Trash in Cal Anderson Park

Dear Diary,

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

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

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

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

Titration

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

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

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

The City's Work

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

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

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

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

The Kids' Work

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

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

The Bad News

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

North (along E Denny Way)

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

When I returned alone, not much had changed:

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

From somewhere in between:

East (along 11th Ave)

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

Along the Paved Paths

Along the North-South Gravel Path

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

The Southeast

The West (along Nagle Place)

Water Fountains - an Interim Report, Part III

 Dear Diary,

You probably remember that the last two pages I wrote in you concerned two trips to many water fountains that found a geographical pattern in their status as on or not.  This page concerns two more trips.

September 30

On this day I showered, changed clothes, and got my mail.  These errands put me close to Cal Anderson Park and to some previously mentioned street water fountains.  The addresses below lack direction markers and are not in "NE".

Freestanding street water fountain in front of the Bartell Drugs store at 5th Ave and Westlake Ave - UNUSABLY DAMAGED (as I first reported May 1 in "Water Fountains:  Things We've Lost, Part II")

Freestanding street water fountain on 4th Ave in front of Freeway Park, between Pine and Pike Streets - NOT RUNNING (same first report)

(The person whose legs are in the shot was with me that day and gave permission.)

Freestanding street water fountain on 3rd Ave just south of Union St, in front of the downtown Post Office - NOT RUNNING (same first report)

Freestanding street water fountain at 1st Ave and Pike St, across the street from a main entrance to Pike Place Market - UNUSABLY DAMAGED (as I first reported June 18 in "Ways to Fight Water Addiction")

Cal Anderson Park

I actually didn't bother to check the fancy, huge, winterised new fountain in the park.  It's just that I'd forgotten this park has two drinking fountains - the other is reachable only across gravel, which I disliked walking on long before I had a cart to worry about.

Freestanding water fountain near the water tower - ON (my first report this year)

This means I've been worrying sort of needlessly about water on Capitol Hill - no, I don't think the fountains known to me in Volunteer Park are enough, and the library is open too few hours.  However, this fountain will be shut off sometime next month, whereas the formerly running street fountain in front of Rite Aid, and Cal Anderson Park's own new main fountain, would both have run most or all of the coming months.

October 1

A hike from Burke-Gilman Playground ending at the UW campus, phone charged along the way, begun in morning but extremely lazily conducted and not finished until night.  Covered the five last fountains visited September 17 (Part I) but not re-visited September 28 (Part II) plus three more.

Burke-Gilman Playground Park - ON

Street fountain on Burke-Gilman Trail at 30th Ave - ON

I said a while ago that I liked to photograph this fountain, but it had been some time since I did so.  Here are two:

Ravenna Park - both fountains ON but the double "lower" one difficult to drink from, as on September 17.

Cowen Park - ON

Freestanding street fountain on 15th Ave a bit nearer 43rd than 42nd Streets - ON AND USABLY DAMAGED (good water; first reported on May 1 in "The Curious Incident of the Light in the Night-Time", but I'm not sure when I first noticed its missing drain)

Christie Park

For more on this now reopened park, see the page after next, today or tomorrow.

Freestanding double water fountain near the ping-pong table - ON (both faucets giving reasonable streams)

University Playground

Freestanding water fountain near the women's room - UNUSABLY DAMAGED

I first reported this off April 25 in "Our Major Characters".  The October 1 hike is the first time I heard water move in response to my pushing the tap, but none came out.  I don't know whether the damage visible below is vandalism or a plumber's effort to find the problem.

Water Fountains - an Interim Report, Part II

Dear Diary,

The last page I wrote in you re-introduced in some detail, by location, characteristics, and where I'd written about them before, sixteen water fountains and what I found of them on a mostly night hike September 17.  This page reports on eleven of those fountains as seen again September 28.  None had changed status, among on, off or damaged.

September 28

As on the 17th, a hike from the Northeast branch of the Seattle Public Library to the UW campus, but this time mostly by day, with a somewhat better charged phone, so I could take some pictures.  It was still way too hot for me for hiking, so I only reached eleven of the sixteen fountains covered on the 17th, and wound up in a different part of campus.  I took some pictures for specific reasons, but mainly in a misguided attempt to convey how I saw the northern parks, of which I've shown you, dear Diary, few pictures so far.  It seems I see mainly grass in them.  Sorry.

