My February Hikes

Dear Diary,

To start with, I planned to tackle all the parks with restrooms in one region of North Seattle, that is, NE, N and NW, in one day off each.  In reality, on February 19th I visited the majority of NE parks; on February 26, the majority of NW (adding one on the 28th); on March 5 a few in NE and N; on March 12 only Salmon Bay Park; and on March 19 most of N.  (In each region I started in the north, to keep myself from focusing as usual on the closer-together parks further south.)  On March 22 (my day off had switched), I visited the parks of Greenwood and east of there, which were most of what was left, but it was already too late to evaluate their restrooms' winter availability.

In your previous page, dear Diary, I focused on the lists of park restrooms open in winter posted by Christina Hirsch in 2019 and in 2022.  In particular, I noted that of four restrooms or restroom pairs added to the 2022 list in North Seattle, three appeared to be outright lies (University Playground's restroom doors welded shut; Little Brook Park's restroom posted as seasonally closed; Salmon Bay Park's restrooms locked on two visits) and one, at best, a conflict between Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation management and the parks maintenance workers who actually open, clean, do minor repairs on, and close the restrooms, that is, Sandel Playground's restrooms, which now in two winters (2020-2021 and 2022-2023) have been advertised as open but have instead been closed.

However, I found other interesting things on these hikes, including but not limited to more lies, and so plan two other pages to tell you about them, dear Diary.  This is the first, and covers NE and NW.

February 19th

I've now uploaded most of the photos to Google Drive.  For this hike, that means Magnuson Park, Matthews Beach, Little Brook Park, all visited between 1 and 4 pm; then University Playground, Cowen Park, Ravenna Park, Burke-Gilman Playground Park and View Ridge Playfield, between 4 P.M. and 9 P.M.  (The restrooms at Burke-Gilman Playground Park, which I reached at 7:20 P.M., both had visible seasonal closure notices still up; those at View Ridge Playfield, which I reached at 8:04 P.M., stay open all the time, 24/7.  For which I was very grateful by that time, because all the other open restrooms - Magnuson Park's beach restrooms and Matthews Beach's - had been early in the hike.)

I found the street-style fountain near the intersection of the Burke-Gilman Trail and 30th Ave NE not running.  I didn't check the park-style fountain further south.

Other notes:

Magnuson Park

As the previous page noted, without going out of my way re water fountains, I found four that were running, of which three were attached to heated buildings.  The fourth was in Magnuson Park.  It was running strongly:

I was concerned enough about this - cold weather was then forecast - to write to Rachel Schulkin, PR at the parks department.  But I thought there was a real chance that someone in charge at Magnuson Park was doing a controlled experiment, comparing an attached fountain with a free-standing one.  So I told her the fountains should be turned off unless they represented such an experiment.

I think I was worrying too much.  I've told you before, dear Diary, that while homeless I began tracking low temperatures in spreadsheets - a succession of these as the electronic gadgets where I kept them broke or were stolen.  (And as my standards changed.  I originally just listed temperature readings from signs I passed on my way to campus.)  The surviving version goes back to 2019, and I still go to some trouble to keep that spreadsheet up.

Now, 2022 was distinctive compared to the other years I still have, and as best I remember going further back.  I track three thermometers:  one at the roof of the UW's Atmospheric Sciences building, measured every minute by UW personnel; one at Boeing Field, measured every five minutes by the National Weather Service; and one at NOAA's building on the UW campus, a couple blocks south of the Atmospheric Sciences building and much closer to the water, measured every hour also by the National Weather Service.  Historically, my comments on the spreadsheet concerned almost only missed readings at one or another of these.  UW was usually the highest, NOAA often the lowest.  But in 2022, NOAA's readings started going haywire, very often dropping by 8º Fahrenheit for a single reading, sometimes two or three times in 24 hours.  I noted these but only recorded more believable lows.  My complaints about NOAA's readings got ever more baroque as these "swoops" became more frequent and more extreme (for a time they were consistently 11º F in extent).  Finally October 1st to 6th, neither NOAA nor UW gave credible readings; readings at both ranged 11º to 15º F throughout those days.  From October 7th to November 23rd, NOAA was credible, the UW not; but on November 24th, NOAA swooped eight times, and this pattern of frequent swoops making it un-useable as a data source has been its pattern basically ever since, except for a few weeks around New Year's.  On November 28th, the UW came back, and has been steady ever since.  I've since learnt, from my work on the counties, that actually the Weather Service has multiple stations whose temperature readings regularly swoop; I suspect the main brand of thermometer NWS relies on is maybe not up to being used outside for years on end.

