Doorways I Have Known, part III: Recent Years

Dear Diary,

We're almost done with this stroll down memory lane, which ends with visits to places of your memory as well as of mine.

Laurelhurst

In Laurelhurst I found, again, different circumstances.  There were far fewer homeless people around, but there was competition for doorways again, because there were also fewer of those.  Laurelhurst is a pretty wealthy neighbourhood, and people gave me money again.  Although I was in a certain amount of shock from the disasters of 2016 (my Milwaukee storage unit's sale) and 2017 (my laptop's theft) and from my frequent changes of address in 2016-2018, I wasn't anywhere near as lost and lorn as I'd been on Broadway, so I suspect the changes reflect more on the neighbourhoods I've lived in, as well as on the prevalence of homeless people in those neighbourhoods, than on my own bearing.  I'll mention specific gifts below.

3717 1/2 NE 45th St

Then and Now:  Marlai Thai Cuisine and Museum Quality Framing

I was a very bad neighbour during the couple of years I slept here.

Open Street Map well represents the jagged outline of the building at the southwest corner of 38th Ave NE and 45th.  This results in a whole series of doorways with differing amounts of dry suitable for sleeping in.  There's also considerable complexity where the individual soffits that furnish that dry meet.

So, in particular, the doorway I'm talking about here slopes downward toward Marlai, whose only connection with it is Marlai's west wall.  People therefore slept on the high ground, at the MQF end of the doorway.  But that's where the soffits meet, or actually, don't quite meet, and as a result, when it rains, it rains right down on those people.  Thanks to good drainage (and the whole doorway's facing north, the first north face I'd slept in), the low end, towards Marlai, stays dry through the most relentless rains.  I was frankly contemptuous of these peers' fecklessness.  I'd learnt on Broadway already to scope out new places on rainy nights - that's why I think I went back to Galerias in spring 2013, as a base from which to reconnoiter - and couldn't believe they hadn't bothered.

I had a weapon against them, too.  I'd by that point for years been sweeping any doorway I slept in.  When I found the doorway I preferred occupied, I just switched next door, to the actual doorway of MQF, and started sweeping; I tried to be quiet, but didn't exactly weep when I failed.  Of the two people I think I drove away from their bad spot, one tolerated that, but after a few days went away; the other reliably got up and left right away.

The first, the one who stayed through my sweeping, looked Hispanic, and I think he was probably an employee of the taco truck across the street.  Frankly, I thought they should've done better by him, and maybe they did once I showed up; for much of the time I slept there, music blared from that taco truck until the wee hours of the night.  The other, I eventually concluded, the one who responded immediately once I started sweeping, was a white guy who was a sort of modern-day hunter-gatherer, following a set rotation; I noticed that he arrived on the same day of the week, the same number of weeks apart.

I forget why, but when leaves started falling in autumn 2018, I missed a few days, and came back to find an artistic arrangement of leaves across the doorway.  Obviously I couldn't sleep on that, so the best I could do was sweep the leaves toward a dryer part of the high ground for the night, and then try to produce my own artistic arrangement in the morning.  At any rate, nobody took the trouble to complain to me.  By autumn 2019 the leaf thing was old hat.

This was a pretty heavenly place to sleep.  There were almost no passersby at night, except when the bars back west on 45th closed, so I had endless privacy for building my bed.  There was lots of space.  The taco truck wasn't close enough for its music to keep me awake.  I very slowly unwound.  This is where I was sleeping when I got my first cart, and at first I was determined to sleep under it, so I'd know immediately if someone was stealing it.  Gradually I got less concerned about that.  This was the first place I took my shoes off to sleep.  Sometimes when I was too tired to build my bed properly, I would get as far as laying down my sleeping bag and just crash on that for an hour or two, or a few times for the whole night, waking each time to find the as-yet un-emptied satchels around me untouched.  On many nights, homeless people did pass the doorway, but apparently none were tempted by my stuff.  (Once, one did rather insistently want a book, but happily settled for one I hadn't enjoyed.)

Once, in 2020 I think, after UW had closed, I slept late enough for the MQF opener to arrive, but otherwise I had few interactions with that store (which has a side door on this doorway that they consistently put furniture in front of).  Only, once a week a truck would arrive delivering glass, which was interesting to watch the first few times, and consistently woke me.  I remember that during the lockdown there was some reason I needed to get MQF's attention, and I had to try several times before getting through.