Dahl Playfield - NOT RUNNING

Although on this visit I actually found some neat stuff here - a sort of micro-scale woods with a path through it - I definitely see this park mainly as big grassy swards meant for athletic use, so this time I wanted a picture of grass:

Ravenna-Eckstein Park - Probably NOT RUNNING, but officially DANGEROUS, believe it or not:

I think of this park as crowded with features that usually in turn crowd it with people.  I have no idea how trying to photograph that without including the people got me so much grass:

Bryant Playground - NOT RUNNING

I think of this park as topographically challenged:

View Ridge Playfield - NOT RUNNING

Of course, I went to the spot from which I once shot a night view to shoot a day one:

Enough of that.  The two remaining parks in this page, you've already, dear Diary, seen in plenty of photos.  I still took some in Magnuson Park, but not in Laurelhurst Playfield.  I also took one on the way.  Since my previous trip's route to Magnuson Park, along 65th St, had resulted in wailing and lamentation, I tried 75th St this time, and thus found another park not Parks', near 50th Ave.  This is a Seattle Public Utilities site across 75th from the Sand Point Country Club.  For some reason they've gone to a lot of trouble to gussy it up, but have then slapped a fence around most of it:

Of course there were also tears and the gnashing of teeth along this route - not on 75th, and not in the neighbourhood of switchbacks between 75th and Sand Point Way, but rather in the epic struggle to walk the three blocks from 77th to 74th Sts along Sand Point, a part of it not designed for the human form.

But in the fullness of time, yea, I reached

Magnuson Park

Playground fountain - NOT RUNNING

I still haven't seen the restroom more or less tied to this fountain - though actually pretty far away - open, though in fairness I also haven't looked during calendrical summer.  Yet another door shot:

Central fountain - ON; a shot of it overshooting its bowl:

Beach fountain - ON; a shot of the adjacent shower:

Southern fountain - has gone from USABLY to UNUSABLY DAMAGED.  A shot; if you compare it to the one from April, the main difference is a white part you can see in that shot, but not below:

Finally,

Laurelhurst Playfield - all fountains ON

My phone was by then really low on power, and by the time I'd rested, night was falling, so I left and ended the hike.

Next part, probably this evening, downtown and Capitol Hill.

Water Fountains - an Interim Report, Part I

 Dear Diary,

I'd hoped that the sudden turning on of seven water fountains in the area I've concentrated on represented a general resumption of service all over North Seattle, or indeed all over town.  The trip I mentioned in the page I already wrote in you today, dear Diary, was meant to document progress towards that.  I now seriously doubt fountains really have been turned on all over town, but a case could still be made, so I expect to go hiking again soon, further than this page and its sequel document, to see.

I made a series of hikes to check convenient water fountains, one already mentioned several weeks ago, then several more this past week.  If I go in order, dear Diary, you'll see why I doubt that the few days' delay in reporting these more recent hikes made any difference.

September 17

A hike with my phone low on power, as it was when I first wrote this sentence, from the Northeast branch of the Seattle Public Library to the University of Washington's main Seattle campus to charge that phone.  So no photos.  Roughly 5 P.M. to 11 P.M.

Results:

Dahl Playfield - This time I explored some.  I'm now pretty sure this is the only water fountain there.

Water fountain attached to the restroom building - NOT RUNNING (as I first reported May 6, "Go North, Aging Man!")

Ravenna-Eckstein Park

Freestanding water fountain near the Community Center on its west side - NOT RUNNING (same first report)

Bryant Playground

Freestanding water fountain between the tennis and basketball courts (not easily reached without stairs) - NOT RUNNING (same first report)

View Ridge Playfield

Freestanding water fountain behind one side of the home plate-centred baseball structure - NOT RUNNING (same first report)

Magnuson Park

Freestanding water fountain between the playground and a parking lot - NOT RUNNING (as I first reported April 29, "Two Magnuson Park Questions Tentatively Answered")

Freestanding water fountain near the central restrooms - ON (overshoots its bowl; good water; I haven't previously reported on this being on; same first report for it being off before that)

Water fountain attached to the beach restroom building - ON (good water; can only overshoot its bowl when nothing else is competing for its water; I speculated that something I'd overheard meant it was on, July 30 in "Amazing Water Fountain News", but had not reported it before this page; earlier pages implied this fountain was off, but same first clear report)

On this trip I first became aware that there's a shower next to that water fountain.  (Really, I'm not the most observant person.) Photo below.

Damaged water fountain near damaged former restroom building - now UNUSABLY DAMAGED.  (It had been possible to push the machinery in such a way that one could reasonably expect water to come out, as shown in a photo in April 24, "Magnuson Park:  Things We've Lost, Part I"; parts are now missing such that that's no longer possible.)