Anyway, though, this melange of sources reported a bunch of temperatures in the 20s before February 19 of this year.  November 9th, 2022:  NOAA 29º (Boeing 30º).  November 18th through 20th (both NOAA and Boeing).  December 1st and 2nd, also the 15th and 16th (all Boeing; UW higher).  December 21st through 24th (both UW and Boeing, and going down to 16º).  January 30th, 2023 (both UW, at 29º, and Boeing, at 21º).  So when I found that fountain running on February 19th, one of two things had to be true:  Either it was equal to 16º temperatures, or it was being closely supervised by someone able and willing to turn it off when such temperatures threatened.

So I shouldn't have worried so much.  It looks like Seattle parks could have a lot more running water fountains in typical Seattle winters, although if the explanation is close supervision, that probably doesn't scale up too well.

I didn't find the showers at either Magnuson or Matthews beaches running.

Ravenna Park

Both the 2019 list and the 2022 list said Ravenna Park's lower restrooms were open.  I know from when you began, dear Diary, that the 2019 list was telling the truth.  The 2022 list was not, and I can't imagine why a list that had clearly been actively compiled included the long-term-closed restrooms at Ravenna Park.

February 26th

Again, most of the photos are now at Google Drive, including Carkeek Park, Golden Gardens Park, Soundview Playfield, Loyal Heights Community Center, Salmon Bay Park, Ballard Community Center, Ballard Commons, and also the street water fountain at Greenwood Ave and 85th St, which was near a place where I changed buses, and which I found running very strongly:

Carkeek Park

Carkeek Park is distinctive among the parks of North Seattle with regard to its restrooms:  It's the largest park with only one restroom location.  Jackson Park, the next largest, has only one location for restrooms whose doors open to the outside, and all its restrooms are in one small part of the park, but most of the park is a golf course, which apparently makes that OK.  Otherwise, the next smaller park with only one set of restrooms is Maple Leaf Reservoir Park, one-seventh the size of Carkeek Park.

The reason Carkeek Park can get away with having so few restrooms is partly that most of what's interesting in that park is near those restrooms - the beach, the playground, the picnic shelters.  It's also partly that, like Jackson Park, it used to have park restrooms whose doors open indoors.  But then the Environmental Learning Center at Carkeek Park, which is way off at the other end of the park, much closer to city streets, closed to the public, leaving Carkeek with only one set of restrooms.

So what's new is that one of the ELC buildings has re-opened to the public:

In 2010 it was open Tuesdays through Saturdays, but 10 A.M. to 4 P.M.  So the current schedule is nearly as many hours, though, as in many libraries, it's managed this largely by expanding morning hours.

The front of this building has a lot of glass:

Through this I could see the doors of the restrooms, and could also see a couple of people working.  But they weren't formally open, and I didn't want to bother them (partly because, after all, I hoped to finish NW that day).

Golden Gardens Park

I vaguely remember that the showers here were running, unlike those at Matthews Beach and Magnuson Park.  But my photos don't document this, and it could be a false memory.

February 28th

Gilman Playground

As with Burke-Gilman Playground Park, I got here outside my usual hours limits (6:06 P.M.), but it was OK because there were still closure signs on the doors.  At Google Drive see here.

All for now, dear Diary.  I'll write up the March hikes in the coming days as my schedule allows.  Until then, happy nights and days.

Two Downtowns and Two Malls

Dear Diary,

On Monday I finally got to watch a movie my cousin had worked on, in the way I wanted to watch it.  I didn't find his name in the credits; they went by too fast, so I'll probably have to look on a DVD to say I've seen him listed.  But anyway.

I had some errands to run first.  One of them should've been on Capitol Hill, but ended up taking me downtown, where the others were anyway; the upshot was that I was in Bellevue in the evening instead of the afternoon.  But while I was in downtown Seattle, I found a street fountain I'd found before and forgotten about, which isn't on Seattle Public Utilities' list.

R. [595 Pine St]

I hadn't bought a newspaper - none of my plans for the day involved finding water fountains or restrooms, and although it was a splurge to go to the movie in the first place, I don't splurge quite so thoroughly as to buy something I normally can't afford just because I'm splurging.  I also forgot to take a location shot.  But this water fountain is at the southwest corner of 6th Ave and Pine St, and was running strongly Monday afternoon:

and giving good water.  (I expected trouble at the theatre over satchels, so didn't even bring a bottle, let alone food, for the journey.  Pretty soon I'll tell you, dear Diary, about another water fountain I drank copiously from Monday afternoon.)

