Hike 2A: Mid-Northeast, part II

Dear Diary,

The Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation home page at the very hour I started this page lead off with "Space Available in School Aged Childcare Program".  Clicking on that leads in turn to a page that says "Wedgwood School Aged Care 2020-2021" happens at "Ravenna-Eckstein Cmty Ctr".

So on Wednesday morning, without even stopping to buy groceries and draw water, north I went again to

Ravenna-Eckstein Community Center and Park

Another version of the postcard shot:

Notice the dark windows.  No, dear Diary, that isn't some weird photographic effect.  At 8:47 A.M. on a Wednesday, this ostensible child care site was a closed building.

I thought I should rule out the possibility that the kids were outside, so I went around back to the park.  Now, this was the day after I'd told you, dear Diary, in "What's in a Name?", that I ought to pay more attention to parks' sporting aspects.  So when I saw this:

well, I just had to tell you about it.  See, I don't know anything about dimensions, but I do know that that's a proper set of lines for a basketball court.

Anyway, weirdly, considering the hour, not only were there no child care classes at the playgrounds, there were no kids at all:

It turns out that one more click leads to the information that the Ravenna-Eckstein Community Center's child care is actually offered at "Wedgwood Elemenarty School".  So kids whose schools are closed due to COVID-19 are instead attending child care - at school?

I forgot to do the introduction thing in the previous page.  Although, according to my notes, I mentioned Ravenna-Eckstein Park in "Go North, Aging Man!" May 6, it wasn't until October 3, in "Water Fountains - An Interim Report", part II, that I said anything much.  The previous page and this still don't add up to what I think of as "doing justice" to this small but surprisingly complex space, and I'll have to think about that.

View Ridge Playfield

One reason I had to put these parks early in the hikes is that I'd already started with this one.  Late on New Year's Day my stomach got a bit queasy, no, not that, but suggesting I might not get much warning of Number Two, so I decided not to take chances, and to head for the 24 hour restroom.  To my great relief it came through:

As this story suggests, I've paid considerably more attention to View Ridge Playfield than to the other two parks these pages concern.  Still more so because these are the nearest park restrooms to the Seattle Public Library's Northeast branch, where I usually went for Wi-Fi - among other things, to write you, dear Diary - in the months I lacked University Wi-Fi.

So this is another park introduced May 6 in "Go North, Aging Man!" without photos, but already June 4 in "Home Dry Home" I included a landscape shot, and then June 12 "A Night View of View Ridge Playfield, and a Name".  After that, October 2 "A Thank You", October 3 "Water Fountains - An Interim Report", part II, and November 23 "Standing Room Only", part III.

But none of these really conveyed all that much about the place - the night view basically showed what I can also attest from later experience, that at night in that park one can't see much.  On Wednesday, fired up with my newfound zeal for parks' athletic sides, I vowed to Do Better.

But first things first:

All as expected.  That is the best side of this building, by the way, not because of anything visible now, but because of the chalk art the kids will put onto the pavement in front come summer.  Last summer I spent perhaps an hour total watching the slow decay of the beauty of one exceptional drawing.

Next I looked at my notes from "What's in a Name?"  Apparently View Ridge claims baseball, soccer and basketball.  Baseball:

This is pretty much the norm in the grass baseball fields:  sand infields, grass outfields, and way off at the opposite corner another diamond.  I don't remember whether we did these things that way in Milwaukee in the 1970s.  The infields have a degree of sameishness that strongly suggests common origins, possibly thanks to the local Little League.  Notice also, dear Diary, the partly sheltered benches in the dugouts.

As for soccer?  That usually means a pair of white, very sameish, ahem, movable goalposts:

But View Ridge is a little different here:

Basketball means a half court:

I was fortunate in the arrival, before I could take that shot, of the parks employee mentioned several times in "My Book of Hours".  He pointed out that thanks to the cancellation of team sports, the fields hadn't been re-seeded or groomed, and none of "the soccer things" were out.  He also said View Ridge's field was one of the best, because it had its original soil, not the sandy stuff Parks puts down elsewhere.  Finally, he told me View Ridge's restrooms had actually been 24 hours for years.