I had more contacts with Marlai; I may have done the opposite of conflating here, remembered more nights than there actually were, but I don't think so.  Once after they'd closed, but before they'd left, and so before I'd done more than sweep, a distraught woman showed up begging me to call the police.  The Marlai employees came out, and eventually the man she was running from arrived too; at one point he attacked one of the Marlai group.  Turned out they were a couple from some small town whose child was at Children's Hospital; she'd been worried about his stability for a while, but under this new stress he'd gotten drunk and violent, and she hoped a night in jail would calm him down.  None of us bystanders was all that comfortable with the outcome, and the Marlai employee chose not to press charges.

Once Marlai got a steam cleaning, and for some reason the guys doing it couldn't park in back and work from there, but had to park on 45th.  They apologised for delaying my sleep - and one of them, to make it clear he meant it, gave me a really large, really warm hooded coat, that I can wear over other coats.  At the time I told him I mainly wanted it to cover my cart, because with only one coat I had to choose between protecting my books and protecting myself.  But in fact I relied on it heavily while hiking for you last winter, dear Diary, and I expect to wear it again this week.

Not long after those events, the snow of 2019 came.  Marlai's crew the first night were amazed that I was willing to try to sleep there under those circumstances - though there wasn't much snow in the doorway - and pooled their tips to give me that night.

Richer people of Laurelhurst gave me much larger amounts later, that in fact contributed to my being housed now during the snow of 2021.  But the gifts I remember from that doorway are the coat and $24 in tips.  Both contributed to my welfare immediately.  When I went downtown, thinking I'd need to go inside the coldest night (but the forecasts were wrong), and anyway wanting to warm up by day, my backpack was stolen, and that $24 enabled me to buy what I most immediately needed to replace.

I've often thought I ought to pay some sort of rent to the spaces I occupied while homeless.  I did little things in the HUB and Savery Hall, and submitted call number corrections at Suzzallo Library, in that spirit.  I made a point of shopping at Half Price Books during the years I slept in their doorway.  But I haven't, yet, visited the surviving locations of Samurai Noodle; I'm relieved to hear that American Apparel is still in business; I've yet to replace the glasses I got while homeless, both pairs broken, but I should probably get one pair at Sound Eye and Laser (source of the new pair in "Stealing from the Homeless"), and another at One Hour Optical.

Well, Marlai had closed by the time I got there on Christmas Eve, MQF long before, so they too have to wait.  But I haven't forgotten.

3717 NE 45th St

Then and Now:  Museum Quality Framing

I'd continued acquiring books relentlessly even after Half Price Books closed, at Little Free Libraries and from the University District Food Bank.  I stored many at Suzzallo Library (which turned into months of worry when the lockdown came), but also carried many with me.  As a result, I needed to build a pretty tall stack wallward of my head, when building my bed.  This doorway has an architectural feature that gets in the way of that.  Also, its dry is smaller.  Finally, this is the doorway used by the glass deliveries.  So I didn't like sleeping here, which made me as ruthless as I've described over the other spot.

3605 1/2 NE 45th St

Then and Now:  Flooring America

I think I tried to build my bed here several times, but succeeded only once.  Its orientation was opposite what I was used to, there's a small electrical fixture marring the right angle I relied on, and there's what I think is a permanent stain on the concrete that looks just like a wet spot.  And you can see, dear Diary, the dry isn't all that wide.

University of Washington

For the first six months, the students were away, and the mice, they did play.  Things got gradually more crowded on campus during the 2020-2021 school year, but I was housed before the UW finally sort-of-fully re-opened this past autumn quarter.  There was never a large number of homeless people on campus during the lockdown, never an encampment, but I'm not sure the number shrank much from when the buildings were open, either.

UW normally doesn't allow anyone to use its outdoor electrical outlets.  And it normally doesn't allow anyone to sleep on campus.  Both of these rules were waived once the lockdown started (as the electrical one had been waived during 2019's snow, far as I experienced), but everyone knew they could be re-imposed at any time, in any particular circumstance.

The main places I used on campus during its lockdown, the places I took photographs of on Christmas Eve, are places I'd used before the lockdown, places that were among the reasons I always reached Laurelhurst, and before it University Way or even Roosevelt, after other homeless people did.