On my way from the Bellevue Transit Center to the cinema, I found another street fountain:

a. [10501 NE 6th St, Bellevue]

It was not running strongly, in fact so weakly that I'd pretty much have had to kiss the bowl to drink from it:

For various reasons, I went back to Bellevue on an expiring transfer yesterday, so I was able to take proper shots, running with newspaper, and location, but again I forgot the location shot.

Lincoln Square North

Lincoln Square Cinemas does indeed have a box rule, and I'm pretty sure the satchel I carried exceeded it that day, but the ticketseller let me past.  I enjoyed the movie a great deal.  However, it only started after about twenty minutes of commercials and ten of previews, and it's a really long movie in the first place, and I really had drunk copiously from water fountains in downtown Seattle.

So when I left the theatre, I was thinking two things:  1) it was really unfair for me to generalise about Bellevue street fountains on the basis of one example, and 2) I couldn't do anything about this unfairness until I'd found a restroom.

This resulted in the shocking discovery that there are no public restrooms in Lincoln Square North.  Who ever heard of an indoor mall without restrooms?  I even found a map that showed no restrooms.  However, when I went back yesterday, instead of going all the way up to that map, I settled for one at the entrance, and that does show restrooms - in a different building, Lincoln Square South.

(Look closely at Level 2, dear Diary.)

This presented three possibilities:  i) The lack was unique to this particular mall.  ii) The lack was in common among the malls that present themselves as "The Bellevue Collection".  iii) The lack was normal for Bellevue, perhaps for suburban, malls generally.  Considering that I'd just finished an epic list of libraries for which I fairly often recommended shopping malls as nearby places with restrooms, this last possibility was concerning.

Bellevue Square

Fortunately, the lack of restrooms is in fact just something about that particular mall.  Bellevue Square, across the street from Lincoln Square North and also part of "The Bellevue Collection", has restrooms, and has good signage enabling me to find them.

 

The first photo shows the sign inside the Macy's through which I'd entered, the second in the actual shopping mall space.  The mall's restrooms aren't what I'd think it would supply for its wealthy target market, but aren't by any means bad.

On the other hand, Bellevue Square does take some trouble to hide its food court, which isn't at the center of the first floor as usual, but hidden in a corner of the second.  I'd gotten kind of hungry, and anyway it took no time at all to determine that the only thing I could buy to compensate for using their restroom would be food.  (Normally, I'd just buy a couple of gumballs.  But Bellevue Square has no gum machines, and anyway I had no change.)  Once I finally found the food court, it turned out to include a Great State Burgers location.  I see that chain favourably because of employees who offered me food from there when I slept down the street from a location, and more so after something I'll tell you about soon, dear Diary.  But I'd never eaten their food.  So I decided to extend the splurge far enough to get a cheeseburger.

(It was somewhat discouraging, given my own current search for work, that all three of the Great State employees whom I saw are middle-aged like me.  The two ticketsellers I saw at Lincoln Square Cinemas are at least middle-aged, possibly actually old.  Do businesses in Bellevue hire teenagers for upper management to make up for depriving them of more usual teenage jobs?)

Once I'd eaten (at an outside bench, of course), I started cudgeling Open Street Map, which unlike Google Maps tries to show street fountains.  What I found then on my phone turned out to be all the street fountains Open Street Map actually shows between NE 12th St and the line of SE 4th St, and between 100th Ave NE and I-405.  Here's a map of that area from Open Street Map:

That turns out to be on just a bit too large a scale to show Open Street Map's symbol for a water fountain, which I've finally figured out - it shows a very small tap delivering water into a slightly larger partly-filled cup.  (I'd always thought that cup was a flowerpot, and couldn't figure out what it was doing there.)  Fortunately, Bellevue itself thinks its downtown is somewhat smaller:

and the symbol shows just fine on that scale:

One of those is fountain a above.  Here are the other two:

b. [10840 NE 6th St, Bellevue]

This fountain I remember, sort of in front of the Bellevue Transit Center's visitor's center.  It was of the type in Northacres Park and Cal Anderson Park, where you have to wait for the water because of the freeze-proofing.  I don't remember ever visiting in winter to see whether it was on, though.

Maybe it's still there behind those hoardings, but I'm not betting that way.  In any event, it isn't accessible this year.

c. [375 106th Ave NE, Bellevue]

The fountain at this location is definitely still there and accessible.  It just isn't running:

So where Seattle has, let's see, at least twelve outdoor water fountains downtown outside the parks, Bellevue's rather smaller downtown has at least three. [1]  Fair enough.  But where six of Seattle's were running strongly last week and/or Monday, none of Bellevue's were running strongly yesterday.