Anyway, as for non-athletic signs of uniqueness?  The view hill across the street isn't really part of the park.  I remembered liking the trees one sees from there, but not so much by day.  But that gave me a hint.  I don't know whether it's just familiarity at work, or something real, but I do like the arrangement of the trees in the southern, non-field, side of the park.

Well, I doubt that shot makes my point, dear Diary, but in any event such bucolic things must now pause, because the next three pages concern Magnuson Park.

Hike 1B: Mid-Northeast, part I

Dear Diary,

Gosh, I'm sorry.  It's been four - no, five now - days, hasn't it?  But I put off telling you about these parks because I expected to finish with the area soon; but then Wednesday I took so many pictures that it seemed best to split them anyway.  So this page is about two parks I visited fairly late Sunday.  The next is about one of those parks again, and a third one, as I visited them Wednesday morning.

I originally hoped to do these three, Maple Leaf Reservoir Park, and Magnuson Park in one day.  "Mid-Northeast" then would've meant parks north of 65th St and south of 85th St in northeast Seattle.  But as it turned out those other two parks got separated, so what's left is "mid" east-west as well as north-south.

Dahl Playfield

A playfield whose men's room has a serious privacy problem - I was always going to have a problematic relationship with Waldo J. Dahl Playfield, but it's close enough that I've told you bits and pieces about it often enough anyway, dear Diary.  Introduced May 6 in "Go North, Aging Man", then featured October 2 and 3 in "A Thank You" and the first two parts of "Water Fountains - An Interim Report", and finally getting a bit more attention December 15 in "The End of the Tour".  Remembering that as more extensive than it actually was, I meant to keep my visit to Dahl Playfield strictly business.  Everyone said its restrooms would be open; were they?

But I'd ignored Target's restrooms, incensed that they continue to pretend their water fountains are "out of order", so the last restroom I'd been near was Maple Leaf Reservoir Park's, not actually very far horizontally but hours before.  The whole way east and south, taking creek action shots I'll probably never use, my need to do Number Two got stronger and stronger.

So...  Here's the restroom building:

And here's the open door of the men's room:

And, um, ...

here are my shoes in the inches of water sitting in the deepest part of the room, near the sink, which unfortunately is not where the room's drain is.

It had rained inches in the preceding days, so I wondered if this was overflow.  That finally led me to the women's room:

Notice the dry floor.  Turned out the women's room had a slight stoop outside, enough to keep most rain out.  Did the men's?  Yes.  What I'd had to wade through was a cleaning technique, not an act of God.  The men's room had been hosed down.

So it seems I'll continue to have a problematic relationship with Dahl Playfield.  But everyone was right; the restrooms were open.

Ravenna-Eckstein Community Center and Park

The postcard shot:

The closed door:

The water fountain out back, no longer surrounded by "DANGER" tape.  I don't know whether it would have run this year; either outcome, this coming spring, will be a surprise:

But something was bothering me, and I came back to Ravenna-Eckstein three days later.

What's in a Name?

Dear Diary,

Going Sunday to visit some of the more prominent parks of northeast Seattle reminded me of something I'd more or less forgotten:  my imagining a hierarchy of park naming.

I don't know of a North Seattle Parks and Recreation park that goes by only one name, like Madonna.  They're all two or more, a specific name and a more general, vaguely classifying, one.

I spent some sleepless time two nights ago classifying the parks in my list by their second names.  Last night I added their "amenities" as listed by the department on their web pages, and today (um, the 5th) their areas in acres.

I wasn't surprised that "Park" was the clear champion, 46 not counting one "Mini Park" and two "Pocket Park"s.  The runners up are all clustered in a group, "Natural Area", "Place", "Playfield", and "Playground", ten to twelve each.

