The Biblically Heroic Sweep of Cowen Park

Dear Diary,

Today I went to Ravenna Boulevard, Cowen Park, Ravenna Park and 17th Ave NE, whose boulevard is considered a park by the Seattle Department of Transportation, but not by the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation.

Important news:  Both the "upper" restrooms in Ravenna Park were open.  I didn't have my newspaper with me, so didn't take pictures.  But there are now open park restrooms sort of near the U-District.  I found no other changes in the parks' plumbing - neither Cowen nor Ravenna has a running water fountain, Cowen's restrooms are still closed (and in a recent page I boneheadedly forgot that they do have explanatory signs on their doors), and Ravenna's lower men's room too.

The block of Ravenna Boulevard between 15th Ave and University Way NE, also known as Olga Park, was swept this morning.  A camper there was murdered by a visitor earlier this week, and so the entire camp was punished.  This is, of course, biblically correct, dear Diary, for as Numbers 14:18 says:  "and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation."  Imagine how much better a place Seattle would be if every neighbourhood where anyone was murdered were evacuated and levelled.  We might still have five buildings standing in town, who knows?

At any rate, this meant that, given my policy against showing you photos of tents, that today was my first chance to take landscape photos of Olga Park.

I found a notice proper in form, though it didn't meet the 72-hour standard that was once legally required:

There was also this confusing declaration:

Given that the parks department is now allotting itself two weeks to do nothing, presumably because the one week in which they did nothing at Albert Davis Park hadn't been enough, they did a really thorough job of putting up closure signage:

However, what I witnessed, and in fact participated in, wasn't the sweep of Olga Park, but of Cowen Park.

I found a couple of young women with stacks of pizzas and other stuff set up across 15th Ave NE from where I took the picture just above.  They told me Cowen Park was being swept as we spoke.  Since I'd never actually seen a sweep done, I figured I owed it to you, dear Diary, to find out what they're like.

What I found was a rather odd confrontation.  A single tent stood in one of the awkward corners Cowen Park has many of.  A man stood in front of it.  Surrounding him on three sides were many employees of the parks department.  And on what passes for a sidewalk at the edge of Cowen Park - that is, a dirt path with some edgy gravel here and there - stood a bunch of people yelling at the parks department employees.

The man who was in front of that tent is black, as are quite a few of the parks department employees, including both of those I'll quote to you, dear Diary, from memory.  There may have been a white parks department employee or two there, but I didn't notice them; there were people of various other races.  Essentially all the protestors were white; mostly young women, and a few who might have been men, plus one man at least my age.  He and one less young woman, who turned out herself to be homeless (she claimed to have seen tents slashed at Albert Davis Park, where she was living May 6), were by far the loudest.  There was a guy on a bicycle who struck me as not really belonging to any of these groups, but who seemed to have some sort of rapport with the man in front of the tent; he's also black, and for all I know he could be anything from a relative to a fellow homeless man (though if so, he was travelling awfully light) to a dealer to a social worker.

For a while everyone focused on each other, and a weird sort of argument.  Some of the protestors yelled, others, including me, made caustic but quieter remarks.  The parks department employees said what they could, quoting law, saying they were just doing their jobs (and that bit of World War II folklore has certainly not died out from among the youth of today, unfortunately for people just doing their jobs everywhere...).  Since the louder people were the angriest, and had trouble restraining their movements, things escalated, giving the parks employees all the excuse they needed to call the police, and when those arrived, the whole confrontation collapsed.

Two episodes in the confrontation are worth quoting.  At one point a parks department employee apologised to the homeless man.  Apparently this employee had advised him, while sweeping Olga Park, that Cowen Park might be a safe place to go, and now regretted giving this advice.

At another point, when one of the protestors asked where the man should go next, a parks department employe mentioned that there are mountains all around Seattle with plenty of places to camp.  I reiterate that the person who said this boneheaded thing is just as black as the foolishly compassionate colleague, and as the homeless man himself.

