How to Lie to the Homeless, part IIB

Dear Diary,

As I told readers of the Seattle Times last year, I've spent much of my career as a temporary office worker.  This made it hard to learn skills in depth, though I did become "expert" in Form 5500 reporting during the 1990s, when this required a weird version of accounting, as a temp.  However, temp work does expose a person to many workplaces.  Thus, for example, I know that many working Americans prefer to think of their workplaces as uniquely crazy.  It's important to humour this belief.

More to the point, I also know a great deal about norms of office restrooms, and have some experience with restrooms of other kinds of workplaces (some of my jobs were in warehouses, for example).

And I never found one without a sink.

(Let me note one thing about that:  I'm aware that construction workers have to put up with "sanican"s without hand-washing stations daily.  Do they call those "restrooms" ?  Is that where the re-definition started?  In any event, I feel sorry for them, but that doesn't change my general argument.)

This carries forward to your pages, dear Diary.  Last month I visited every park restroom in North Seattle, and for every open men's room or all-gender room, tried to list for you the important contents.  That wasn't just a game, and it wasn't just so I could complain, as I did, about the creeping elimination of urinals.  I also wanted to establish that every park restroom in North Seattle has a sink in it, with the exception of the "Portland Loo" at Ballard Commons, whose sink is outside instead.

But during this pandemic, with the city of Seattle unable to make up for previous administrations' demolition of public restrooms, the city has been trying desperately to convince its homeless citizens that the "sanican"s it can afford to put all over are just as good as the restrooms it can't, even though health problems have repeatedly resulted when homeless people have been gullible or desperate enough to buy this claim.

In this quest, the city has gone far enough, as part IIA of this series demonstrated, to try to re-define an English word, "restroom", to define the sinks out of it.  Imagine for a moment what would happen if the city applied this re-definition everywhere.  "Wait a minute, where are the sinks in our new home?"  "Well, Seattle no longer requires sinks in dwellings."  Nope, homeless people are special.  We (I was, after all, homeless much of the time the city has been doing this) are supposed to be able to withstand things that nobody else would tolerate.

And in the forefront of this evil deed has been the city's "Homeless Strategy and Investment Division", a part of the Department of Human Services.  Perhaps serving the kinds of humans who become homeless is no longer part of that department's remit, and the strategy and investments are meant to sub-humanise us still further?

Let's look at what the Division did with a map bearing the title "City-Funded Hygiene Services Available During COVID-19".  Let's see the version of their explanation there today:

Oh, dear Diary, is that print too small for you?  Here:

COVID-19 forced hundreds of businesses and organizations to close their doors to prevent the spread of the virus. This map shows City-funded hygiene services that are open to people in need. These resources are provided by multiple City departments.

On the map below, please click on the Legend button for a description of what each of the different location symbols means.

All locations include access to restrooms. Some locations offer access to showers and laundry services. Some locations are open to the general public, whereas some are funded only for those experiencing homelessness and other locations are designed for specific groups of people such as women or children. Please click on the Filter Locations (Funnel) button to highlight specific types of services on the map.

Note: Layers must be turned on for filters to work properly. Please click the button in the upper right corner to Turn Layers On and Off. The map only shows OPEN restrooms and hygiene facilities. These facilities may unexpectedly close periodically due to vandalism, fires, and/or plumbing issues.

It's funny how they shouted their lies.

"All locations include access to restrooms."

They currently claim Cowen Park's restrooms are open.  Well, that could've changed since yesterday, when I found them closed.

This is more typical of their lies, though.  They admit that Gilman Playground's restrooms are closed, but bill the "sanican"s there as restrooms.  (They also claim a hand-washing unit, which I don't remember.  I guess I'll have to go back and look.  Anyway, that's data, which is the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation's bailiwick.)

I guess after that I don't need to explain what's a lie about "The map only shows OPEN restrooms and hygiene facilities."  Right, dear Diary?

There's a number near the bottom of each such info block that shows the total number of restrooms, as claimed by the city.  Here's Gilman's block:

Restroom Building and Portable Restroom: GILMAN PLAYGROUND
Location Name    GILMAN PLAYGROUND
Address    923 NW 54th St
Type    Restroom Building and Portable Restroom
Operational Status    24 hours
Operating Hours    24 hours (Sanican Only)
Notes   
24 Hour    Yes
City Department    Seattle Parks and Recreation
Total Restrooms (Buildings & Portables)    2
ADA Compliant Restrooms from Total    1
Hand Washing Units    1
Showers On Site    No
Showers   
Laundry   
Accessible by    General Public
Focus Population    All
Zoom to

Let's compare the total at Sandel Playground.  The parks department has actually been deploying "sanican"s at a furious clip - there are a bunch near the Green Lake Small Craft Center, and a new bunch in Ravenna Park, near the "upper" restrooms, apparently to replace the set that were near the "lower" restrooms but are now in Cowen Park.  I'm pretty sure I've seen a "sanican" at Sandel, too, but if that's the case, the datum hasn't reached this map yet:

Location Name    SANDEL PLAYGROUND
Address    9053 1st Ave NW
Type    Restroom Building and Sink
Operational Status    Open
Operating Hours    7 am - 7:00/9:00pm
Notes   
24 Hour    No
City Department    Seattle Parks and Recreation
Total Restrooms (Buildings & Portables)    1

One of the things that have offended me about this map from getgo is that every "sanican" is counted as a "restroom", but an entire building that might have five toilets and a urinal in it is counted for the same number.  There's a reason restroom buildings are more expensive than "sanican"s; it's because they're better.  I'm not sure what those numbers are being used to prove, but if it's anything important, the people being shown them should know that they're essentially lies too.