My imagined hierarchy is Park sometimes > Playfield > Playground > Place.  So let's take "Natural Area" first.  Weirdly, the department reserves this, in North Seattle, for Thornton Creek and its tributaries, ten of the eleven.  The only exception is Pipers Creek Natural Area.  Which is a reminder that parks' names are partly political.  In this case, Pipers Creek is sometimes set up as a northwestern equivalent to Thornton Creek.

Parks about other streams need other names.  Thornton Creek grabs some of these too - Inverness Ravine Park, Victory Creek Park, Mock Creek Ravine.  But a park near the surviving mouth of Yesler Creek is Union Bay Boglands, then there's Ravenna Ravine (actually an unnamed tributary to Ravenna Creek) and no fewer than four parks in northwestern Seattle on four different creeks - Crown Hill Glen, North Beach Ravine, North Beach Park and Llandover Woods Greenspace.

This is counting only parks that, well, feel like Natural Areas.  Victory Creek Park recently had picnic tables and a playground, but today its main concession to the lazy is a single bench.  It wasn't clear how to allocate other parks.  In Little Brook and Ravenna Parks, the titular streams can be seen, but is that fair to Victory Heights Playground, whose stream has vanished?

Anyway.  The hierarchy.

"Place"s really stand out.  They're small, and they have few or no symbolised amenities.  Belvoir Place in turn looks different on both counts - at .42 acres it's by far the biggest, and it has two amenities listed, a waterway for hand-carried boats and a view.  The rest are all below .25 acres, and only two have even one amenity listed - Bergen Place's art (yuck) and Sunset Place's water fountain.  The views from Sunset Place and the Blue Ridge Places, all of which I've shown you, dear Diary, are not listed, so that's a reminder that the lists of amenities aren't infallible.

Size isn't a reliable guide to these classifications either, except when it is.  No "playfield" or "playground" in North Seattle is below a quarter acre.  Most "place"s are, also all three "circle"s (all of which really are more or less traffic circles), both "pocket park"s and the "mini park", and both "triangle"s and the "square" that's really a triangle.

But that leaves ten other very small parks.  I won't list all of them, but half have all sorts of names, including Marvin's Garden and the Wallingford Steps, and half are "park"s, including Peace Park and Thyme Patch Park.  Most of the "place"s don't matter much to me, but the kids of one neighbourhood would really miss Wedgwood Square, the students of another Christie Park, and I'd be sorry never to have seen Pinehurst Pocket Park.

All the parks I failed to find - one of the Blue Ridge Places, Cascade Place and Victory Creek Confluence Natural Area - are under a quarter-acre.  Good to know there are limits to my visual difficulties.

Anyway, moving on.  All "playground"s in North Seattle are rather bigger.  Most are between 2 and 4 acres; Meridian is twice 4, though, and Pinehurst and Victory Heights a little less than 2.  All but one have playgrounds; the exception, Sacajawea Playground, has the playground of Sacajawea Elementary School next door listed as an amenity to conform it.  All except Froula and Sacajawea have water fountains; nearly half have restrooms (although those at Ross aren't listed among its amenities).

Which brings me to southern Ballard.  I found "Ross Playground", as listed at the parks department website, billing itself as "Ross Playfield" on its scoreboard, "Ross Park" on its main sign.  I was sold.  I'll note that its list of amenities, once bolstered not only by its restrooms but also by the art (the mosaic) I keep having trouble photographing, is more than adequate to a park its size.

"Gilman Playground" is more problematic.  On first seeing it, primed by the instability of Ross's name, I thought "This is obviously a playfield."  I meant its focus on sports - it lists the most sports as amenities, baseball, basketball, soccer and tennis, among North Seattle's playgrounds - and the sheer blandness I find in all playfields.  At the time I conceived this conspiracy theory:  "Ballard residents won't let Ross and Gilman move up to their rightful places in the hierarchy because Ballard Playground is only a playground."  More seriously, Gilman as a playfield would be the smallest, just under 4 acres, except for the parks that are playfields by virtue of being high schools' playfields (Ingraham and Nathan Hale).