Laurelhurst Playfield

For all of these, I first reported that they were off April 25 in "Our Main Characters", and first reported that they were on July 30 in "Amazing Water Fountain News"

Freestanding water fountain near the tennis courts - ON (I saw it turned on July 29; on my latest visit there, listed below, gave quite warm water, so I'm waiting to see what it does on a colder day)

Freestanding double water fountain behind home plate of the southwestern baseball diamond - ON (the lower faucet overshoots the bowl, the upper has rather less flow)

Freestanding water fountain near home plate of the northeastern baseball diamond - ON (the upper faucet overshoots the bowl, and gives good water; the lower has so little flow I doubt it can easily be drunk)

Burke-Gilman Playground Park

Water fountain attached to the restroom building - ON (my preferred water at present; I first reported this fountain on April 22 in "Magnuson Park Has a Warm-Water Sink!", then that it had been turned off July 17 in "Momentous News", probably at least a week after the event, and finally that it was back on August 25 in "Some News")

Burke-Gilman Trail

Freestanding street water fountain near 30th Ave - ON (I don't think I've drunk from this this year, but used to give good water; first reported off May 1 in "Water Fountains:  Things We've Lost, Part II", then on August 25 in "Some News")

Ravenna Park

Double freestanding water fountain among the picnic tables near the "lower" restroom building - ON (I remember this as rather hard water, and haven't drunk from it this year; first reported off April 25 in "Our Main Characters", then on July 30 in "Amazing Water Fountain News", but then it had an overshooting tap and a lower-flow one, while now both taps are so low as to be hard to drink from)

Freestanding water fountain near the "upper" restroom building - ON (rather hard water; first reported on April 27 in "FOUND:  Park Drinking Water NEAR UW!!")

Cowen Park

Freestanding water fountain sort of near the playground - ON (first reported off April 25 in "Our Main Characters", then on August 25 in "Some News")

Whew, dear Diary!  Although I've now introduced most of the fountains, the other hikes produced photos, so I'd best stop here for now.  Until later, or more probably tomorrow.

A Thank You

 Dear Diary,

A few weeks ago, as you may have heard, Seattle won the coveted award for Most Polluted Major City Air for several days running thanks to wildfire smoke.  Early in the smoke's ownership of the city, I walked north to the Northeast branch of the Seattle Public Library and stayed near there for several days.  The closest park restroom to there is, conveniently enough, the one at View Ridge Playfield that's open 24 hours.

The day I came north, September 11, our wonderful mayor wisely closed the parks so nobody would be tempted to go outside.  Since I normally lack a place where I can be inside these days, I was in a rule-breaking frame of mind and went to View Ridge Playfield anyway.  That day, the men's room was open, but out of toilet paper; the women's room was closed for repairs.

So on Friday, and Saturday morning, I used Safeway's restroom (this is the one at 35th Ave and 75th St).  But Saturday evening I felt guilty about trying again, and wasn't sure it wouldn't be locked, so instead I looked for one of those individually wrapped rolls of institutional toilet paper.  Not at that Safeway.  With trepidation I went to the playfield - where the paper had in fact been refilled, and I could do Number Two in peace.

On Monday - we're up to the 14th now - I noticed that the women's room had been re-opened.

On Thursday the 17th, the last day the parks were closed, I got kind of stir-crazy, and even though the air was still not fit to breathe, set out on a hike, which the next page I'll write in you, dear Diary, will explain.  I started at 5 P.M., and set out from the library for Dahl Playfield.

Now, I'd thought of basically three possibilities for how the closure would have affected the park restrooms we unsheltered homeless are supposed to rely on.  To be honest, I expected:

1. Closure.  The parks closure announcement seemed to have come late in the day, so I figured the restrooms had already been closed (except the 24-hour ones), and would just stay that way.

But Dahl Playfield's restroom was open.  (Much to my personal relief at the time, may I add.)  So that theory wasn't true.  My next idea:

2. All open.  Maybe someone had thought of us, and had left the restrooms unlocked the entire time.

I liked that theory for two reasons:  it would be safe for parks staff, and it would provide evidence that more restrooms could be opened 24 hours.  It was quite a while before the hike allowed me to test this theory - the next restrooms I saw were View Ridge's, and the ones after that were Magnuson Park's.  Since any hike to Magnuson Park is twice as far as any equal distance hike to any other destination, well, it was quite a while.  But after days of struggle - well, OK, an hour or three - I found Magnuson Park's restrooms all closed.  So that left only the least probable hypothesis standing:

3.  Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation had, with respect to restrooms, simply ignored the closure, continuing to unlock, clean, stock, and lock them daily.