In any event, this is another example, ostensibly directed towards the homeless, of the city trying to re-define "restroom"s into things that don't need sinks.

Now let's look at the map's legend.

Portable Restroom and Sink
    
Hygiene Trailer with Shower, Toilet and Sink
    
Restroom Building and Sink
    
Portable Restroom
    
Restroom Building and Portable Restroom
    
Portable Restroom and Sink
    
Hygiene Trailer with Shower, Toilet and Sink
    
Restroom Building and Sink
    
Portable Restroom
    
Restroom Building and Portable Restroom
    
Laundry Services
    
24 Hours
   

Clear as day, right?

Not the way it's been used.  This, however, is a case where I don't entirely know where to assign blame.

The fundamental way the map lied to the homeless this winter was that it used the symbol for "Restroom Building and Portable Restroom" in cases where the restroom building was actually closed.  It's still doing that today for Gilman Playground and Cowen Park.

It isn't obvious to me whether that's a data issue, the parks department doing the lying, or a design issue, DHS doing the lying.  What I do know is that it's a lie.  Moreover, because I called attention to this throughout the e-mails I sent to, ultimately, two DHS employees and one parks department employee, I know that DHS was informed, but did nothing.

There are, of course, many detail errors.  For example:

Location Name    Urban Rest Stop - U-District
Address    1415 NE 43rd St
Type    Day Center
Operational Status Operating

DHS is the agency responsible for funding the Urban Rest Stop, so surely must know that that location has been closed since last November.  I told them so too, in my last e-mail in March.   But they continue to salve their consciences as to the shortage of actual restrooms in the U-District by sending homeless people to fenced-off, possibly demolished, rooms.

But fundamentally, here's the thing.  Parks and libraries often have problems thanks to homeless people, and can't necessarily be trusted to do good things for the homeless.  But the whole point of a "Homeless Strategy and Investment Division" ought to be that it tries to do good things for homeless people.  They should not have succumbed to what I assume is a mayoral directive to set up the Big Lie that homeless people don't need to wash their hands as other humans do.

There's been a certain amount of press about how demoralised that part of DHS has become, because it's supposed to essentially fold in favour of the county-wide office that's being set up, and the staffers don't know whether they'll have jobs soon.  I understand that stress; as a lifelong temp, I've had a great deal more of it than most people have had.  But it's no excuse for their continued attempt to render anyone who lacks a permanent place of abode sub-human.

I'm sorry to leave you on such a bad note, dear Diary, but I've now spent three weekdays running on work for you, in the month in which I really must empty my storage.  So good night, dear Diary, and a good week.

 

Escaping Green Lake Park, part II

Dear Diary,

I've put off writing this page and the next one as long as I can, because they tell a story that was no fun to live through, and is no fun to remember.  I have no photos to illustrate either page, for reasons that will become obvious.

I should clarify, though.  The first "Escaping Green Lake Park" page has the immediate political purpose of shaming the parks department into providing a real sidewalk on part of Aurora Ave N for which it's responsible.  The page "Escaping Carkeek Park" has the long-range political purpose of getting consideration for pedestrians built into the next plan for repairing NW Carkeek Park Drive.  But this page doesn't have any such purpose; I don't actually want to live in a world that would prevent stories like this one from happening.  I just also don't want to live through that story again.

The last page about my January hikes ended with me pushing my new cart through the rain to Webster Park.  Webster Park is near NW 65th St, but I knew from quite recent experience that I didn't want to approach Green Lake, or Woodland, Parks from that direction.  So I trudged back to NW 85th St and walked to Green Lake Park from there.

I entered via Winona Ave N and Stone Ave N, and on arriving at the Bath House restrooms found them locked.  I'm not really sure what time it was, but it was certainly late enough that they well should have been locked.  From there I started around the loop path clockwise, against the current rule, but I certainly didn't want to deal with the long distance counter-clockwise to the Shellhouse restrooms.

You must imagine, dear Diary, every few feet a giant pool, as I went along the trail.  The wading pool restrooms, I missed entirely in the dark and the rain.  Now, you understand, I hadn't actually entered a restroom since mid-day, and it was pretty late.  So I was relieved to find the Community Center restrooms still open.  The toilets were both disgusting for some reason, so I settled for a urinal, which didn't flush properly, and then soaped my hands ...

Only to find that the water was shut off.  Hence the problems with toilets and urinal.  The open doors were a macabre joke on anyone fool enough to be outside in the weather.

It turns out that even fairly intense rain isn't good at rinsing even fairly lame soap from one's hands.  I finally had to rub my hands across a bunch of bushes' leaves to remove the soap.