That said, Bellevue, like Seattle, does have downtown parks, and one of them has working water fountains.  But this page has already gotten long enough, so I'll tell you, dear Diary, about that park and about my hike home afterward in another page later today.  Happy hours until then.

[1] Bellevue's street fountains are even less documented than Seattle's, which is an impressive achievement on the part of whomever they belong to.  So of course, since Bellevue's downtown is much less familiar to me than Seattle's, it's possible there are more in places I haven't looked.

Downtown Seattle's Street Fountains This Week

Dear Diary,

After three afternoons and evenings of returning to downtown parks, I've re-visited three-quarters of my list.  But it's going to take me a bunch of work to write the pages most of those places need, and I wanted to get something written before then.

So I'm singling out one category of place.  Or maybe two.

To start with, twelve drinking water fountains that Seattle Public Utilities maintains on the streets of downtown Seattle.  Their pseudo-map of these fountains was updated after I last discussed it in July 2021, and now includes most fountains known to me.  Specifically, what I refer to as a "street fountain" is two related things:  a drinking water fountain on a city street, but also a specific style of drinking water fountain that in Seattle, in my experience, is usually used on streets but not in parks.  All twelve of these fountains are recognisably that style.

Five other water fountains downtown that SPU doesn't list are also in the same style.  Four of those latter five are on sidewalks adjacent to parks owned by the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation; the fifth is actually inside such a park.  The parks are Westlake Park, Prefontaine Place, Pioneer Square with two fountains, and Hing Hay Park where the fountain is inside the park.  However, SPU isn't really consistent about this.  It lists a fountain in Occidental Square, and in North Seattle one (out of two) on the Burke-Gilman Trail.  Faced with such inconsistency, this page includes the five park-proximate ones too.

I haven't, in my hikes around downtown this week, been specifically looking for more street fountains; nor, for that matter, was I when I hiked around downtown last fall.  On the other hand, I did add a bunch of places to my initial lists last fall, and did add two so far this week; I'm not being completely unobservant.  But the fact is, SPU's initial June 2021 map showed fewer fountains than the current one shows.  So possibly there are downtown street fountains I haven't found and SPU still doesn't list.  Anyway, this page lists those known to me, in the order used by SPU, with the park-proximate fountains merged where I thought best.

Here's a map.  The SPU ones are black; the one in Occidental Square that's both SPU and parks is gray-green; and the ones that are only parks are green.

The pseudo-map presents the twelve as street addresses, and it can't be magnified to show downtown clearly.  So I name them both by the street addresses and by whatever else I think appropriate.  However, first:  I'm aware that my tagging system (well, Blogspot calls 'em labels, but they're tags) - anyway, I haven't tried to adapt it to downtown in any detail, let alone to specific street fountains there.  On top of which, the "labels" aren't even shown to readers reading on their phones.  So here are links to previous pages in which I've discussed downtown street fountains, and I'll cite those pages under each individual fountain as relevant.

1 - "Water Fountains:  Things We've Lost, Part II", 5/1/2020.

2 - "Ways to Fight Water Addiction", 6/18/2020.

3 - "Water Fountains - an Interim Report, Part III", 10/3/2020.

4 - "Credit Where It's Due:  Downtown Street Fountains", 7/5/2021.  This page includes two photos for each fountain covered, one to show where the fountain is, the other to show whether it provided water.  Page 2 did the same for the only fountain it covers; below, for fountains not covered by either page 2 or page 4, I provide location shots as well as water shots.  Page 4 also identifies three models of street fountains, differing at their bases.

5 - "Foolish Mortal Tackles Street Fountains Again", 7/6/2021.  This page includes no new visits to fountains, but mentions a few and maps both downtown and North Seattle street fountains.

6 - "Today's Hike: Many water fountains turned on in areas around the University", 7/10/2021.

Summary of this week's results:

• Running strongly - 7 (6 SPU, 1 park)
• Running other than strongly - 3 (1 SPU, 2 parks)
• Stripped to their bases - 4 (2 SPU, 2 parks)
  
• Completely missing - 3 (3 SPU, 0 parks)

Here they are:

A. 501 Olive Way

At the intersection of 5th Ave, Olive Way, and Westlake Ave.  Specifically, southeast of Olive and northeast of 5th.  Previously 1 (photo, damaged beyond use), 3 (photo, same condition), 4 (photos, damaged but useable).  Several of the northernmost ones downtown, in particular this one, now have a different bowl from the models shown in previous pages, in particular the three models shown in 4.