As for Meridian Playground, in hierarchy terms it can't move up because it has no sports except a minimal concession to basketball, but it's easily as rich an experience as many official parks.  I dunno.  I don't live near any of these three, and I don't know the real politics of their names.  It seems obvious that people have recurringly been unsatisfied to call Ross a "playground", but beyond that?

It's obviously time to move on.  "Playfield"s are, as suggested above, bigger, except for Ingraham Playfield (.8 acres) and presumably Nathan Hale Playfield (whose area I don't know).  (In fact, let's please leave these two, which don't have parks department web pages, out of all the rest of this.)  Wallingford is the smallest of the rest in North Seattle, at 4 1/2 acres; Loyal Heights, 6 2/3, is next.  Meadowbrook, 18 1/2, is the biggest.  All have restrooms and water fountains, although Dahl's fountain isn't listed among its amenities, and some of the restrooms are technically in community centers (which are, in turn, in the playfields).

They all offer multiple sports, though at least in their web pages' lists of amenities, arguably none exceed Gilman's four.  (Depends on the definition of "sport".)  All list baseball except Wallingford.  I'd thought "playfield" status demanded baseball diamonds, so I did some digging.  At a community website, in the 23rd comment, by "gregf", beginning "Since the field area was created in 1970", is a historical take on Wallingford Playfield's field, and how the parks department has apparently pushed to turn it more specific (probably for baseball).  Let's hear it for the bland!

So maybe it's obvious by now that this page is really more about memories than about names, and why do the playfields give me so few meaningful memories?  Obviously, I didn't play sports in them growing up, nor since.  I did play Little League as a child, and think I must have had fun, but don't in the least associate that with the Milwaukee parks involved.  I remember ultimate frisbee in college much more vividly, but nobody needs a specially marked space for ultimate; we used the Midway, which is in fact a Chicago park, but of which I have many more memories than just sporting ones.

North Seattle's playfields, as I've mentioned more than once to you, dear Diary, try to show individuality in their playgrounds, ironic in terms of the notional hierarchy by which playfields should care more about other things.  Soundview is so much the winner in this as to shade all the rest, and although I've offered photos of Wallingford's, Meadowbrook's and Laurelhurst's playgrounds in my desperate search for "neat stuff" at each, surely, dear Diary, you remember the joy with which I greeted Laurelhurst's firepit and bridge, and the creeks at Dahl and Meadowbrook, as actual differences?  I suppose my brief enthusiasms for those creeks foreshadowed "Land and Water".

What is clear is that I haven't really been fair to parks' sporting aspects, and to whatever extent I write about parks after you, dear Diary, I ought to try to do better.  I suppose at least leaving team sports out of you enhances your credibility as a record of the pandemic, though.

When I think about it, this ignoring goes beyond the playfields.  I've repeatedly told you, dear Diary, about the bowl in Ravenna Park that's even lower than the "lower" restrooms, about its purple paving stone, concerts in it, and its outlet from the park's ravine, but I've never mentioned, have I, that it's actually a baseball diamond?  I seem to have mentioned actual sporting contests - soccer at Cal Anderson Park, tennis at Laurelhurst, softball at Ravenna - primarily as opportunities to ogle players.  Sheesh.

Anyway, as this implies, some North Seattle "park"s can be seen as improved playfields, lending support to my idea of a hierarchy.  Some big parks do this on steroids; Magnuson Park, the biggest, lists sixteen amenities, including baseball, soccer and tennis.  But some don't:  Carkeek Park lists only hiking, if one considers that a sport.  Only seven of the 46 list baseball (Cowen, Green Lake, Magnuson, Maple Leaf, Northacres, Ravenna, Woodland).