Wow, did I want to escape.  Well, there's quite a path right next to the Community Center, so I started up it, only to find myself wading.  This didn't make any sense to me - I was going uphill, after all - so I ignored it until it was far too late to turn back.  At its deepest, the water reached my knees, which was also quite deep enough to soak all my bedding.

That's why this page has no photos.  I still can't make sense of the lake I found there.  Nor is it any more plausible as a river:  there was a lot of rain in Seattle that night, but I don't think there was enough near there to maintain a flow that deep for any length of time.  Since I don't understand the phenomenon, I can't see under what circumstances it might recur, so I could photograph it.

Anyway, eventually I escaped the Green Lake Basketball Court Lake and reached, well, wet ground, anyway.  Now, dear Diary, although your presently most popular page talks about shivering, it doesn't go into my classification of shivers, which is necessary here.

Shivers are primarily involuntary, but can sometimes be partly controlled, or even voluntarily so.  When I can control my shivers, I usually focus them in my hands, and either wave them back and forth in an arm imitation of walking, or rub them between my knees if I'm sitting down.  Early in my homelessness - say, 2013 - I was doing the latter, covered by a blanket, on a since-removed bench in front of the Capitol Hill branch library, when a rather younger, but still professional, man walked by, and jeered at me for masturbating, despite my denial.  He walked on, as pleased at having scored off a stranger as a teenager, and I didn't realise until recently, thinking about this page, that by suggesting I could do that with my hands at my knees he was actually complimenting me.

Well, that may be a bad joke, but it's all the comic relief this page offers, because as I walked away from Green Lake Park, I wasn't doing (this is the classification) "little", controllable, shivers like that, but "big", uncontrollable, shivers.  Very big, rather like convulsions.

I needed food, and although I had some, I needed to get it without opening my cart's coverings.  The first restaurant I passed that was open is called O'Ginger's, and is apparently some sort of Chinese fusion place.  I remembered liking Thai cashew chicken, so ordered their version of that.  It turned out to be an enormous dish, which I ate in a sheltered alcove in the same building, just out of sight of the restaurant.  I also tried to write an e-mail, but water had gotten into the phone, and I had to stop.

After the hot meal, the shivers subsided somewhat.  I actually managed to reach several more restroom pairs that night, and then set about finding shelter for the night.  This is when I was deranged enough to figure out the route that allows pedestrians to walk Aurora, but when I finally returned to Aurora, didn't recognise it, and had to walk Linden Ave N for several blocks before I'd believe that the next street was Aurora.

Shivers were starting to come back by the time I passed the fenced-off Everspring Inn.  Fortunately, soon after I saw a name I recognised.  Nobody had ever told me there was a nationally franchised business among the universally reviled Aurora Ave motels, but there it was, a Travelodge.  What's more, it had a vacancy, and allowed me to check in.

I stayed there the rest of that night (it was 2 A.M. by that time) and two more.  You already know, dear Diary, that on January 13 I returned to Golden Gardens Park and Sandel Playground.  But what else I did there is for the next two pages.

The End of the Tour

Dear Diary,

How have you been?  I see you've had a lot of visitors the last day or two.  I hope they were all wearing masks.  I was busy doing something I thought I had to finish in one big heave, but I'm sorry I neglected you for so long, especially since I'm still telling you about my hikes in mid-October.

At least this page should finish one of the hikes.  The previous page, "To the Beaches!" all of two weeks ago, left me trying to sleep at View Ridge Playfield's picnic shelter the night of October 12.  I woke there October 13, verified that the water fountain still wasn't running, and continued north to 75th St, getting food at the Safeway at 35th Ave.  Continuing along 75th, I stopped at 30th to take a photo of Maple Leaf hill:

Well, at least that's what I was trying to show.

My destination, way over at 25th Ave, was

Dahl Playfield

I wanted to do three things:

• verify that the water fountain still wasn't running (it wasn't)
• take a photo
• and take a video.

The photo had to do with a mistake I'd repeatedly made.  I've visited this park just enough to have picked out a preferred spot in it, one of a pair of picnic tables near the path from the park entrance to the restrooms.  Just south of those tables, a thin screen of ?saplings separates the tables from what, in the summer, had looked like a child-sized trail, and I'd thought, "how remarkably thoughtful!"

When I visited earlier in October to begin my water fountain census, of course I found out that this was actually a creek bed, dry in summer but, well, not in fall.

Finally the video.  When I came here on June 27 I think I took one, but then deleted it.  This time I didn't even take it.  But my past failures to describe correctly what makes the men's room at Dahl Playfield uniquely non-private, even compared to other restrooms without stall doors, weighed on me, and some time later I shot this one.  I'll try to embed it, but since I flagged this one as age-restricted from getgo, and my embedded videos aren't working properly, I don't have much hope where this one is concerned.

So here's a link to my demonstration that there's no privacy for men at Dahl Playfield.