Anyway, on the police's arrival, several of the quieter young women started giving orders which various people obeyed, and next thing I knew I was one of about half a dozen people lifting the tent before it'd been emptied.  Basically, the protestors and their hangers-on (including me) did the sweep for the parks department.  They certainly did check our work, but we left the spot as clean as they would have.

Ironically, the next stop was ... Ravenna Boulevard, halfway across the street.  One block from Olga Park.  The protestors had hired a rental van, which arrived reasonably soon, but the homeless man had trouble deciding what to do.  By the time I left he'd pretty much decided to spend the night there on Ravenna Boulevard, and maybe the next day move to the doorway of a vacant building across the street.  Last time I saw him, a few hours later, he was still there.

I followed my usual rules, dear Diary:  I tried not to photograph any tents or people, and will not show you my failures.  Here's what I did photograph:

First, the vast threat this one man's tent posed to the public's enjoyment of Cowen Park:

Notice also in that photo the vehicles.  There were well over five parks department employees there, and if I wasn't willing to photograph them, I was certainly willing to photograph their trucks.  Here's another:

Really, I think there were more like ten of them.  The group I spoke with later was four men, and was definitely not even close to all.

So yes, obviously one tent would've made it impossible for anyone else to use Cowen Park.  And of course someone just swept has no right to pitch a tent where the sweepers can see.  After all, sweeps are like bills of attainder, which everyone knows are constitutional somewhere:  they attach to this man, and to his descendants unto the third generation.  Little details like notice or legal authority don't matter compared to that.

Anyway, that's the threat from which these valiant parks department employees spared the neighbours of Cowen Park.  I put off writing this page, dear Diary, long enough to skim the books of Numbers and of Joshua, looking for something explicitly saying that evildoers should be hounded from door to door until slain, or some such, an explicit declaration that those not of the tribe must all die.  I didn't find one; I'm just not as biblically literate as I thought I was.  Oddly, however, in other books which some people consider biblical, one finds other things, for example this, from Matthew 25: 31-40:

³¹ When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:

³² And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:

³³ And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.

³⁴ Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

³⁵ For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:

³⁶ Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

³⁷ Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?

³⁸ When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?

³⁹ Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

⁴⁰ And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Good night, dear Diary.

The Wounded Land

Dear Diary,

Yesterday I went to my storage, and had some time left on my transfer, so I went to see what had happened in Cal Anderson Park.  What I found was a more complete victory for the city, as I called one side in the recent disputes, than I'd anticipated.  In particular, I didn't see a single tent.

Yet I'm pretty sure the city would agree that the land they retook is wounded.  They would point to the muddy slope near the entrance at 11th Ave and E Olive St - never in good shape, but rarely in as bad shape as I saw it - at the two still closed restroom stalls, at the graffiti they erase daily.

The side I chose, whom I called the kids, would probably point to the lives disrupted, the arrests about which I'm ashamed to have heard so little, and such details as the still vindictively, wastefully shut off winterised water fountain.

Most people's sense that something isn't right seems to be focused on two perfectly inoffensive ping-pong tables:

Against this, playing devil's advocate, I'll note that the city has managed one thing I'd have expected the kids to be able to handle, but they never did:

They've also done amazingly fast carpentry.  This shelterhouse is done with its days as shelter:

I chose, however, to focus on the same two things I focused on before the climax, signage and plumbing.

I saw one thing I can just about convince myself I'd forgotten seeing before:

But elsewhere, even in a concession to the kids' sentiments, the style is completely different - even here, where it's pointless, the city wants its emblems to look mass reproducible:

Oh, stupid me - that's a banner, isn't it, dear Diary, not paint at all, and certainly mass produced.  Oh dear.

Anyway, let's re-start at the beginning:

Having struggled for months with how to communicate a long, pointless official park closure without a fence, the city now feels the need to shout even though nobody else is raising a voice.