So really, this hierarchy is looking pretty shaky by now.  I thought the less sporting "park"s won that title by strong individuality - places like Fremont Canal and Fremont Peak, or Peace, or Ballard Corners.  But then what do we do about the recipe for a Seattle park I concocted after first seeing Cedar and Little Brook:  "Take a playground, add a grassy area, and there you are."

"Park" isn't just the "Smith" of parks.  It's more common, and it more often really points to an actual smith.  That is, of the 46, quite a few either have lots of amenities, or strong individuality.  But "park" is also the "Smith" of parks.  And politically, it's the obvious way to keep up with the Joneses.  I'm sure several of the "park"s made by my recipe got that title because the park in the next neighbourhood already had it.

So I think "place", "playground", and "playfield" are real categories with real definitions.  I don't know whether, elsewhere in Seattle, "natural area" is such a category; here it's been captured by Thornton Creek.  "Park" is not such a category.

What about the little categories?

There are more "boulevard"s not just in Seattle, but in the parks department's list of parks, than Ravenna.  There are more "garden"s than Marvin's, though I suspect they all mean the word more vegetatively.  There are more "mini park"s than Lake City, more "plaza"s than University Heights, more "viewpoint"s than NW 60th St; there is even one more "greenspace" than Llandover Woods.

Burke-Gilman is of course not the only "trail" in Seattle, but for some reason it's the only one listed as a Seattle park on the department website.  Similar for "boglands" and Union Bay, "glen" and Crown Hill, "homestead" and Hubbard, "loop" and Cheshiahud Lake Union, "open space" and Bitter Lake Reservoir, and "steps" and Wallingford.

Out of many, many.  I started you, dear Diary, with a warning about lying to you, but there's a sense in which I've been lying to you all along.  I am not in fact the biggest fan of our current mayor.  I adopted that pose as a satirical device, which maybe makes the lying OK, but it became harder and harder to maintain the more I wrote about Cal Anderson Park.

So take this business of closing the big parks entirely on holidays, and early at other times, with the exhortation that Seattle has hundreds of other parks.  From a public health standpoint this is dubious.  The big parks offer more room for social distancing than the small, but they also offer more room for crowds and superspreader events.

But although my father was an epidemiologist, I am not; I write, at the moment, about parks.  And the mayor's advice was more right than wrong.  As this epidemic drags on, Seattle does have many outdoor places worth visiting.  Yes, it takes more love for parks than I can muster to find something special about Corliss Place, but that's more the exception than the rule.  I've mentioned a lot of interesting parks in this page, and in your pages in general, dear Diary, and I hope, if it ever stops raining, that anyone who reads you will explore some of them.  Good night.

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.

Canalwards, Foolish Mortal

Dear Diary,

I spent several days in December making short hikes, as I told you some time ago I intended.  These hikes took me to arguably seven parks owned or managed by Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation, all south of 43rd St in the University District and Laurelhurst.  And in most of them I found problems with what I've told you, dear Diary, before:  some outright errors of fact, some weasel wording to avoid other errors, and plenty of omissions.  So this page is my attempt to do better by these parks.

None, unfortunately, have restrooms, and only one (the only one this page isn't apologising to) has a water fountain, which I found not running today.

I discovered the hard way in writing this that it's really dumb to copy a modern web page into a Blogspot page as one writes the latter.  (Because Android and/or Chrome wouldn't let me copy just the paragraph I wanted.)  I think the ill effects are confined to me writing this, but I trust, dear Diary, that if anyone reading you sees, in particular, an annoying blue horizontal bar, they'll complain in the comments.  (EDIT 1/1:  Actually, I think I've fixed it.  Let me know if not.)

December 22

Fritz Hedges Waterway Park

This park is on Boat St, west of Brooklyn Ave.  Introduced May 13 in "Down by the Canal", then given full treatment October 20 in "Fritz Hedges Waterway Park".  In the latter page, I wrote:

"Unfortunately, as in the expanded Christie Park, all the furniture is metal."