Anyway.  There's a reason I've visited Dahl Playfield so often.  See, it's right across the street from the last of the "last seven" parks, as I then thought they were, that I visited on June 27:

Picardo Farm

Have you ever wondered what the "P" in "P-Patch", the name in Seattle for community garden spots, means?

Around the middle of the 20th century, there were still farms in the Ravenna neighbourhood, but by the 1960s only one was left, and it was on its last legs.  Neighbourhood activists worked out a deal by which the city bought the farm, and parceled it out into individual garden spaces.  When people in other areas demanded their own places, the name of the farm's family - Picardo - got attached.  Hence P-Patch.

I mentioned re Maple Leaf Community Garden (in "Six Parks in Search of Another") that most P-Patches are assigned by the city to the Department of Neighborhoods, which runs the program in all of them, and that when a P-Patch was instead accounted to the Department of Parks and Recreation, it was worth asking why.  In this case, I think it's inertia.  I don't know that the DoN even existed when the city bought Picardo Farm; it certainly didn't get the property, which has, I assume, been treated as belonging to Parks ever since.

One of the many distinctive things about Picardo Farm is its size:

Another is its plumbing.  It doesn't have a water fountain, but oh mama, does it ever have a sink:

Near the sink is the sign explaining the history I probably butchered above:

Continuing east to the northeast corner, we reach ... well, not plumbing, not exactly, but a restroom nonetheless:

If you Google "Picardo Farm", one of the first things you hear about - one of the main things they brag about - is their "composting toilet", shown above.  I didn't find it in June, but whenever I did, it was ringed with signs admonishing visitors to use sanitiser, which was offered on a nearby table.  Now, I would think that a good idea regardless of the pandemic, but when I returned in mid-October the table, sanitiser, and, I think, some of the signs were gone.

Did I mention that Picardo Farm is big?  Three acres, not large for a park, but huge for a P-Patch.  Not that parks that size normally get plumbing or restrooms, either.  So of course Picardo Farm also has a picnic shelter:

Well, enough.  Picardo Farm really is a P-Patch, which means the rules governing visitors from the general public differ from those applicable in parks; in particular, the hours are shorter.  (Which is one reason why I didn't yell and scream about the restroom earlier; Dahl Playfield, even with less privacy, has a sink and longer hours, and is clearly preferable.)  Visitors should read and heed those rules.

Roosevelt Land-Banked Site

When I looked up the address, 1321 66th St, I was sure the parks department had made yet another deal for, well, this:

But it's only a fifth of an acre, which even I know is too small for a football field, and the address turns out to be across the street:

I don't know whether the department plans to put a park there after the construction office closes, or to trade the land for some other parcel, but anyway, my Rand McNally maps are still wrong about Roosevelt High School being park land.

I headed from there toward Wallingford, for reasons I'll get to soon, but stopped along the way to visit

Froula Playground

Like Bitter Lake Reservoir Open Space, this park is built next to a reservoir, but offers not a drop to drink, so I tend not to pay it much mind, but thought I should make up for saying virtually nothing about a place so close to the UW - 12th Ave and 72nd St - by taking a picture:

Note the concrete seat in the foreground.  This place just keeps finding new ways to disappoint me.

There are two parks department parks left that I haven't told you, dear Diary, about yet, even though both are in "NE".  I reached one on October 14, the other October 20.  I wanted to finish the job in this page, but to start and then run up against Blogspot limits would be worse than just starting a new page from getgo, so I'll stop here for now.  Until the next page, dear Diary.

Standing Room Only, Part V: Elsewhere

Dear Diary,

Whew!  Just one more page, and I can go back to telling you about October 11 and 12, and then October 16 and 17.

This page is actually sort of about those dates too, as well as about October 9 and 10.  Because I saw a picnic shelter discussed in this page on each of those pairs of dates:  I slept in Carkeek Park's shelter 2 between the 9th and 10th, and in one of Golden Gardens Park's between the 16th and 17th, and visited Maple Leaf Reservoir Park's rentable shelter both the 11th and 12th.  (It isn't at all a good place to sleep, plus I was harassed both dates.)  It's worth remembering that each of those nights was rainy; I had to plan those hikes around shelters.

Carkeek Park

Carkeek Park has two shelters, but unlike Magnuson or Woodland Parks, or to anticipate a bit Golden Gardens or Maple Leaf Reservoir Parks, the two at Carkeek Park have very little in common.

I had rushed to Carkeek Park from way across town at Mineral Springs Park.  Of course I wanted to check on Carkeek's water fountains, and I had to take pictures at the Blue Ridge parks on Carkeek's other side.  But I also expected rain, and wanted a shelter roof over my head very much.  When I saw what I'd be getting, I couldn't believe my luck.

The luck held, too.  Soon after my arrival, a loud crowd of kids - high school or college, I thought - started trickling in.  Apparently they'd planned to have a party in that building, but when they found me there, they gamely went on to shelter 1:

and didn't even reconsider their generosity when a torrential rain hammered their party and got them to flee.

