is the Gould Park referred to:

I like this park much better than the three north of Campus Parkway, so have taken more photos of it, and have just enough room to show you them all, dear Diary.  One thing I really liked in 2020 was that it was a semi-classical design (complete with inspirational quotes which I don't much like), left to fall to ruin in approved classical style.  For example:

And here's more ruin, nearly two years later.  I tried to find the bench with that "V" on it, and am pretty sure it's one of the now-damaged benches in the second photo.

This park is also adjacent to the University of Washington Police Building, but is worth a visit even for people who don't have crimes to report.

Transportation Services Building Courtyard (R on map)

This could be called any number of other things - the Jones Playhouse Hillclimb, for example.  But because the Transportation Services Building's door is at least notionally open, I've chosen to interpret it this way.

Campus Parkway is a reasonably long walk, and it's a place where scads of people wait for buses.  So the fundamental thing parks can offer along it is seating.  The south side of the parkway has wide sidewalks, allowing seating at the bus stops and some away from them.  But on the north side, Schmitz Hall just has a complicated plaza (usually crowded with people using its skybridge or waiting at a bus stop, with some seating); each of the other blocks does something different and park-like with the seating it provides.

In this case, it's combining the seating with, and focusing its attention on, a pretty unnecessary stairway, adjacent to, and actually ending at, the sidewalk of University Way.  But within this space whoever designed it managed also to jam in a fair amount of greenery and two bike racks, one looking rather like an exercise machine.  I'm sorry, dear Diary; the other two Campus Parkway parks don't measure up.  This part is turning out front-loaded with the good stuff.

The first photo is from 2020, the second from 2022.

Olympic Vista (S on map)

This is the only city-owned park in this part, and although, given that this park consists of boulevard islands, it makes sense for it to be City of Seattle Department of Transportation property, I can't help thinking the university was involved in its design.  Two things lead me to this belief, but I'd better show you my photos, dear Diary, before trying to explain then.

There are "vistas" in each of three of the UW's standard parts of campus.  From the top of Rainier Vista on Central Campus, Mount Rainier can in fact be seen on occasion; I've seen it from there myself.  From the top of Portage Bay Vista on South Campus, Portage Bay can easily be seen most of the time.  But as it happens, Olympic Vista's highest point is at its west end, so one can't even look toward the Olympic Mountains, nor, by turning around, does one have much chance to see them.  To put this politely, that name is purely aspirational.

In 2020 I walked this boulevard west to east, taking photos from the east ends of the islands; in 2022 east to west, taking photos from the west ends.

Island 1, Eastlake to 12th Avenues (S1 on map)

This island is actually two blocks long, so I have more photos.  This is from the westernmost edge, from Eastlake, in fact, well above the island itself.  This is the interruption in grass along Eastlake's east side that I mentioned in the last part this block of Olympic Vista provides; this is the photo I took today.

 

On the west side of Condon Hall, in line with 11th Ave, there's a stair to the ground level, leading toward a paved path across this island.  I think both my December 2020 photos were taken from that path.

Island 1 begins as a forested slope.  Enough of the trees are coniferous that the ground is carpeted in needles, rather than grass.  Toward the east it's rather more like island 2, next.

Island 2, 12th to Brooklyn Avenues (S2 on map)

First, 2022 from the west end, then 2020 from the east end.

We're now in a cultivated woods, with a carpet of grass, sustained by a shortage of conifers.

Island 3, Brooklyn Ave to University Way (S3 on map)

Same order.

We're in a garden.

Island 4, University Way to 15th Ave (S4 on map)

Same order.

And here, we're in a park, verging on a plaza.  See, as Olympic Vista gets closer to the Central Campus, it also gets more civilised.  I find it hard to believe that SDOT just happened to decide to do that.

And in fact, according to University of Washington by Norman J. Johnston, cited in the northern West Campus part of the UW buildings page, pages 104-105, SDOT didn't.  Not that he agrees with me that the existing parkway was in any way planned.