Yesterday evening, running strongly:

B. Westlake Park

This one is on the northeast side of 4th Ave, adjacent to the park.  If SPU gave it an address, that might be 1520 4th Ave.   Previously, 1 (photo, not running), 3 (photo, not running), 4 (photos, running strongly), 5 (only mentioned).

This afternoon, running unpredictably, but this photo is from yesterday afternoon:

C. 1529 3rd Avenue

On the southwest side of 3rd Ave, southeast of Pine St.  I haven't previously mentioned this specific one to you, dear Diary.

Yesterday afternoon, completely missing:

And a location shot taken this afternoon:

D. 1520 Pike Place

Near the northern corner of Post Alley and Pike Place.  I haven't previously mentioned it to you, dear Diary.

Yesterday evening, running strongly:

And a location shot taken this afternoon, which I obviously couldn't keep as clear of people as I prefer:

E. 100 Pike St

At the north corner of 1st Ave and Pike St.  Previously, 2 (photos, 1- location and 2 - damaged beyond use), 3 (photo, same condition), 4 (no photo, running).

Yesterday evening, running weakly:

F. 1000 2nd Ave

At the north corner of 2nd Ave and Madison St.  Previously 4 (photos, running), 5 (only mentioned), 6 (no photo, running, I didn't like the taste).

Yesterday afternoon, running strongly:

G. 1398 3rd Ave

At the east corner of 3rd Ave and Union St.  Previously, 1 (photo, not running), 3 (photo, not running), 4 (photos, running strongly), 6 (no photo, running, I didn't like the taste).

Yesterday afternoon, running strongly:

H. 898 3rd Ave

At the east corner of 3rd Ave and Marion St.  Previously, 6 (photo, not running).

Yesterday afternoon, stripped to its base:

This afternoon, a location shot:

Sorry it isn't clear, dear Diary.  You can see part of the fountain base there at the bottom.  I had trouble taking this picture because someone was standing just outside the frame; I think he was a messenger waiting for another delivery order, and he showed no sign of moving until he got one.  So I settled for this.

I. 200 Columbia St

Somewhere near 2nd Ave and Columbia St, presumably on the north corner.  Previously, 6 (couldn't find it).

I couldn't find it yesterday afternoon, either.  So this afternoon I came back and walked from Cherry to Marion streets and from 1st to 3rd avenues on both sides of the street, eight blocks of walking in all, just to see whether I could find any trace of this fountain.  And I couldn't.  My two leading hypotheses are:  1) Subsequent work on the sidewalks has erased the telltale signs of a completely removed fountain; or 2) This is SPU's little joke on anyone who relies on the map.

While SPU's addresses aren't all that reliable, they aren't nearly as bad as the parks department's.  So I looked particularly hard at the north corner, and took three photos to show that the pavement on that corner and for quite a way beyond it in each direction looks quite undisturbed.

J. 298 James St

At the west corner of 3rd Ave and James St.  Previously, 6 (no photo, damaged but useable).

This afternoon, stripped to its base: 

Also this afternoon, a location shot:

Another constrained shot.  Really, downtown is a lot more crowded than it was a year ago.

K. Prefontaine Place

This one is on 3rd Ave just north of Yesler Way.  If SPU gave it an address, that might be 501 3rd Ave.  I don't think I've previously mentioned this one to you, dear Diary.

Tuesday afternoon, stripped to its base:

\

And this afternoon, a location shot:

Pioneer Square

L. East

This one is on the north side of Yesler Way just west of James St.  If SPU gave it an address, that might be 120 Yesler Way.  Previously, 4 (photo, running, no location shot) and 5 (only mentioned).

Tuesday afternoon,stripped to its base:

And, you guessed it, dear Diary!  This afternoon, a location shot:

M. West

This one is at the northeast corner of 1st Ave and Yesler Way.  If SPU gave it an address, that might be 100 Yesler Way, or 600 1st Ave.  Previously, 4 (photos, running strongly), 5 (only mentioned).

Tuesday afternoon, and this afternoon, running strongly as a spray, which isn't to say it's the light, gentle kind of spray, but the kind you want for washing an inanimate object, say, or maybe watering a garden:

N. 201 Occidental Ave (Occidental Square)

At what would have been the southwest corner of Occidental Ave S and S Washington St if the park weren't there instead.  Previously, 4 (photos, running strongly; this is the one wrongly identified there as at the north end of "Occidental Park").