Particularly relevant to this set of pages' focus, shelter 1 shelters no tables at all, shelter 2 (which is indeed the WPA project it looks like) three.  This is, of course, reflected in their daily rates at Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation:  $120 for #1, higher for #2 - but frankly, the latter is a preposterous steal at just $195.  Just compare their rain resistance - shelter 1:

versus shelter 2:

The problem, of course, is location.  Carkeek Park's shelters are on the park's main, upper, level, not on its beach; those at Golden Gardens, and the beach one at Magnuson, Parks are all level with their beaches.  Separately, location is also the problem for homeless habitation.  It's years of hard travel - well, anyway an hour or two, largely on gravel - to the QFC on Holman Road.  You could only live in shelter 2 if you had a partner you could trust to protect your stuff, every time you went for supplies.  At least there's a working water fountain, but for how long?  (Neither shelter's sink was on; I'll spare you the photos I took of them.)  Oh, and, of course, the ultimate 21st century deal-breaker:  no electricity.  So no, I won't be abandoning my doorway for Carkeek Park's palace in the sky.

I suppose what stories I have of Maple Leaf Reservoir, or of Golden Gardens, Parks belong not here but in the stories of the hikes themselves.  (I will end the suspense right now on one count though:  the young woman quoted in part I has not become the partner I'd need to live at Carkeek Park.)

Maple Leaf Reservoir Park

The rentable shelter is on the upper level of this two-tiered park.  It is overwhelmingly made of metal.  Seems to me all the parks in this page are even more unlikely to be in the path of a homeless wanderer seeking a seat than Woodland Park's shelter 7.  But at Maple Leaf, that wanderer would only find metal seats anyhow.  It's $210 per day.

This shelter does have electricity, though.

There's another shelter on the lower level, also all-metal.  It's still too small to rent out; maybe in a decade or so it'll have grown big enough.

Meadowbrook Playfield

I only noticed this shelter out of sentimentality.  When I was testing the nearby water fountain on October 12, I noticed some kids sitting there.  At first I just envied them the shade they had, but then it penetrated my thick skull that they were playing D&D, or something similar, just like my friends and I at their age.  Anyway, they left before I did, so I took a picture of another non-rentable shelter.

With, sigh, metal seats.

Golden Gardens Park

As mentioned above, these shelters are practically on the beach.  So of course they partake of the beach ethos, that rain does not exist, and neither is really designed as shelter at all, so much as shade.  (They're basically identical, including in price, each $120 per day.)

I survived because each does have a table, shoved against its other amenities at the dryest place in the "shelter".  I bumped my cart up against the table and sat myself and my satchels on it too.

Well, as shelters at Magnuson and Maple Leaf Reservoir Parks and Meadowbrook Playfield have shown, not all park picnic shelters are listed in the rental list.  There are also other kinds of shelter with seating in some parks.  In particular, if seeking such, be sure to try the baseball fields' bullpens.  But I trust this is enough to show that the parks can't single-handedly provide the sheltered seating homeless people will want this winter.  I hope this winter won't be standing room only for me, but it will be for too many of us.

Standing Room Only, Part IV: Woodland Park

Dear Diary,

Well, that turned out to be more than a few hours, didn't it?  Sigh.  Anyway.  This page is about the seven rentable picnic shelters of Woodland Park, which are in the western half of the eastern block of that park, the block called by the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation Lower Woodland Park.

These shelters are in woodlands, rolling in the north, flatter in the south, and those hills, plains and valleys were, when I visited in early October, crowded with tents.  You may remember, dear Diary, that in the two pages titled "South of North Once More", a geological age or so ago, I expressed surprise that pretty well all the homeless people I'd seen in Green Lake Park, both tent campers and shocked-looking men I interpreted as newly homeless, in early June, were gone in early October.  What I didn't say then was that the homeless population in Woodland Park, specifically the west and especially the northwest of Lower Woodland, had grown exponentially.  I have good reason to believe that the main attraction is electricity, piped by a vast network of extension cords from the shelters that have it.  Shelter sink water may matter, too, not so much as a bonus, but making up for Woodland Park's desperate shortage of working water fountains.

This changed my approach to photography.  Surely you remember, dear Diary, that I prefer to show you only pictures that include no other people, and also no homeless people's tents.  I couldn't photograph most of these shelters without breaking both of these rules.  What I eventually settled on was that I could break them only from a distance.  You'll see what that means.

I'll cover these shelters from north to south.  I found basically three models for these shelters.  Some appear to be inhabited.  Some appear to be kept clear of residents, instead shared as a sort of kitchen among those living in nearby tents.  And I found one, with neither sink nor electrical outlet, empty.

Shelter 6

This is a very large shelter way up at the park's north end, and the department's price to rent it reflects that, $310 per day.  It's closest to the northernmost restrooms, and the lawn bowling greens those restrooms serve.  My understanding is that those restrooms are seasonal, and may by now have closed; however, the restrooms of the Small Craft Center in Green Lake Park aren't far.  The only working water fountain in the upper, western half of Lower Woodland Park is right outside this shelter's door, but of course I don't know whether it's still running.

It was, on October 7, much the most homelike of the shelters.  It was crowded with furniture and fabric, most of its unwalled sides blocked, but all in a reasonably consistent and uncluttered way.  I was totally unsurprised that the person who greeted me was a woman.  I certainly didn't ask her whether she hogged the shelter's amenities, whatever they were, or supervised their sharing among the nearby residents, but those struck me as the possibilities.