In the 1920s [university] President Suzzallo dreamed of a grand ceremonial route leading from the west and the north end of University Bridge to the university campus.  Difficult to achieve because of the intervening extant residential and commercial properties, it was nevertheless an idea that was given additional clout by its inclusion in the 1948 Campus Plan.  Its completion in 1953 brought University Bridge traffic to the campus, but abruptly so, with only a hint of panache and with no destination clearly established.  Cluttered with utility poles and wires, it is unfortunately aligned visually with the new skylit portion of the Henry's addition, which inauspiciously blurs the parkway's visual axis on the George Washington statue and Suzzallo Library's façade beyond.  At the parkway's western end the irregular plantings of trees (remnants of a 1961 international forestry conference) add to a general dishevelment that does violence to the ambitions Suzzallo had.  This is a parkway leading nowhere.

Wow.  And I thought I was mean.  Anyway, aside from the message I see that the university is a civilising influence, the other thing I saw as evidence for the university's involvement in the design is that those metal benches in island 4 all carry inspirational quotations, with attributions, just like the pavement in Gould Park and a few other things here and there around campus.

Anyway, that's three more or less good parks.  The other three - well, one is closed,  and the other two aren't exactly bad, but don't impress me over much.  To proceed:

Condon Hall Courtyard (T on map)

Remember, dear Diary, I said each of the parklets along Campus Parkway had a different solution to the question of seating along Campus Parkway.  The Transportation Services Building's courtyard says what people need is distraction.  Condon Hall's courtyard says what people need is separation.  I'm pretty sure it isn't actually true that this courtyard is only accessible by climbing stairs - the way land slopes around there, there's probably a wheelchair-accessible route.  But the only way to it from Campus Parkway is up stairs.  Physical removal from the madding crowd.

So I've probably been a little unfair to this parklet because of the stairs, but also, I don't find that solution all that appealing.  My December 2020 photo is slanted, for some reason, but is still probably the fairer of the two to what's there:

It does have wood benches (look against that window) as well as those concrete ones.

Elm Hall Courtyard (U on map)

Elm Hall has a courtyard full of undergrowth, rather than grass, with three paved paths along which there are wooden benches.  So it's oversimplifying to say this, but because by far the most-used benches are those adjacent to the sidewalk, it isn't oversimplifying very much:  Elm Hall's courtyard answers the question of seating along Campus Parkway by saying that what people need is involvement.  Visibility.  To be part of the scene.  I think the Transportation Services Building's courtyard is more successful as a park, but Elm Hall's placement of seating is certainly the most sympatico of the three, for me.

I think in December 2020 those benches were just too popular, and the only photo I could take was the very weird one I have.  So here's a photo from October instead:

I'm pretty sure there are actual benches along the path to the left of that photo, although only one thing visible in the photo even vaguely resembles a bench.  I'm quite sure there are actual benches along a path only hinted at in the photo, well behind the ones in the foreground, between levels of undergrowth.

Note that for all that each of these parks is easily understood as revolving around seating, none dips a toe into the shark-infested waters of sheltered seating.  They all leave that for the bus shelters.

Child Center West Campus Playground(s) (V on map)

I haven't tried to take any photos of this area, locked up as it normally is, and crowded as it often is.

Well, that's it for this part of Brooklyn.  Brooklyn sure has a lot of parks, doesn't it, dear Diary?  I still have four left to tell you about, sometime this week.  Tomorrow, though, I hope to finish photographing the door signage of West Campus, leaving me Tuesday to write up the remaining set of West Campus buildings.  Happy nights and days until then!

Six Hikes in Brooklyn, part III: Southwest and Its Sweeps

Dear Diary,

None of the individual parts of this page concern all six hikes its title mentions; but this one concerns four of them, the next part too; all the others discuss only three.  Let's look at the whole set here:

• On December 22nd, 2020, I went hiking throughout southern Brooklyn, city and university parks both.  I ended up using some of the photos of the city ones in "Canalwards, Foolish Mortal" on January 1st, 2021, and deleted those from my phone as usual, so all I have left from this date are photos of places I associated with the university.  This hike hasn't featured in the previous parts but is in all the remaining ones.
  
• On October 8th, 2022 I started hiking this area focusing on properties listed in the City of Seattle's 2020 Real Property Report.  This hike is in all the parts except part V, assuming I get that far.
  
• On October 16th I went back, focusing on areas that looked park-like in Open Street Map.  This hike is in all the parts except this one and part VI.
  
• On October 23rd I re-visited I-5 lands; photos from this hike were in parts I and II.  I-5 this far south is well above street level, so there aren't any photos from this hike in this part.  And the remaining parts of this page are east of I-5, so they won't have any either.
  