Tuesday afternoon, running strongly:

O. 201 S Main St

At the northeast corner of 2nd Ave and Main St.  (That address is wrong, implying the southeast corner.)  I haven't previously mentioned this one to you, dear Diary.

Tuesday evening, running strongly:

And one last location shot taken this afternoon:

P. 398 Occidental Ave S

At the northeast corner of Occidental Ave S and S Jackson St, a block south of Occidental Square.  Previously, 4 (photos, running strongly; this is the one doubly wrongly identified there as at the south end of "Occidental Park").

Yesterday afternoon, completely missing:

Q. Hing Hay Park

Well within the park, but near Maynard Ave S, the northwest corner of Maynard and S King St.  I accidentally included what amounts to a location shot in the page that introduced Hing Hay Park a year ago.

Tuesday evening, running strongly:

And here, as a reward for anyone who's actually read all the way through this page, is a revised map.  Bright blue for running, bright red for not running.

 

And that's all for tonight, dear Diary.  Once my bus pass runs out, I hope this weekend to finish "Library Hours Six Months Later" with the last of the private libraries, and then use what appears to be a lot of dry weather coming to hike the North Seattle parks before settling down to the academic libraries perforce left over from "Six Months Later", and then a much less ambitious series "Library Hours One Year Later".  There should also be much more coming about downtown, but first, I still have about 25 places to visit there tomorrow.  (Mainly Seattle Center and Westlake Ave.)  And I don't yet know how fast I can write all these many pages up, because I don't yet know whether I'll find work quite soon, or instead become homeless again quite soon.  So happy nights and days until we meet again, dear Diary.

Wallingford Playfield, Meridian Playground and a Street Fountain Today

Dear Diary,

While I remain preoccupied with things Korean, I'm also trying to get ordinary things done, and today I had to go to my bank, well south of my house.  So I decided while I was there to visit two parks near it.

This was shortly after 6 P.M., and both parks' restrooms were open.  Both parks' water fountains were running, as was the street fountain on N 45th St.  However, the latter was running so feebly that it was pretty hard to drink from.  That said, Meridian Playground's water fountain had been a poster child for water fountain neglect from the first time I visited in May 2020 until late last year, so it's a good thing that the metal thieves haven't returned to put it out of commission yet again.

The difference between fully and feebly running water fountains:

 

All the photos are at the Google Drive folders:  Meridian, Wallingford, and the street fountain.

Good night and good days until we meet again, dear Diary.

The Parks of Seattle's Downtown, part III: Southwest

Dear Diary,

Well, I'd done the first of the chores I needed to do in order to go hiking today, and by the time I was done it was pouring rain.  So I decided to exercise one of the privileges of the housed and stay home today, instead of running errands (which can be done at night) or going hiking (which can't, really).  The time change last night actually means that it'll be dark by the time I leave work, for some time to come, and for however long, within that time, as my current job lasts.  Since photos taken in the dark tend not to do what I want them to, and since it's hard to find park features in the dark, the temptation to take in a park on my way home will be greatly reduced.

It therefore won't be any sooner than Thursday that I can tell you about the parks of northwest or central downtown, and we'll just have to see about the north-central and northeastern parks.  And in general, this project is eliminating any chance of my doing a thorough North Seattle water fountain hike this autumn, before they all get shut off.  I am, in general, reasonably sure the fountains are, even now that the temperature has begun dropping closer to freezing, back to normal, whatever normal means for any particular fountain, and modulo the actions of repairers and of thieves; the parks both downtown and otherwise which I've visited for the current project have reinforced that belief in me.

Regardless, this decision gave me plenty of time today to tell you about the southwest downtown parks, which I visited by broad, if rainy, daylight yesterday.  Again, in order smallest to largest.

Fortson Square

One important peculiarity of the parks of southwestern downtown is that they don't have much greenery.  The exceptions are the smallest, Fortson Square, and the largest.  By the time I got here yesterday, I'd visited four plant-free parks in a row (all of the next five except Prefontaine Place - also plant-free, but not then yet visited), and I was kind of tired of it, so I was gung-ho for Fortson Square.