In this photo, the shelter is not the white structure at mid-right, but the brown one, obscured by trees, just above the picture's centre.  (The white structure, roofless, is useless as shelter.)

I observed signs of trash piling up along the way to this shelter, and I was surprised.  This is also the area where I specifically remember seeing messy tents such as I imagine refugees from Licton Springs would have.  They were, in early October, a small minority.

Shelter 5

I'm pretty sure this was, at that time, a shared kitchen; on the evening of October 7 I chatted a bit with people using it until an exceptionally territorial dog came after me, but don't remember getting to any of my questions.  It's the most obvious shelter from the main entrance to the area where shelters 4-7 are, what I've called the "hilltop".  Which means, of course, that the closest restrooms are those I've called by that name, and they're year-round.  (In last year's list of such restrooms, they were called "Pink Palace".)  They were also, like Carkeek Park's restrooms, open 24 hours while the driveway gates were shut.  The department rents this shelter for $160 per day in normal years.

Shelter 4

I didn't find this shelter, or any further south, in the gathering dark October 7, and didn't encounter any residents October 8, also true the rest of the way.  This one appeared to be another shared kitchen.  Again, the closest restrooms are the "Pink Palace" hilltop ones; as for water, we're far enough south now that I'm not sure which of the Small Craft Center, shelter 6, or the cloverleaf baseball fields downhill, would be the best choice.  The rent here is just $135 per day.

This is where I photographed something I'd observed also at shelter 6:  piled up trash.  I had then recently posted lots of photos of trash neglected at Cal Anderson Park.  In the coming days I'd see more examples at Licton Springs Park and at Bitter Lake Playfield, the latter corroborated by a resident.  It's a relief to know that our wise and forethoughtful mayor has asked that the relevant program's budget increase next year.

Shelter 7

This is the empty and amenity-free shelter.  It's the furthest from the road of these four, and has much more seating than shelters 4 or 5; that seems to be a criterion for price, which here is $185 per day.  So in the extremely improbable case that a homeless person looking for a place to sit by day were somewhere near this shelter, it might be a reasonable place to try.  Of course, in the intervening month and a half, it could have passed into some sort of use.

These four shelters are those of northwest Lower Woodland Park, and are easiest reached from West Green Lake Way.  A gravel path connects the area with that where shelters 1-3 are, but the usual entrance for those southwestern shelters is off 50th St onto a loop called Woodland Ave.  Shelters 2 and 3 are on the more obvious branch of that loop, from which I didn't see shelter 1 at all; shelter 1's branch of the loop is east of there.

The parks department rents each of the three out, in normal years, for $135 per day.  All three are nearest the southwestern restrooms, year-round ("50th St" in last year's list) and 24-hour this past summer while the gates were closed.

Shelter 2

My first reaction to this shelter's layout was that it was clearly one person's place, but now I'm not so sure; judge for yourself.

(Note the absence of bed and bedding, in particular; also the desk is too bare to bother setting up unless it were to be shared, maybe.)

Shelter 1

This time I wasn't any more sure then than I am now.

My guess was, shared; but I didn't rule out a single occupant, and am not now sure it wasn't vacant.  This is the most isolated of the southwestern shelters, as 7 is of the northwestern.

Shelter 3

I found this, um, shared, but not the way shelters 4 and 5 are.

In case you can't see the photo clearly, two tents occupy most of the shelter's area.

Which is a selfishly dispiriting end to this tour, isn't it, dear Diary?  I'm sorry.  For what it's worth, near as I can tell, none of the remaining shelters of North Seattle, covered in the next and final page of this set, were inhabited, when I visited, by people either communal-minded or selfish.

Standing Room Only, Part II: Near UW

Dear Diary,

I'm sorry!  Yes, I know this is days later than I thought it would be.  It turns out the only kind of page the Blogger app can handle is a simple one like the first page in this set.  It can't do headings at all, and while it allows photos, if you use more than a few, it trashes everything you've done the next time you leave the app to confirm something.  Anyway, it's taken me until today to get to Wi-Fi and try again.

The motivation for this page can be illustrated by the place I'm writing from, the Northeast branch of the Seattle Public Library.  If you're familiar with the building but haven't visited recently, see if you can figure out what's missing:

No?  Well, here's a hint:

Those post holes are where a fancy bench in memory of Sahir Dibee, 1943-1998, was over the summer, and I would guess long before that.  On that bench, this summer, one of my peers strongly preferred to sleep, and deeply resented my intrusions.  I'm currently sitting on my blanket, on the concrete there.  The simpler bench I sometimes slept on was to the left in the first photo.

I'm sure, if you asked, you'd be told the benches came out to accommodate the lines involved in what this branch misleadingly calls "curbside pickup".  I devoutly hope, when those lines go away because the library re-opens, the benches return.  If they don't, people will probably claim we homeless wrecked this porch for everyone.  Well, look:  this year, we've been allowed to sleep not only in parks, but under limited restrictions on the UW campus.  How would we know the libraries would hold our use of an apparently new freedom against everyone?  So I hope that doesn't happen, hope Sahir Dibee can long be honoured in the same place as before.