• On October 25th I photographed two sweep notices in the area this part covers.  So none of the other parts have photos from this date.
  
• And on October 29th I re-photographed the areas of which I still had December 22nd, 2020 photos, because I thought I needed to re-visit them all before telling you, dear Diary, about them anyway.  This part and all those remaining have photos from this hike.
  

This part not only features the most hikes, it also features the most places; even after I took the forgotten island in NE 40th St out of this part, it still has six left to talk about, as does part V; the others, three or four.

As in previous parts and previous pages from my October hikes to Ravenna and the U-District, in each individual part or page I'm going in order of the hikes.

So we start with:

805 NE Northlake Place (H on map)

Oh, oops, I've written myself out of having space for the map in the introduction, haven't I?  But let's continue that for a moment while I show you, dear Diary, the first of the December 2020 photos of places I thought belonged to the university.  In this case, the university's map agrees with the King County Parcel Viewer that I thought correctly.

My unreliable memory claims that I was struck, as I trudged from the Burke-Gilman Trail and North Passage Point back towards campus that day, by this explosion of green (in December, mind!) in a rather grittily urban neighbourhood.

Oh, neighbourhood, map, right?  Here:

That's the only place in this area of which I still have a December 22nd, 2020 photo, dear Diary.

So going on with October 8th:

North Passage Point (I on map)

This park was actually the reason I picked this region to start with.  I'd gone through the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation list of parks and found no additions in North Seattle, but one subtraction:  this park.

Most of it is the property of the State of Washington Department of Transportation, which has apparently stopped leasing it to the parks department and fenced it off because of chips of concrete falling from the I-5 bridge.  A host of sites still document it, but not the parks department's, so apparently the department's taken down its web page.

But such measures don't actually lead to actual land disappearing from the face of the Earth, so I went there to see what I could see.

What I saw was a fenced-off park.  I saw a man inside the fence to dip his toes in the water, who clambered over a shorter fence adjacent to leave; I saw a woman inside the fence to walk her dog, but she left on the other side, so I don't know how she left.

The shorter fence is in the photo immediately above.  But you see, dear Diary, there's also a gate, and if that woman had a key, she might've used that:

The side I was on while taking the first three photos is the parks department's side, which is not fenced off.  It includes the sidewalk whose decorations I praised on first visiting this park early in your life so far, dear Diary, and it includes some grassy land, on which, on this visit, I found an encampment of tents, presumably including homeless people.  Neither of the people I saw inside the fence lived there.

Northlake Park (J on map)

This "park" is simply an overlook adjacent to the sidewalk.  Well, the 2020 real property report claims it occupies 1,660 square feet, which implies that the land below the sidewalk, seaward, is the real park, but that's fenced off.  So most of my photos of this park have been views, and so's this one:

For much more about this park, see "Canalwards, Foolish Mortal", linked up top.

Eastlake Ave NE Street End (K on map)

For much more about this park (not belonging to the parks department, and frankly not much of a park), see the street end page that includes it.

Peace Park (L on map)

My main concern in re-visiting all the parks in this region was to see what had changed.  Specifically whether water fountains had been added, for example, but also to see what had been subtracted from North Passage Point.  Or here.

That statue is "Sadako and the Thousand Cranes", made in 1990 by Daryl Smith, who is not the glass artist born circa 1973 and is not the artist in wood who was a school principal in Indiana at the time (LinkedIn link, requires sign-in), but is surprisingly poorly documented considering he also made the Jimi Hendrix and other rock legend statues on Capitol Hill.  And what has changed is that Sadako (portraying Sasaki Sadako, 1943-1955) doesn't have anything, not cranes, not candies, not nuthin'.

Cheshiahud Lake Union Loop (M and brick-red line on map)

I still haven't done enough research to reconcile the widely varying online accounts of Cheshiahud, an Indian with whom the 19th century settlers of Seattle interacted.  But at least I've finally paid enough attention to the flimsy little markers with which this sort of virtual trail, made out of existing roads, trails, and whatnot, is pointed out, to establish its path in the U-District.  Which led me to the shocking discovery that the parks department page links to a perfectly good map (1-page PDF) that could've saved me the trouble.  I think when I first downloaded that map on my phone, I couldn't get the phone's software to fix its mis-orientation, so forgot about it.  But I think one of the photos I took documenting my not so trail-blazing effort is worth showing you anyway, dear Diary:

So enough park appreciation.  We now take some time out for sweeps.