It also feels the need to plead for support, as if its victory were rickety, though it looks solid to me.  It makes offerings to us homeless, the ostensible focus of the recent fight:

and to the solid citizens whose support for the city both sides assumed:

but it can't escape the style it knows, the resource list, the community comment line.  I have no idea whether the people who craft these can even imagine a heart singing.

And, of course, it earnestly wants everyone to dare to believe that Cal Anderson Park is and will remain a park, again and for always.  No more arbitrary closures, no more dangerously silly fortifications, and above all no more of my kind.  So it's mass-produced Cal Anderson Park-specific signs stating standard park don'ts:

and do's:

Well, one thing all these signs help with is distraction from the plumbing, which seems harder than carpentry.

Here's the one success story:

The Post-Its warn that the lock is broken, so would-be entrants should sing out, as at Little Brook and Greenwood Parks.  I chose not to enter.

It turns out there are two other stalls, not one as I'd thought and based my previous photography on; sorry, dear Diary.  This one has no door handle:

and this one I found locked:

I'm afraid, dear Diary, I've already shown you what I thought the restroom building's best side, its back where the BLM banner hangs, the above door beneath.

Now we come to the water fountain.  Seattle south of the canal is a much bigger place than North Seattle, with about three times as many parks; there must be more of these winterised fountains than at Northacres and Cal Anderson Parks, but there can hardly be many.  Of course private companies have long since mastered ways to keep water fountains running through Seattle winters, as witness Jackson Park, the street fountains if one can find any running, in memory or reality, and for that matter University Village, whence most of my water since the shutdown of Burke-Gilman Playground Park's fountain in June.  But the city parks seem to need the reassurance of a winterised fountain to keep one on through the winter, and this one is off.

No video this time.  Instead observe the dry ground under the fountain.  It wouldn't be that dry if the thing were on.

My investigations of the plumbing got the attention of two young men, apparently employees of Parks and Recreation.  I'd heard that the park would be staffed by social service personnel; maybe they were at lunch.  These guys were abject failures as Homeless Repulsion Systems.  One informed me solemnly that the water fountain was shut off to stop COVID, but it turned out he didn't believe it himself, and had asked his bosses to fix the thing.  We communed a little over this.  But then a conversation spilled over about Miller Park, where, apparently, they had gone, they with their tents whom all good citizens loathe.  Maybe these guys were better homeless repellents than they seemed; at any rate, I turned to go.

Construction had blocked the sidewalks both on Nagle Place and on the east side of Broadway, and I grumbled, but both the destinations I was considering were on the west side of Broadway anyhow.  I ignored Dick's to go first to the street water fountain on Broadway E just north of Olive Way.

The recent discussions in Washington of stimulus payments have of course reminded me of the bread and circuses with which Roman rulers pacified their citizens.  But the Romans also understood true necessity; our word "salary" comes from theirs for "salt".  And they built acqueducts and fountains to get water to their people.

I did not go back to Dick's.  I did not spend any of my stimulus payment in my old neighbourhood, on Capitol Hill.  Instead I shook the dust of that place from off my feet, again, and went to the train, where, of course, my transfer had expired.

Good night, dear Diary.

Before the Ruling at Cal Anderson Park

Dear Diary,

Well, they tell me it's all over, and thankfully no Rachel Corrie today.  So now I can show you the photos I took yesterday.

These fall into three groups.  I'll start with the messages.  When Cal Anderson Park first became a flashpoint, in the days of CHOP and CHAZ, the original Black Lives Matter protestors complained that white activists arriving were diluting the focus to things like saving the whales, say.  Well, probably some of the people there yesterday were some of the people those complaints were about, but this time their focus was strict.  And ...

This time the focus was on my kind.  On me.  These people had not come to the park on behalf of whales, or of the transgendered, or of COVID-19 vaccines for poorer countries, worthy though all of those causes are.  They had taken the risk of coming to the park, and temporarily unhousing themselves, on behalf of me.  How could my heart not sing?