Anyway, this page begins my coverage of the rentable picnic shelters, and a couple more, in North Seattle, with just one, the only one genuinely near the UW.

Ravenna Park

I don't claim to know where all the picnic shelters are in North Seattle, but I'm quite sure there are no picnic shelters of any kind in the plethora of parks in the corner defined by I-5 and 60th St except for this rentable one in Ravenna Park.

It doesn't impress me despite this distinction.  In particular, the page's title is far too apt:  This shelter does have a sink (off this year) and a grill that for all I can see might even include an oven, but is otherwise far too lacking in furniture.

I've now slept in several shelters.  If I were trying to sleep here, as at a similar layout in the Golden Gardens Park shelters, I'd put my satchels on the grill and sit there myself, and rely on the cart to keep my other stuff out of the wet.  The photo just above was early in my work on this series of pages, and I was very impressed by the uselessness of this shelter's few walls.  I was wrong:  sure, they are useless, but most rain actually does fall straight enough down that a roof like this really is a big help.

But I'm trying to focus, here, on how few dry alternatives we have to standing by day, and I think we can agree that sitting on that grill would get old fast.  Helpfully, there's no electricity here (not that I checked at every shelter).

Amazingly, in a normal year, the parks department would expect to get $110 per day for that shelter.

Next, with somewhat less talk, the shelters of Magnuson Park, View Ridge Playfield, Meridian Playground, and Gas Works Park.

We've Been Scooped!

Dear Diary,

Isn't it wonderful?  Yippee!  Yahoo!  Both parks and hygiene are now cool enough again in Seattle to get covered by major media!  In the same week!  It's like winning the lottery!

That Sink in the Alley Is Supposed to Be There by Nathalie Graham for The Stranger, October 16

Seattle Opens New Waterfront Park on Portage Bay in 'Spectacular Spot' Where Police Station Once Stood by Daniel Beekman for The Seattle Times, October 17

I haven't seen a "Seattle Street Sink" yet, but did, purely by chance, visit the new park on its first day open last week, so, dear Diary, I hope you're as comforted as I am that we aren't alone now, and I'll get on with putting my ideas about, and pictures of, the new park into you soon.

Top of the City, Part II

Dear Diary,

Today's page is about four parks - or five if you count as the parks department does - that are all pretty close to each other, and that, taken together, project an image of an almost normal spring in the parks.  Two have no plumbing; in the other two, only one shut-off water fountain attests the current abnormal situation.

They're also all kind of hard to enter, so I'm giving more detailed directions.  They're all between 1st and 15th Avenues and 125th and 145th Streets.

Jackson Park

The parks department's website lists 413 parks.  It does not, however, list among those Jackson Park.  This is partly because it leases much of the park to a private company, Premier Golf.  (So this is the flip side of Nathan Hale Playfield and Cedar Park.)  Sad to say, this private company does a significantly better job of running things than I've found elsewhere in northeast Seattle.  Only two other parks there have all their plumbing working - Burke-Gilman Playground Park and Little Brook Park - and those two have only one or two restrooms and one water fountain each.

Visited May 14, 15, 26 and 27; over four restrooms, at least two pairs open, and at least two water fountains, both running

Jackson Park is, according to the parks department website and signage, two entirely separate not-quite-park entities:  Jackson Park Golf Course and Jackson Park Perimeter Trail.  Both are easiest to enter from 15th Ave, but the actual entrance to the golf course and the most informative entrance to the trail are further west, officially at 10th, actually best reached from 11th Ave and 130th St.  A sign for the trail near that intersection has a map of the trail on its trail-facing back.  As for the golf course, from 11th and 130th look around and identify the most active parking lot.  At that lot's head, you go up a steep incline to reach the main golf course buildings open to the public.

I don't buy the idea that these are two separate non-parks.  For one thing, both have the same official hours, "Dawn to Dusk", which is decidedly non-standard for Seattle parks.  However, all the plumbing is in the golf course.  I found much too little information online about the trail, so when I get the chance, I'll describe it in more detail.  Meanwhile, the golf course.

I didn't visit the course proper, only the cluster of buildings at the top of that hill.  There are essentially three - a cafe, which wasn't open anytime I was there; a shop staffed by professional golfers, so called the "pro shop", the course's nerve centre; and a building supporting a driving range, which is free and open to the public.  Each of these has restrooms.  One pro assured me that all these restrooms are open to the public; another, that no Premier Golf employee would block a well behaved member of the public from them.  I'm unsure anyway about the cafe - aren't restaurants in general still keeping their restrooms closed?  But the driving range has two single-user rooms; the shop's men's room features several toilets, with the usual privacy features so often lacking for park toilets.

I tried the driving range's men's room; it had hot water, believe it or not, but was out of soap that morning, May 27.  (So was BGPP's men's room, for days now.  I take this as a good thing, actually - it implies that parks employees are prioritising getting the rooms open, not getting them perfect - though of course in a better world I wouldn't need to carry hand soap.)