4205 Mary Gates Memorial Drive NE

Then and Now:  Ceramic and Metal Arts Building

This building is in the East Campus, which is downhill from the main campus.  It has a west-facing courtyard that can be a good place to rest after the hike downhill or before the one uphill, and there's a bench for the purpose.  Also, it has University Wi-Fi, though not an electrical outlet.  But it has very, very little reliable dry.  I slept on that bench, sitting up, watching out for the police who liked to take breaks in the parking lot adjacent, any number of times in the summers of 2019 and 2020, and each time fantasised that that could continue, forgetting what this photo shows all too clearly:

Some faculty member or administrator took the trouble, in September 2020, to warn me that I couldn't continue using that bench that year.  The first students to return, that quarter, were the athletes and the artists, and thanks to social distancing, several classes were expected to meet in the courtyard that fall.  It was kind of him to give me that warning, but both of us had forgotten the rain which would've enforced my absence anyway.

4110 East Stevens Way NE

Then and Now:  Padelford Hall

Padelford Hall and a connected multi-level parking garage sprawl across the hill between Central and East campuses.  I became familiar with the intricacies of the climb through Padelford in my first months in Laurelhurst, before the cart.  I liked to work late at night in this space near the top, which as you can see, dear Diary, has a sort of desk.

Once I had the cart, I couldn't do that any more, had to hike outside the whole way, but come the lockdown, I remembered a plaza towards the top with acres of dry (OK, that's an exaggeration, but ...).  You, dear Diary, were born there.  I say you were born of a visit to Magnuson Park, but the place I actually got Blogspot to accept your first pages was this plaza.

It had several disadvantages, however, as a place to spend the lockdown.  It had electrical outlets and Wi-Fi, and even a vending machine, but every place to sit within reach of this plaza is subject to rain.  I also had to disassemble my cart to get it down the stairs to the plaza, which wasn't any kind of fun in the rain.

It's also heavily frequented, and as we learnt more about social distancing, that became more and more problematic.  I took to hiding in the deadest corner of the plaza, traffic-wise, this one:

Another disadvantage, for me personally, at least, was harassment.  This mostly took the form of theft.  I experienced, I think, six thefts at UW during the lockdown, and four of those were here.  But also, at one point someone called the police on me.  This is when a police officer informed me that removing my satchels from my cart constituted "camping", and as such was illegal.  I wish I were making this up.  And on the day in the summer of 2020 when my phone was stolen while charging on a bench outside this plaza, someone took the trouble to do Number One in the corner I'd been using.  I thought the photo above would show the remaining salt stain, but apparently not.  The friend who gave me the carts knows a criminologist who agreed with me that there was a pattern here.  Many, many departments are headquartered in Padelford Hall, and while one of those is Mathematics, most of the rest are pillars of the academic left:  English, Gender Studies, you name it.  But someone in that building, I think, did not like coming into regular contact with a smelly homeless man.

(That said, that isn't why I'm not linking to Padelford's home page above.  Padelford has not physically closed this plaza off to the homeless, which is my criterion, though I assume the rule against sleeping is re-imposed.  I'm not linking because I can't find anything suitable as a home page for Padelford.)

So I moved on.  There are outlets in the Allen Library mall, and there's a bench, but it's carefully placed so that when it rains, rain will usually blow onto it.  And when it's not raining, that bench is pretty popular.  I didn't spend much time there (though enough for one of the other thefts to happen), but rather in two other places.

4069 Spokane Lane

Then and Now:  Kane Hall

Again I didn't find a reasonable home page for the building.  But in this case there's also a clear sign of disapproval of how the homeless behaved here during the lockdown.

Kane Hall has two doorways on its north side with electrical outlets.  As of March 2020, the western doorway's outlet didn't work, but the eastern doorway's did.  So on days I wasn't lucky enough to get a better place, such as the one next on this tour, I would charge my phone here, or later in the lockdown, the battery I used to charge my phone.

 

There's no seating within the doorways, but near the eastern doorway, there's a bunch of seating on a plaza.

So for one thing, that's the remaining theft; in summer 2020, while I dozed on that plaza, the battery was stolen while charging.  I tried a couple of ways to replace it before finding one that worked, and that discouraged long hikes for you those weeks, dear Diary.  After that, I only allowed myself to doze when I wasn't charging anything, which made for some pretty weary six-hour stints of battery charging.