While this wasn't my preferred result, it did mean two things:  we hadn't been forgotten in this closure; and whatever risks I undertook by staying outside those days, a whole bunch of parks workers undertook worse, by working outside much of each day.

Thanks are wholly inadequate, but still necessary.  So thank you, maintenance workers for Parks and Recreation.  I owe you.

Winter Is Coming

Dear Diary,

Do you expect King County to reach Phase 3 and public buildings to re-open before spring of 2021?  Sorry, but I don't.  Now, coming from Wisconsin I don't really think Seattle has a winter - by my standards, February through May is spring, June through September summer, and October through January autumn.  But each of the past two years we've had a week or two of snow, and this time's supposed to be a La Niña, meaning colder and wetter.  So even by my standards, some sort of winter is probably going to happen before we're all happily vaccinated.

So I think it's worth returning to this November 2019 document, listing park restrooms meant to stay open last winter.  It is, of course, possible that this winter, more restrooms will have been winterised, but I haven't so far seen any sign of that.

I know of three parks whose restrooms are currently open 24 hours in North Seattle - Gas Works Park, View Ridge Playfield, and one I haven't introduced yet.  I suspect but do not know that Green Lake Park may be another.  Ballard Commons is sometimes listed as one more, but only has "sanican"s.  Fortunately, all of these are due to remain open except the one I haven't named.

Otherwise.  For the southeastern part of "NE", we have Laurelhurst Community Center, lower Ravenna Park, and further north Dahl Playfield and the beach restrooms at Magnuson Park, besides View Ridge.  Elsewhere in "NE" we have Maple Leaf Reservoir Park, Matthews Beach, Jackson Park (different hours), and the playground-side restrooms at Northacres Park.

In "N", besides Green Lake and Gas Works, there's Wallingford Playfield, some of the restrooms in the eastern part of Woodland Park, and presumably at least some of those in the Woodland Park Zoo (they haven't gotten back to me).  Not much at the north end of "N".

In "NW", Carkeek Park, both sets of restrooms at Golden Gardens Park, and Loyal Heights Community Center seem to be it.  I have no idea why the restrooms at Ballard Community Center should close, but they aren't on last year's list.  (Unless they're what the listing of Ballard Commons actually means.)  This represents a real shortage at the south end of "NW", for which the limited hours at the Ballard branch of the Seattle Public Library will hardly compensate.

Keep in mind, also, that all bets are off if it snows seriously, since all except the 24-hour restrooms need to be opened daily.

That said, this is far better than the water fountain story.  Northacres Park's playground-side fountains are the only winterised ones I found in North Seattle.

My theory is that the reason nothing has been done about this this year has to do with the fact that Seattle also hasn't done much to house us homeless this year.  The idea is that we'll all keep warm hiking to Northacres Park for water (let alone lugging it back) so we won't need housing.  It's so good that our mayor always has our best interests at heart.

Cal Anderson Park Is Not a Park

 Dear Diary, 

This morning before it got too hot out to move, I went to my storage unit.  And on the way there, I walked the perimeter of Cal Anderson Park, as well as some of the paved paths within.

And I think everyone's confused.  Granted, there are reasons for this.  The Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation continues to present it as a park.  We all remember it being a park.  And we all hope it'll be a park again.  But we're all deluded.

Seattle's Parks Are Open

As recently as August 18, the parks department's front page declared that "All parks are open".  Cal Anderson isn't the only exception -  tomorrow Gas Works Park will close for fear that the First Amendment will spread COVID-19 or dissent or something.  But that's my point.  With Gas Works scheduled to close, there's no pretending that "All parks are open".  But with Cal Anderson closed for more than a month, it was OK to say that.  Elementary logic suffices:  This means Cal Anderson Park is not a park.

Seattle's Parks' Restrooms Are Open

According to Erica C. Barnett, our wonderful mayor ordered that park restrooms be opened on April 6.  However, most of the time since then, the restrooms at Cal Anderson Park have been locked; at present they're fenced in.

Admittedly, similar things are also true of University Playground, Freeway Park, and perhaps others.  So unlike the previous point, this isn't conclusive.

Temporarily Closed Parks Don't Work Like That

Temporary closures of Seattle parks work in one of two ways.