Of course my excuse for being there, if questioned by agents of the city (didn't happen) or by protestors (did), was that I was press.  So my next group of photos is of amenities, the things I've been writing about in you all along, dear Diary.  This took some doing because most of these were within the barricades, but one thing wasn't:

Despite the traumatic events going on, Cal Anderson remained about as messy as a very messy park, rather than the hellhole I'd documented some months ago.  Score one for the kids.

Several photos below depict what I found when I first tried to follow the directions I'd been given for a way through the barricades.  But after taking the photo just above, I decided to make one last try.  And it turned out the entrances were guarded, by strapping young men able to move substantial obstacles, and I just hadn't found a guard.  The one I found at that point apparently decided I was too obviously homeless to be a spy, and shifted a pallet, thus creating a passage this ageing and fattening man barely squeezed through.

The park's older water fountain, of course turned off in mid-December:

The newer, winterised, one:

This was also shut off, but since winterised water fountains in Seattle work by requiring the user to hold the button down for some seconds, no mere photo could depict its being shut off.  So I took a video, which, since I've recently been unable to embed videos, can be watched at YouTube.

I trust I don't have to explain these next shots:

However, I do have to mention that I'm not just ignoring the "sanican"s and hand-washing stations out of my usual snobbery.  I was puzzled by my inability to find them, but it turns out they'd been removed, so determined was the city to make life miserable for people in that place.

To my mind this calls into question the city's claim that it acted only in response to threats against park workers.  Granted those shouldn't happen, but to respond first by removing sanitation, contra CDC guidance, and then removing the campers, ditto - well, that seems much too planned out to have been a knee-jerk response to one incident.

Cal Anderson Park has a category of building I haven't said much to you about, dear Diary, for the sensible reason that they're usually locked, and not just during pandemics.  Ironically, they're called "shelterhouses".  That day, the one at Cal Anderson Park actually was sheltering people, but I trust this photo gets across the essentials.

Presumably once it's repaired it'll go back to being rented out at an astonishingly low $10/hour - see, it's the fees that keep it out of reach for the likes of me.

Finally, we come to the defences.  As I circled these fruitlessly, I began to think that the protestors had read my complaint, in "Cal Anderson Park Is Not a Park", that if the city had really meant to close it they would have fenced it, and had decided to do the job themselves.  My first photo, showing the restrooms and main water fountain as close as I expected to get, actually shows a pre-existing fence, of which there are many in the south.

This next one, though, shows the kids' work:

And as noted above, I took several at what seemed the likeliest entrance.  I can't say I'm happy with what they show.

Oddly, from a distance, the barricades became much less noticeable:

And now they're gone.  Good day, dear Diary.

Cal Anderson Park before the Ruling

Dear Diary,

I spent this morning on Capitol Hill, much of it in Cal Anderson Park.  One clueless graffito calls it "The Peoples Republic of Cal Anderson".  Now, on September 6, dear Diary, I told you of my belief that "Cal Anderson Park Is Not a Park".  There I called it a battlefield.  Today it held a specific kind of battlefield:  a fortress preparing for siege.

It will be overrun.  I don't know whether a sweep has already begun, but if not, there will plainly be one soon.  It will face defences, but these, though enough to stymie me for a while, will not hold back an organised force.  The sweep will succeed in such limited objects as destroying a lot of personal property and decreasing the number of people sleeping in the park for at least one night.  It almost certainly won't end the contention in Cal Anderson Park between the parties I called, in "Trash in Cal Anderson Park" on October 4, "the city" and "the kids".

The planned sweep has already rid Cal Anderson Park, at least for now, of most of the third party, the actual homeless whose tents provide the framework for everyone's understanding of the battle.  I spoke with one man, maybe my age or a little older, who had a packed shopping cart beside him, and wasn't waiting for the ruling.  The city likes to claim that all the people who've been a thorn in its side for months have suddenly become shiny happy shelter dwellers; while such claims offered in past sweeps have generally been inflated, the city usually doesn't emit this kind of smoke without some actual fire.