Fortson Square is a tiny park owned by the Seattle Department of Transportation, which considers it a park although the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation does not.  It's a triangle between Yesler Way on the north, 2nd Ave Ext S on the southwest, and the line taken, further south, by 2nd Ave S on the east.  (My thanks to Open Street Map, which located it for me when Google Maps couldn't.)  It has existed in various forms since 1901 (George Hayley Fortson was an officer killed in the Spanish-American War).  It has had pretensions to elegance (look near the bottom of this photo), and like all downtown parks it now hosts art (look near the top of this photo):

And it currently has a further reason for enthusiasm:

Union Station Square

Most of the parks of southwest downtown are brick plazas to which their owners try to attract people with two things:  art, as usual in downtown parks, and bus stops.  Part of the point of attracting people is that parks' makers, by and large, want people to experience parks, but another part of the goal is to deter campers.  However, at Union Station Square, the art, just by existing, people or no, emphatically deters campers:

Ironically, that's conceptual art in which the words engraved on the blocks are railroad-related.  No doubt this is in honour of the train station across the street, but I couldn't help thinking of hoboes, and as I walked away, of the differences among the "new homeless" (people more or less like me, 1970s to the present), the "old homeless" (mostly drunks, such as Bowery bums, 1950s to 1970s), and their predecessors (hoboes, Okies, and vagrants).

Nobody seems to know when the park opened, but the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods points out that it must have been after the construction of 2nd Ave Ext S, in 1928-1929, making hoboes an entirely pertinent referent.  It's the triangle between 2nd Ave Ext S, 3rd Ave S, and S Jackson St.

Prefontaine Place

Prefontaine Place is the triangle between Jefferson St, 3rd Ave, and Yesler Way.  It was left to the city by Henry Yesler to build a library on, but was too small for that, so was given to the city.  By that time Francis Xavier Prefontaine, Seattle's first Roman Catholic priest, had left $5,000 to the city to build a fountain.  So in 1926 the city finally opened a park with a fountain in it.  The gist of this is in this park's parks department site, but much fuller detail is at the DON page; neither page includes the testators' dates of death, but Wikipedia has articles on both.

It isn't much of a bus stop, because it's right next to an entrance to what is now the Pioneer Square train station.  The art is the fountain, which has its own Wikipedia article although the park does not.  (Notice the turtles.)

 

The parks department site currently includes a closure notice for fountain cleaning in December.  The dates in that notice are no more recent than 2019.

Washington Square

This is directly south of Fortson Square, the triangle between 2nd Ave Ext S, 2nd Ave S, and S Washington St.  It's about six times as big as Fortson Square, though.  Essentially no information about it turned up in my searches, probably partly because Google is so much more interested in commercial uses of the name.  But also, it's owned by SDOT, and a much more perfunctory park than the smaller one, or, really, any of the smaller ones so far described:

So why would anyone but a completist like me bother to talk about it online at all?  I thought, on first seeing Cedar Park and Little Brook Park in Lake City, that the minimum requirements for a Seattle park were grass and a playground.  In downtown Seattle, it's bricks and art instead.

Pioneer Square

Speaking of art:

Pioneer Square is the smallest of the three big parks of southwest downtown Seattle.  I've shown you, dear Diary, pictures of it before, in several of your pages about street water fountains.  Pioneer Square contains a building that's sort of a shelter, so it's been chosen by campers pretty much ever since I can remember it, which I'm pretty sure goes back before I was homeless myself.  Its most recent sweep had been the day before I visited yesterday:

It's the triangle between 1st Ave, Yesler Way, and the line of 1st Ave after it turns north of the park, with a small border on James St.  Information about its history is obscured by results about the neighbourhood named for it, but apparently it's been public land since the 1880s.  As that page implies, it's rich in old neat stuff.  I, however, took a landscape shot:

As I was leaving Pioneer Square, I was hailed by a man I'd met when we both raided the U-District Half Price Books recycling bin for books.  I don't think he'd ever been quite homeless, but insecurely housed; he'd then lived in South King County and more or less supported himself trying to sell books obtained free, such as there, but he said he'd lost his vehicle, and of course HPB has closed.  He now lives in the Pioneer Square neighbourhood.  We talked about the election, in which, it turned out, we'd voted differently across the board, and about you, dear Diary, and I gave him my e-mail address.  It's difficult, but neat, to find people who were friendly while I was homeless, so, dear Diary, please don't begrudge this encounter the half-hour of park photography it cost.

Occidental Square

This is the only, um, rectangular "square" in these parts.  It's somewhat more than a half-block along Occidental Ave S between S Main St and S Washington St, about twice the size of Pioneer Square.  Everyone says it opened in 1971, though I'm not convinced the 1971 park was the first park on the site.  It includes the fire fighters' memorial which was the scene of a famous attack on a homeless sleeper in 2014, but in general I haven't noticed nearly as many campers here as in Pioneer Square, though, certainly, at any given time plenty of the people here appear to be homeless.  The main context in which I encountered Occidental Square prior to writing you, dear Diary, is that early in my homelessness I was having trouble charging my laptop, and was told that there were public charging stations at this park.  Well, I found outlets, but not a realistic way to use them in the rain.  My theory was that the outlets made this a sort of no man's land, like the picnic shelters in Woodland Park that appear to have functioned as shared kitchens for the tent campers around them.  But it turns out that for several years the Downtown Seattle Association has managed this park, and that's probably why it's little camped in.