But for another thing, Kane Hall's doorways were often appallingly messy during the lockdown.  This is because some kids, probably from Roots, made Kane their headquarters, and some of these kids evidently hadn't learnt anything at all about cleanliness in their lives.  Most of the activity was actually upstairs from the doorways; Kane has a gigantic semi-outdoor second floor, maybe even really an acre of dry, partly protected from the wind, with outlets ...  Pretty much all that a crowd of homeless kids could want.

 

But it seems this particular epicene couple were most often the ones crowded out from there, to spill their sodas and tear apart their ramen cups in the same doorway I used.  I normally considered the cart's wheels enough insulation between my stuff and pretty much any kind of dirt, but hesitated on a regular basis to drive them through what those kids laid down.  And the thing is, I'm pretty sure I saw the woman of the couple. once, presenting herself as the hip edgy person appropriate to her age online and in conversations, with no sign of the filth she seemed content to live in.

Well, there have been consequences.

That's the outlet in the doorway, not one of those upstairs, but they're all covered like that now.

4275 East Stevens Way NE

Then and Now:  Bank of America Executive Education Center

This was the place where I wrote many of your pages, dear Diary, where I did many of the other things I whiled away the empty hours of the lockdown with.  For some reason the builders of this building put a huge porch in, and then ran a bench along the long side of that porch.

 

I'd stopped at this location before the lockdown to work or watch K-dramas late.  Only once had I encountered anyone who belonged to the building, a couple apparently of South Asian descent of whom the man sneeringly insisted that my only goal was to sleep there.  I think, a few weeks later, I took him up on that offer once or twice, but mostly what I wanted that bench for, in 2018, was a place to use Wi-Fi.  Once I'd moved to Laurelhurst, it was out of my way, and I don't think I turned to it early in the lockdown.

But as Padelford became increasingly untenable and Kane increasingly awful, I was more and more inclined to come here, carefully sitting at the far end of the bench from the door for social distancing.  The reaction from within the building was split.  I'm pretty sure ordinary employees didn't pay much attention.  One, a Muslim, once gave me a sandwich she'd bought, which had turned out to have bacon in it.  But the UW had inaugurated an unarmed security force, alongside its armed police, shortly before the lockdown, and someone within that building thought it was a good idea to get these security guards to get rid of me.  They threatened me with prosecution for loitering, and called police on me, who wearily explained that loitering laws were not enforceable on public property.  This cycle happened two or three times.  But compared to the problems at Padelford, this was trivial.

I don't think anyone in my earlier life would've predicted that English scholars would persecute me, but business scholars would embrace me, but that's more or less what I found during UW's lockdown.

As my time to get housed approached, I changed many of my ways.  Some events had led me to realise that the Stranger issues I'd been using under my sleeping bag weren't actually doing anything to keep me warm, and I finally pitched them all into my storage sometime, I think, in January.  In February I lived in SeaTac, as you know, dear Diary.  And in March I simply could not convince myself to build my bed again, so spent essentially every night, until I moved into the home whence I'm writing, on that bench.

But months before that, I'd moved to a different neighbourhood altogether, off and on, for the Wi-Fi.

View Ridge

After my phone was stolen, my new phone didn't have University Wi-Fi until a friend on the faculty figured out how to confer it on me, around Thanksgiving.  So for several months, if I wanted to do anything with Wi-Fi, I had to trudge to a public library.  For things like updates, the University branch was good enough, but it was hard to find a place to sit that also got a good signal from inside the building, to say nothing of the competition, so sustained work had to happen elsewhere.

6801 35th Ave NE

Then and Now:  Seattle Public Library, Northeast branch

I've more or less told you this story before, dear Diary, when it happened, and it doesn't really need much re-hashing.  There was competition here too, both for the Wi-Fi and for the three sheltered benches on the library's porch.  There was a man who never spoke to me, but made his disapproval of my sleeping there, far too close to where he wanted to sleep, very clear.  Library staff were unhappy with me but took no definite actions until "curbside pickup" came along, which they used as an excuse to remove all three benches.  By then I'd already tired of my silent critic, and told him I'd be elsewhere at night, so slept in the View Ridge Playfield shelter.

The main reason I've put this byway into this page is that two of the benches are back, and actually have been back for months - I took the photo below in late September.  The backed one on which that man preferred to sleep, the one honouring Sahir Dibee, has been replaced with an unbacked one similar to the other two.

I'm greatly relieved that at least one thing "those awful homeless" could have been blamed for has not, after all, come to pass.