In particular, the city claimed to have one tiny house to offer, and it apparently will go to by far the squeakiest wheel, the woman who sued.  And this brings me, dear Diary, to why you aren't seeing my photos today.  My heart lifted when I heard about that suit.  When I saw the slogans the kids presented, the ones they were preparing to fight under, when I read the complaint the woman's lawyer filed, my heart sang.

The kids were concerned that I not take any photos featuring identifiable faces.  But I find that I need to go farther.  I am not going to aid the city, in the coming battle, by showing you, dear Diary, and anyone who reads you, any part of the kids' defences.  The judge's ruling showed the lawyer's complaint to be slapdash, but it still bought time for my peers' escape.  The coming battle will surely be pointless and one-sided, but I will honour those fighting it in my name, and provide no help to their opponents.

The fortress is much smaller than Cal Anderson Park as a whole; indeed, a bunch of tents remain outside the lines, though I have no idea whether they're still occupied.  Also well outside the lines is a really impressive tree:

Good night, dear Diary.  Should you, or anyone reading you, want more information, I recommend the coverage in The Seattle Times and in Capitol Hill Seattle, which latter in particular provided a link to the complaint, and direct access to the ruling.

Two Last Strays

Dear Diary,

This page introduces two last parks, after which I think I'll have told you about all the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation parks in North Seattle that can be found from two lists:  in the department's website, and in the city's annual "real property report" for 2020.  Now, that report is completed and sent to the city council in January of each year, so I can't claim to be genuinely up to date.  But at least last year, the new one wasn't available online yet by May, so for some months it'll probably be difficult to find out about additional incipient parks, which is what these two are.

I visited both parks on days I spent mainly visiting street ends, October 14 and 20.  I also spent most of October 17 on that.  You may remember, dear Diary, that I introduced street ends back on October 8, in "Lake Union's North Shore", and included in that page photos of varying quality.  This bothered me, so I thought about what photos would really be useful in presenting a street end, and visited or re-visited all those in North Seattle on those three days, trying to take three photos each.

Most North Seattle street ends belong to the Department of Transportation, not the parks department, and like other parks not Parks' I've found in North Seattle, have no water fountains, let alone restrooms.  The two parks this page is about also lack these amenities.  My purpose in visiting everything I could, between April and October, was simply to make sure I could say with confidence where water fountains and restrooms could be found.

These two don't have them, and probably won't either, but I might as well get on with introducing them.

Laurelhurst Recreation Center

I was astonished that one of the new parks in the 2020 real property report, as against the 2019, was right across from Laurelhurst Playfield, just a few blocks horizontally and no more than a hundred feet vertically from where I used to sleep most nights, before this year.  I couldn't for the life of me figure out where in that part of Laurelhurst, a neighbourhood I thought I knew pretty well, a "Laurelhurst Recreation Center" could be.

Well, here's what's at the stated address:

I wonder how many of its students think of Laurelhurst Elementary as a "recreation center".

Now, I'm not privy to whatever dealmaking led to that line in the real property report last January, but I can guess, and my guess is that the parks department is mainly interested in, and the school district probably mainly wants help with, the playgrounds:

Well, we'll see.

Morningside Substation Site

On June 27, I wrote in you, dear Diary, a page claiming victory, like this page, in fact.  One way I know that claim, in "A Heavy Mile Stone", was wrong, is that in that page I dismissed this place, already listed in the 2019 property report, as obviously not a park.  Oops - the neighbours disagree.

It isn't at all big, a third of an acre, but some neighbours claim to have named it ("Wedgwood Community Park"), and others were meeting there on October 20 (obviously before I took the photo above), spreading seditious ideas like these:

It's a pity our wonderful mayor won't be around much longer to stand steadfastly against such talk, but we can't demand her whole life from her, after all.