805 NE Northlake Place

On the 23rd, visiting various I-5 patches of land, I'd come to the conclusion that the land from 40th to 42nd had been swept.  This surprised me, because I knew that WSDOT had been criticised by homeless-haters as far too slow to sweep encampments for their tastes. [1]  So on the 25th, I went back to see whether my conclusion was right, and concluded, as related to you, dear Diary, in part II, that it probably wasn't.

[1] For more on WSDOT and sweeps, see an article by Leo Brine in Publicola on a bill that ultimately failed.

I don't have a clear record of what I did after that on the 25th, but anyway, I eventually came back here.  And found that a bunch of RVs that had been parked just north of here, essentially blocking drivers from reaching the end of Northlake Place, had been swept that very day, probably while I'd been dithering over I-5 land.  The only notice I found was this one:

Now, this came as a complete surprise to me.  Not the sweep, that is, but the notice.  I'd seen a sweep notice just two weeks before, issued in mid-September.

The two most obvious differences are that the new ones are much easier to read, and don't have dates issued.  The more I thought about it, the more confident I became that they weren't sweep notices at all, but notices following a sweep, intended to help people reclaim their property (or at least, ostensibly so intended).  So I freaked out all over again.  Had Seattle finally decided to stop warning people of imminent sweeps?

North Passage Point

It's certainly gotten looser in its legalese:

Unless I'm living on a different planet from the writer of that notice, North Passage Point isn't in "Burke Gilman Trail to NE Northlake Way and from Eastlake Pl NE to Pasadena Pl NE", it's south of NE Northlake Way.

So I went home and wrote to two real journalists who might be interested, neither of whom has replied so far.  And I stewed.  But six days later, when I came back to re-photograph the university parks of West Campus...

805 NE Northlake Place

I found two RVs parked along Northlake Place again, and the owner of one, who called himself Red, hailed me.  He told me he'd been on the streets most of the time since he was ten years old, and he was 42 at the time.  He said they had in fact gotten notice - visitors.  He also said his RV didn't run, needed a new engine which he couldn't afford.  Which I interpreted as meaning that his RV had been towed (either by the sweepers, or by a friend beforehand), and then returned to him.

So I still don't know whether Seattle is continuing to post sweep notices, physical objects that nosy people like me can see, as opposed to just notifying people they find on-site.  But it isn't (at least in this case) doing something as obviously wicked as not warning people at all that their lives will be up-ended.

Which brings me to the last photos in this photo-heavy part, since I then took a closer look at the explosion of greenery.  It turns out not to be so very green.  In fact, there's a big clearing in the middle of this vacant block.

Although I wanted to spend today at home, I panicked when I saw that both Open Street Map and Google Maps show a building on this block.  Had I gotten something catastrophically wrong?

The Department of Neighborhoods has a photo of a building, dated 2002.

The Department of Finance and Administrative Services has an April 2015 notice that the property is for sale (6-page PDF).  The city had acquired it in 1971 thinking it would need it for work being done at the time on Pacific St (which Northlake Way turns into there).  At the time a sculptor they call Theodore Jonsson already leased the land, and the city had renewed the lease as recently as 2014 (10-page PDF), but that was due to expire in 2019.  They worried that his sculptural work, in metal, had led to environmental contamination.

As it turned out, Jonsson, who'd been born in 1933, died in June 2015 at his daughter's house.

So the damage to the land, and a few bits and pieces, are what's left of the building.  This is a surprisingly recent park; its life as such can't have begun before 2015, which means the nearly two years between December 2020 and today are a significant part of its lifespan so far.  That it's come this far without, possibly, any real work by anyone, is impressive.

Meanwhile, I got the impression that Jonsson was another poorly documented sculptor, but that's because I'd looked for him as Theodore.  Turns out there are several pages memorialising "Ted Jonsson" and depicting his art.  He was an important advocate for the 1% for art policy, and an early beneficiary too.  His art isn't much to my taste, but I've liked plenty of other work paid for with 1%, so on balance, I'm grateful.  And also for whatever hypothetical pollution he may have produced that's intimidated anyone from building on his studio's former site.

So, dear Diary, another part with an ambiguously happy ending.  Good night, and happy hours until we meet again tomorrow.