Well, dear Diary, this is the end of our walk down memory lane, and of part two of the current series of pages I'm writing in you.  Part three is, like part one, much shorter, and I hope to write it this evening, but, well, this series has repeatedly frustrated my timing hopes, so we'll see.  Happy hours, and if necessary days, until then.

Doorways I Have Known, part I: Broadway

Dear Diary,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Broadway E

611

Then:  Under renovation

Now:  Ishoni Yakiniku

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

201

Then and Now:  Rite Aid

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

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

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

It isn't working now.

200

Then:  American Apparel

Now:  Kitanda Espresso and Acai

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

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

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

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

202

Then:  Vacant, then some tea shop

Now:  Hi Tea Cafe

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

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

206

Then:  Castle Megastore and The Highline

Now:  Blade & Timber and The Highline

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

212

Then:  Newly built and vacant

Now:  Post Pike Bar

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

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

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

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

300

Then and Now:  Julia's

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

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

312

Then:  Red Light Vintage

Now:  Lifelong Thrift Store

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

No address

No shop

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

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

400

Then:  Not sure

Now:  Mattress Firm

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

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

412

Then:  Samurai Noodle

Now:  Due' Cucina Italiana

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

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

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

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

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

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

414

Then and Now:  Seattle Cigar and Tobacco

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

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

424

Then and Now:  Hardware Salon

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

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

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

534

Then and Now:  Hour Eyes Optical

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

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

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

538

Then:  A succession of restaurants

Now:  Star Fusion and Bar

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

 

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

Hike 1A: Inconvenients, part II

Dear Diary,

They said this winter would probably be cold and wet.  So far, half right.  It's certainly been wet, and part of my fear of rain comes from the certainty that nothing that gets wet will dry out anytime soon.  But even though I've been shivering a lot, it hasn't been all that cold.  My basic clothing right now, thanks to my own lazy refusal to go change, is absurdly underdressed for winter, and the only reason I'm getting away with it is mild temperatures.

We should, in fact, dear Diary, consider this in relation to your upcoming birthday.  Our wonderful mayor was getting a lot of criticism, last March, because she sent people to closed park restrooms.  Well, that was careless (and it isn't a good thing that her parks department is repeating the mistake this year) but many of those restrooms should in fact have stayed closed; the last night to reach the mid-30s was April 13, one week after she ordered those rooms opened.

Um, so, anyway.  It's been warm.  Most of the time these days, when climbing hills with my cart, I regret it if I don't actually strip down to my seasonally inappropriate T-shirt.  And since it was close to noon, of course that happened yesterday as I climbed Maple Leaf Hill.  I'd tried to use the topographic maps I've downloaded to plan my travels, and it partly worked, but it was still uphill.

N 45th St

But first I have to backtrack a bit; last night I forgot something important.  On my way to Wallingford Playfield I knew I'd pass the street water fountain on N 45th St near Wallingford Ave N, in front of QFC.

Now, in "Water Fountains:  Things We've Lost, Part II" on May 1, I boldly claimed that these street fountains stayed on all winter, little dreaming that when winter came I'd still be writing you and accountable for that.  I strongly suspect what allows this to work is heat supplied by nearby institutions, which would explain deference the fountains sometimes show to their neighbours, most obviously the one painted red in front of Bartell Drugs at 5th Ave and Stewart St.

I already knew that the peculiar fountain on 15th Ave NE south of NE 43rd St had stopped running, though not whether that was for the winter or permanently (due to its damage and to construction nearby).  And the street-style fountain on the Burke-Gilman Trail had been shut off, but that happens every winter.

So I made a deal with myself.  If the fountain was working, I'd get the day's groceries at the QFC that probably made that possible.  It was, so I happily, um, well, no, in the rain it was actually a tedious nuisance, but still, I was able to fill my bottles.  And on my way from Wallingford Playfield to Meridian Playground went and got the day's food at QFC.

Maple Leaf Reservoir Park

I first told you, dear Diary, about this park May 29, in "South to and from Northgate".  The first pictures I showed you were in "Standing Room Only, Part V:  Elsewhere" November 24, but rather more came three days later in "The Kingdom of the Winds".

Between that, and worry that I'd have to deal again with the harasser mentioned in that page, and the fact that the park was crowded enough (though socially distanced) to give me some trouble finding a place to eat the food I'd bought - well, on this visit, I only took the three photos I'd come to take:

Last winter, these rooms were supposed to stay open, and they're on both the current HSD and the outdated Parks maps; no surprises here.