The water fountains I found are side by side between the restrooms at the driving range.  Of course there could be others.  Some talk about how Jackson Park adapted to the coronavirus mentions "restrooms" removed from the course itself, but I'm told these were only, as this implies, "sanican"s.

Licorice Fern Natural Area

Visited May 15; no plumbing

We've already seen with Mock Creek Ravine that individual parts of the Thornton Creek Natural Area can have their own names.  It now turns out you can have nested Natural Areas, as here.  Licorice Fern has, according to Google, not the parks department, an address, and if you go to that address, the dead end of 130th St west of 12th Ave, you find a greensward with two trails leading away.  I followed one, though not far, somewhat shocked by the idea of a trail anywhere near Thornton Creek.  (But wait until tomorrow...)  I found a map online (PDF) later according to which these two trails are the only ones, and excused myself on that basis from exploring further.

Flicker Haven Natural Area

Visited May 15 and 27; no plumbing

This is the current official name of an area south of Jackson Park, or sometimes considered itself the southwest of Jackson Park.  It has also been known as "Thornton Creek Park #1".  I haven't been able to reconcile descriptions of that with what I've found except by assuming the descriptions actually refer to the P-Patch which is in the northern end of what Google Maps thinks of as this park.  That P-Patch is on 10th Ave just north of a notional 130th St, on 10th represented by an overpass.  

The 8th Ave border isn't much more informative.  I couldn't tell whether the dead end of 130th St east of 8th included any public property.  Where 8th Ave turns and becomes 8th Ct, a trail appears, continuing north in the line of 8th Ave until it descends, probably to merge with the Jackson Park Perimeter Trail.

This page has a sort of map, but at least on my phone it doesn't render well.  Evidently people have worked within this area, but I don't know how they entered.

On this trip, I already knew I'd be covering Green Lake and other parks with strictly "N" addresses.  There are only two parks west of I-5 with "NE" addresses; since this next one has restrooms, I decided to cover them in this trip and set of pages.

Northacres Park and Playfield

Visited May 15 and 27; two pairs of restrooms (one all-gender single-user), for openness see below, and three water fountains, two running

This park is both terribly and excellently named.  It's entirely south of Jackson, Little Brook and Cedar Parks, and it's smaller not only than Jackson and Magnuson Parks but also than Ravenna Park and Matthews Beach.  But it still feels like acres, especially along its thickly forested north side, which stretches from I-5 to 1st Ave along 130th St, and it's still pretty far north for most of us.  As for its surname:  in Seattle's park nomenclature, "park" outranks "playfield"; Magnuson Park has a dozen ball fields, but nobody tacks an "and Playfields" onto its name.  This, too, however, makes sense, as I'll explain.

Northacres Park has the less common of the Seattle parks' two usual schedules.  It used to have the more common, and in this photo I can only hope you can see the different schedules on the two signs:

The two schedules are 4 A.M. to 11:30 P.M. (the default) and 6 A.M. to 10 P.M.  I suspect but do not know that the latter is usually thanks to neighbours.  Other parks I've covered that open at 6 are:

Laurelhurst Playfield

Ravenna Park

University Playground

Matthews Beach

Albert Davis Park

The park's official address is on 1st Ave, near a notional 127th St.  There one finds a seemingly ordinary park, with two age-specific playgrounds, a basketball hoop crowded by art, and weird plumbing:  two single-user all-gender restrooms, with two winter-hardened water fountains attached.  The weirdest thing about this not so ordinary park, however, is that in several directions it's surrounded by woods.

I don't remember any issues with the restrooms, which I used on May 15, except that I found them locked.  I'd had little luck calling the parks department weeks earlier, but decided to try again, and not only reached someone, but he got multiple parks employees to come unlock them.  On May 27 I filled two 20-ounce bottles from the water fountains and found it good water.

The guy who actually unlocked the rooms on May 15 represented himself as the boss of the person who'd forgotten to.  He's the one who told me Little Brook's restroom had reopened - he'd done that the same morning.  He wouldn't give me his name, but said he was close to retirement; I'll probably quote him enough to get him in trouble if any of his bosses ever read any of this, but doubt the trouble would be serious.

For now, however, I only need to thank him for pointing me to the playfield, which is in a different clearing in the woods, several blocks away.  This is why "and Playfield" makes sense to me here.  You reach Northacres Playfield by continuing south on 1st Ave, turning left onto 125th St, and turning left again on 3rd Ave.  This is a couple of baseball diamonds, a couple of picnic tables, restrooms and a water fountain; on May 27, without a game going, I found it kind of sad.

That day I used the men's room (which was open on both May 15 and May 27).  It was poor for privacy, but not as bad as Waldo Dahl Playfield or Little Brook Park.  Its sink, however, is of the same design as the one I remember from Cal Anderson Park:  spraying so much water horizontally that it's much better for soaking whatever's in your pockets than for washing your hands.

The water fountain, near but not visibly attached to the restrooms, is not running.  And that returns us to the real world of northeast Seattle's parks in May 2020, the last ten of which I'll discuss in less detail 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.