Anyway, again, dear Diary, I've shown you photos before in the street fountain context, and it was raining, so I settled for a single landscape shot this time.

City Hall Park

This, twice the size of Occidental Square, is the only park in southwest downtown bigger than Little Brook Park, and so the only one I concentrated on at first.  It's between 3rd Ave, 4th Ave, the line of Jefferson St (which starts at 4th), and Yesler Way; it shares the block it's on, from Yesler to James St, with the King County Courthouse, while Seattle's present City Hall is a block north on 4th.  It's split into two by a micro-street, Dilling Way.  There's some disagreement about when the park opened, but Writes of Way seems to be correct that it was in 1911, since there was apparently still a city hall on it in 1909.

It seems to consist of grassy swards and benches.  (I don't seem to have caught them in these photos, but there's a whole row of wooden benches, not just these stone ones.)

 

It's been much in the news recently.  An encampment was swept in August.  Over the summer there were many complaints that people with business in the courthouse felt unsafe passing that encampment, sometimes with examples of campers actually doing things that might justify that fear.  In late July, a man attacked a woman inside a women's room at the courthouse; he's been reported to be schizophrenic, a meth addict, and, no surprise given those things, homeless, but not to be a camper at that particular camp.  However, there was a fatal stabbing at a camp in this park in 2019.

Personally, I've been afraid of many homeless people downtown, to a greater or lesser extent, more or less the whole time I've lived in Seattle, and that didn't change much when I became homeless myself.  I did sleep downtown for three nights during a snow situation in, oh, 2019, I think.  On the second night my backpack was stolen, which was probably the most lastingly injurious of the three backpack thefts I experienced while homeless.  Thinking about it now, housed again, it occurs to me that services for homeless people are famously concentrated downtown - that's the usual explanation for why there are so many homeless people there - and so the homeless who live downtown are likely to include many of those who most need services.  People like me better able (for all my own mental issues) to work within society have little reason to mix with folks like that.  So while I don't want to tar all the homeless downtown with one brush - I'm quite certain that's wrong; my best homeless friend, yet another person I haven't seen recently, has lived there - I am willing to grant, to myself as much as to suburbanites, that it makes sense to be scared of many homeless people downtown.

There's a closure notice at the parks department's web page for City Hall Park, saying it was closed from August 13 to October 12.  Two months is a whole lot longer than the closures of swept parks in North Seattle, and it was a lot more enforced:  fences blocking off everything except a bike path which, like Dilling Way, splits the park.  Well, we've seen in North Seattle that the parks department is lazy about cleaning up things like closure notices and caution tape; how much lazier would they be about something as difficult to clean up as a fence?  So when I first visited after work on Wednesday, October 27, I figured my job was done as soon as I saw how thorough the fence was:

And, in fact, I've found no evidence that City Hall Park has ever had water fountains or restrooms.  The purpose of this particular page, of course, is park appreciation, so I went back to try to appreciate the fenced-off area, but, well, benches and greenswards aren't actually my favourite parts of parks, and fences don't help.

In fact, the security situation prompted the King County Council to vote to acquire the park from the city, presumably on the grounds that the Sheriff's office is much more capable of protecting employees and visitors to the courthouse than the Seattle Police Department.  This vote came one week after October 12.  So, joking aside, my guess is that until someone at City Hall decides how to respond to the takeover bid, the fences will stay up.

Just in case anyone from City Hall reads this:  Since the law requires that any park land deeded away by the city be replaced by park land elsewhere, part of the issue must be where to site a new park; without some idea of that, the city can't really properly decide whether to agree with the takeover.  Since the land is likely to be owned by King County, the city would probably have to choose from a limited selection.  Downtown Seattle is not actually especially under-parked; City Hall Park is only the seventh-largest park downtown.  In North Seattle, Fremont is an obvious choice, but Lake City an even more obvious one, especially if the new park GETS RESTROOMS.  Outside North Seattle, is there any doubt that Georgetown is in most need?

Anyway, dear Diary, you probably won't hear from me before Thursday, so catch up with your blog friends until then, OK?  Good night.