As I got ready to leave, a man with an accent similar to the harasser's, but not similar in voice or appearance, asked me for cash, and I refused.

Northgate Park, Community Center and Library

Turns out the peak of Maple Leaf Hill is actually on Roosevelt, so I went down to 5th Ave NE to avoid it.  I resisted the impulse to hike into Beaver Pond Natural Area to photograph the South Fork of Thornton Creek.  My missions were:  Northgate Community Center, to photograph its closed doors, and Target, to replace my umbrella.

At first I went to what turned out to be the wrong door of the Community Center, where I found something astonishing.

Do you see that, dear Diary?  An actual wooden bench actually sheltered?

Anyway, it was the wrong door, so I went round front.  The postcard shot:

And the closed door:

Now, that sign is arguably not entirely true.  This page offers signup for child care starting Tuesday, September 8, which means 2020, at a bunch of community centres, including four in North Seattle:  Bitter Lake, Meadowbrook, Ravenna-Eckstein - and Northgate.  Considerable physical evidence attests that this care is in fact being provided at Northgate, which would explain all the health check stuff at the door.  (Why check the health of people entering the building if nobody is entering it?)  However, I haven't seen actual kids, so still could be wrong.

Anyway, as I turned to go, I found something else astonishing.

This is not, up to right now, on either the HSD or the Parks map.  Now, the Parks map may be bureaucratically restricted, showing only things Parks pays for; that might explain its omissions both at University Playground and here.  (Though that's not a very helpful sort of map.)  Alternatively, this might be omitted from the Parks map if its physical location is actually the library's property.

But library and park are both city property, so unless this "sanican" unlocked itself and walked to Northgate from a nearby construction site, it's city-funded - which should qualify it for the HSD map.  And I wrote to HSD nearly 24 hours ago now.  I'm mildly surprised their map still omits it.

As to the interior?  Plenty of toilet paper, but dear Diary, did you remember the angle of that doohickey in yesterday's photo?

Another "sanican" without sanitiser.  This makes four now.

Well, I went to Target, and found the last umbrella of the same size and colour that they had.  Then I checked my phone and found that I was nearing my photo limit.  So I went to

Hubbard Homestead

And while I sat on an already mostly dry wooden bench there and played a trick on my phone to let me take more photos, I remembered that I still have not shown you, dear Diary, a single picture of this unassuming park where I have now several times stopped for such utilitarian purposes.  I didn't have time to study the park properly, but hope these two photos conveniently close to where I'd sat will tide you over, dear Diary, until I do.

More stones

A pond.  I hadn't at all remembered a pond.

I need to get moving, dear Diary, but still hope to find time to write another page in you tonight.  We'll see.  [EDIT a few hours later, but technically the next day.  Nope, I've gathered the data but they still don't make sense to me, so not tonight.  Good night, dear Diary.]

Hike 1A: Inconvenients, part I

Dear Diary,

I just couldn't help myself, today I had to get out there and start hiking even before the rain stopped.  I didn't get as far as I wanted, but did complete more than half.  Here's the first half of the first half.

My actual goal for this hike was to get to Northgate.  One reason I've been so scared of rain lately is that on my hike of December 28, I tore a hole in the larger of my umbrellas.  The fear of rain was becoming a real problem, so I needed to do the simplest thing I could to assuage it, replace that umbrella.  The Target near me had no room for such big ones, hence Northgate, where I'd bought the original in October.

But I'd been meaning to start with a different hike, and specifically with Maple Leaf Reservoir Park.  Well, but Maple Leaf is on the way to Northgate ...  And just like that a hike became clear, linking a bunch of places that weren't at all convenient to do in the day journies I've been planning.  A leftovers hike.

I'd also decided I really should at least take a look at everything on the HSD map.  So my first stop was hardly a park.

45th St NE at I-5

The city has a full set of "sanican"s here for a nearby encampment.  (Well, the map staunchly maintains that anyone can use them, and is no doubt correct, but I think it's clear where most of the business must come from.)

So HSD listed a regular "sanican", an ADA one, and a hand-washing station.  All present:

I remembered that in the original article that pretty much inspired you, dear Diary, Erica C. Barnett had actually looked inside the "sanican"s.  So now that I was actually going to pay attention to them, despite my continued belief that running water is the ideal, how could I do less?