Anyway.  Maybe I'm wrong this time too, but as best I know, I'm done introducing parks department parks to you, dear Diary.  Tomorrow I hope to tell you about my trip to Ballard October 16, and then I'm afraid it'll be several pages only shore-lovers could enjoy, as I go through the street ends.  So it may look like business as usual, dear Diary, but actually, I think I'm almost done writing you.  Maybe another month; I have some time-consuming hiking to do once the street end photos are off my phone.  But the end is in sight.

Trash in Cal Anderson Park

Dear Diary,

You must remember that I wrote in you, about a month ago, an argument that "Cal Anderson Park Is Not a Park".  Since then, thousands, nay billions, of people have, um, not read it.  Flush from this success, I want in this page to focus on one part of that argument.

We were told, and I repeated, that the closure was for purposes of "cleaning and repair".  This turns out to be a summary of rather more complicated wording in the original announcement, but a pretty good summary.  Now, "repair" may be difficult to show from photographs (at least without before and after), but vision is the usual way we assess "cleaning".  So if, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, prepare for 40,000 words' worth of the titular trash in Cal Anderson Park as of September 30.

These pictures aren't all that appealing, and are pretty repetitive, so I'll say my piece up front.  Seems to me two reasonably organised groups have effectively claimed, in recent months, to control Cal Anderson Park.  Let's call these "the city" and "the kids".  I'm pretty sure both groups' leaders and many of their members would agree that environmental stewardship and public health are Good Things.  Neither group is showing this by their actions concerning the trash, and although the city is led by our wonderful mayor, I must admit that the far too little that is being effectively done is all the kids' work.

Addresses in this page are not in "NE" and are not abbreviated by omission of any directional signs.

Titration

I took most of these pictures in late afternoon.  Much park trash removal is done in mornings, so eventually I decided to shoot pictures of some nearby trash cans for comparison.  First, from a bus shelter on the north side of E Pine St, just steps from the park:

Next, from the ground level of the Sound Transit station on the south side of E Denny Way just east of Broadway:

Although these cans varied in fullness, it wouldn't be completely unreasonable to call them all about half full.

The City's Work

The current closure system is supposed to consist of people who inform visitors of the closure.  I wasn't informed myself, so I don't know whether any of the people I saw in the park were such people, but most of those I saw had obvious non-closure-related activities in progress, so probably weren't.

I overheard many conversations in the park, mostly while following the paved path equivalent to E Olive St and its southward continuation, with the common theme of disapproval of the Seattle Police Department, which has carried out at least two closure enforcement efforts.

I looked for the closure signs profusely posted in July, of which only ten remained a month ago.  This time I found only one:

The fence mentioned and photographed in the previous page no longer encloses the restrooms, but that doesn't exactly mean they're open:

The Kids' Work

Cal Anderson Park is much longer north-south than east-west, and the main places I saw the kids having a positive effect on the trash were in the middle, along the paved path at the level of E Olive St, and around the gravel path near the western side, north of the paved path and south of the water tower.  Examples:

I should probably also count in this category a rack of clothing well south of all this, in the playfield.

The Bad News

I'm grouping these geographically, based on my memory of my route, but I don't remember each individual trash can and may have a photo or two grouped wrongly at the edges of some groups.

North (along E Denny Way)

I only stopped to take one picture in the morning, when, as mentioned in the previous page, I was accompanied.

When I returned alone, not much had changed:

These photos were taken from the park entrance at 11th Ave and E Denny Way.  Here's the entrance at Nagle Place and Denny:

From somewhere in between:

East (along 11th Ave)

The entrance at E Howell St.  I was trying to catch four trash cans at once, of which I think three are visible, one not overflowing.  The bright green satchel in the foreground was, at that time, my own trash transport system, and not the fault of any other park visitor.

Along the Paved Paths

Along the North-South Gravel Path

(The blue and white object protruding into the left side of that photo is my umbrella.)

The Southeast

The West (along Nagle Place)