1) They're closed long term for renovation and such, in which case the closure is enforced by a fence.  Examples I've shown you pictures of, dear Diary, include Fritz Hedges Waterway Park, A. B. Ernst Park (incipient fence), and especially Christie Park.   Granted, Cal Anderson's restrooms and shelterhouse are fenced in, but that's not the same thing.

2) They're closed short term for some reason, in which case the closure is enforced only by people (who might be armed) and signs.  Examples we've seen since I started you, dear Diary, include the Mother's Day closures of the major parks and the upcoming Labor Day closure of Gas Works Park.  Something similar to this applies to the revamped closing times of the major parks, which was 8 P.M. in the spring, 9:30 P.M. in the summer, and will now be 8 P.M. again.

Cal Anderson Park has been closed long term, but the closure has been enforced only by people and signs.  That said, some of the enforcing people have been pretty violent about it.

Also, both short and long term closures have either intrinsic or clearly stated endpoints.  Major parks have closed early and for certain holiday weekends for fear of COVID-19, and OK, now also for fear of disputes, but one imagines that when the pandemic formally ends these closures will end too.  Presumably when the pandemic formally ends our wonderful mayor will appear at opening ceremonies for Fritz Hedges and Christie and those fences will come down.  But

This Closure Is Not for the Stated Reason, and Has No Obvious Endpoint

We were initially told Cal Anderson Park would close for a short time for repairs and cleaning.  Two months later, this is becoming hard to believe, especially given that the fences appropriate to this kind of closure never went up.

Also, if that were true, the park would be visibly improving, and it is not.  I hadn't looked at the basketball courts earlier this year, but this morning they lacked hoops.  The fancy new winterised water fountain installed this spring:

has been running each time I've seen it this year, but today it was dry.

Above all, the place is drowning in trash.  I made it my goal, while walking the perimeter, to find these signs:

which had been, in July, extremely conspicuous along the northern border.  I found ten.  Two are behind the fences in the park's middle (you can see one in the restroom photo).  Two could be said to be at park entrances:  at Nagle Place (no directionals for this page's north-south streets) and E Pine St (actual entrance blocked by pre-existing fence) and the one above, which might conceivably be seen by someone approaching 11th Ave and E Olive St.  The other six are placed two each at actual park entrances:

11th Ave and E Howell St:

11th Ave and E Denny Way:

10th Ave and E Denny Way:

OK, so the trash isn't all that conspicuous in most of my photos.  This is partly because it didn't occur to me that it was the real story while I was photographing, and partly because I try to avoid photographing my peers, including their tents, and just days after the last violent sweep much of the park's middle is covered with tents.  As I'll have occasion to remark in another post if the weather ever cools off, most of the homeless encampments I've encountered in Seattle parks this year have been conspicuously tidy.  Whether that's because my peers have been behaving unusually well, because parks staff have been going above and beyond, or (as I suspect) both, my travels this summer have just about broken the equivalence in my mind between urban tents and litter.  But at Cal Anderson Park today, there's tons of trash in patterns that show my peers misbehaving, tons more in patterns that show parks staff not collecting the trash at all, and that's not even starting on the many non-trash items the police recently added to the backlog, quite a few of which are still visible.

Is There an Endpoint?

Look, let's get real.  Cal Anderson Park is currently a battleground, and that's why it's closed.  More precisely, the East Precinct Seattle Police find any group there, with the possible exception of evangelical Christians, threatening, so they want to have legal cover for ejecting all such groups from the park.

What would it take to change this?

Obviously, what should happen is that everyone in Seattle should sign, in each person's own blood, a loyalty oath promising, under pain of felony prosecution and imprisonment, never again to disagree with our wonderful mayor in thought, word or deed.  If this took place before next year's election, I'm sure it would assuage every fear, and Cal Anderson Park could return to being a normal park.

Otherwise, I think we're left with the difficulty of proving a negative.  The East Precinct is making it very clear that it isn't going to be the one to back down again.  So we have to consider non-park futures for Cal Anderson.

Well, one is sort of a park future.  Maybe the reason its name hasn't been formally changed is that it's meant to become a car park, that is, a parking lot.  No doubt a police parking lot, so it could remain a battlefield.

On the other hand, one useful future for a battlefield is as a military base.  In Seattle, of course, even a military base can become a park, as witness Discovery Park and the Ballard Locks.  But perhaps the Seattle Police could show the US Army how to do it right.

I still hope to finish writing you, dear Diary, before this situation gets resolved.