Probably fortunately for everyone's sanity, either my rain-wet fingers failed to get photos taken, or the camera erased them, but both sanitiser dispensers there lacked casings and bottles of sanitiser.  Both units had plenty of toilet paper.

Wallingford Playfield

This park has never really gotten its deserved attention from me.  I introduced it June 9 in "At the Centre of the Universe, Does Gas Work?"  But by that point in the relevant day's hiking, I was just too tired to take in another park, especially a playfield.  I had another chance October 8 in "South of North Once More, Part I".  But I couldn't take any photos, there were so many people there, so I even forgot the restrooms' conditions, one of the things the October hikes focused on.  I did at least notice that big rocks seemed to figure prominently in the park's design.

Do tell.

That's from the opposite corner of the park from where I've previously been.

Another example - the greenery is nice, yes, but look behind it:

Well, darn, that didn't work right at all.  One of the rocks behind the trees is visible, but not at all the actual stone wall behind them.

Anyway.  I didn't want the restroom buildings to think I was neglecting them for "sanican"s, so I decided that if I was going to photograph the "sanican"s, I should photograph the buildings too, not just their open or closed doors.  Voila:

This building has the magical property that when it rains, none of its awnings can keep any side dry.

I also, of course, found rocks in the one place playfields reliably try for individuality, the playgrounds:

The water fountain visible at that photo's far right seems to have been fixed, so perhaps Wallingford will have a working park water fountain later this year.

Anyway, HSD, Parks and last year's list all agreed this one should be open, and so it is.  Huzzah!

Meridian Playground

Unlike its neighbour to the south, I've showered this quirky park with attention; I really like it, but will just refer anyone interested to "A Shower at Green Lake" June 8, "South of North Once More" I again, and "Standing Room Only, Part III:  Less Near UW" November 23.  On this visit I was all business.  Only Parks expected this one to be open, but majority ruled.

The shot of the closed women's room door is odd because a woman was actually camping in the sheltered doorway.

University Playground

I've treated this as, well, a neglected stepchild among my core parks all along; see in particular "Our Main Characters" April 25, "We're All in This Together" April 28, "The Curious Incident of the Light in the Night-Time" May 2, "Foolish Mortal" May 6, "Home Dry Home" June 4 and, um, "Water Fountains - An Interim Report Part III" October 3.  This is the only park with restrooms in North Seattle, none of whose restrooms were open at any time in 2020, and I haven't treated it much better.

Not today, either, but to foil my nefarious plan to leave it out of a future University District hike, a tall man stood the entire time I was there in the doorway of the men's room, so I couldn't take all three shots.

University Playground has also historically had a "sanican".  Reliably, once a year it would get trashed, and the next one would be from a different company.  I always figured a neighbourhood group had put it there, and had too little power with the vendors to get them to swallow the destruction.  But no, it's the city's, and even their lavish spending on Honey Bucket couldn't keep the company here.  The company that is here, though, has now been for some time; either they're very tolerant, or the trasher graduated, got caught, or left town.  HSD's map includes this; I have no idea why, but the Parks map does not.

This is the only "sanican" I found today out of toilet paper.

The white doohickey in that photo is at an angle that announces:  "There's no sanitiser bottle here to stop me, ha ha!"  Remember that angle.

Seattle Public Library - University Branch

Sorry, dear Diary.  I know I've told you about the restrooms here before, more than once, and with at least one photo, but when I was indexing you it didn't even occur to me to list those references.

Anyway.  For big buildings, I figured the equivalent of photographing the best side of a restroom building is to take the money shot, the one they want to sell postcards of, such as:

Well, OK, they don't want to sell postcards of my version, but...  Anyway, here's the open door:

Granted, all that tape looks hostile; clearly they've decided everyone should use the ramp.  But they were open, as scheduled and as HSD claims.

So far HSD has a perfect score, while Parks was wrong about Meridian and University Playgrounds.  I have to confess, dear Diary:  I wrote to the media people for both departments, Parks and HSD, tonight, about things I'd noticed wrong with their maps, even before telling you.  I hope you aren't too angry.

But Blogspot has been fighting every photograph I've uploaded in this page, dear Diary.  And I took a lot of photos at Northgate.  So I'm glad the site seems to have let me keep together the places that in fact are closer together, but I'm going to have to put Maple Leaf and Northgate into a separate page.  Also to put that page off until tomorrow.  Even if that gives HSD, at least, who seem to have been maintaining their map, a chance to hide their mistakes.

Good night, dear Diary.