Nope.

See those discolourations in the long concrete benches?  There are four total; in that shot, one is hidden by the shade.  Let's take a closer look at that one.

I was wrong.  (Heck, I was technically wrong just because of the concrete benches, even without their wooden inserts.)

North Passage Point

This park is between Northlake Way and the water under I-5.  Introduced in "Down by the Canal", and I seem not to have mentioned it to you since, dear Diary.  In that page, I noted that other people being around had cramped my photography.  I also made a big deal out of this park having land, unlike, for example, the next one, so downplayed this park's water views.

Well, on December 22 none of that was an issue.  Here's a landscape:

Now, the builders of I-5 of course chose a narrow point in the water to cross, specifically the strait between Portage Bay and Lake Union.  This means that from this park, one can look at either of those water bodies, or in between, at South Passage Point across the water.

Portage Bay, seen through the University Bridge:

South Passage Point:

Lake Union:

Northlake Park

This is basically a viewpoint on Northlake, a block east of North Passage Point.  I introduced it rather badly in "Down by the Canal", then never mentioned it again.

One of the things I did wrong was spoil my photo of the view with a finger in the shot.  That's what I focused on fixing this time.

Peace Park

This is between 9th and Eastlake Avenues on 40th St, which puts it right next to the University Bridge.  Introduced in "Down by the Canal" with the following wording to avoid saying what I just did:

"This isn't on the canal, but is essentially built into one of the bridges over the canal, the University Bridge."

I did so because the parks department page propounds the cockamamie notion that the park is actually at the intersection of 40th and Pacific Streets, and I refused to believe the evidence of my own eyes, and the street signs there.  In my lists of parks, that's the address I use.  So I went there December 22 to establish the real address.

(To be fair to the department, they may simply mean that the park is on both 40th and Pacific, and indeed I showed you, dear Diary, a photo of the boring Pacific Street side.  It's still an inadequate and misleading address.)

December 23

Fritz Hedges Waterway Park

Yes, it's wooden.

December 29

Union Bay Boglands No. 1 and No. 2

This park, so to speak, is on Surber Drive from 41st St to a little south of 38th St.  Introduced rather confusedly and perfunctorily May 13 in "Back East, Where the Gardens Are Pretty".

What I know now that I didn't know then is that from 1926 to 1966 the city had a landfill there, where about half of the university's east campus is today.  My guess now is that when the city conveyed most of the land to the university, they held back the Surber Drive edge in hopes people would build more mansions with pretty gardens, hopes that were not to be fulfilled.

My further guess is that the two parcels exist because a Seattle Public Utilities pumping station is between them.  At any rate, No. 1's address is "Surber Drive NE & 41st NE", while No. 2 is at "3905 NE Surber Drive".

When I first went there this time, my eyes immediately flew to a green space north of 41st.  A bunch of people had parked there, but it turned out not to be part of the huge Talaris property next door.  Oops:  it's actually an unimproved block of 38th Ave.

(Those photos are actually from December 28.)

The best clue came from the university's own map, which stops short at 38th.  And if you go into the area, differences emerge between the university's Yesler Swamp and the city's Union Bay Boglands.  One is that the swamp's famous boardwalk seems never to come too close to the eastern edge.  Another is that in the city side, but not the university side, there's lots of that welcome green in winter, conifers:

(Yes, I know the green up front is ivy.  Look behind it.)

January 1

And happy new year, dear Diary!  Did you ever expect to get so old?  I certainly didn't expect it of you.

Christie Park

This park is on the southwest corner of 9th Ave and 43rd St.  Introduced May 6 in "Go North, Aging Man!" and then corrected the same day in the first "Foolish Mortal" page; lavishly depicted October 4 in "Christie Park, Expanded, at Sunset".  It's the furthest north of these parks, and the only one I don't (as far as I know) owe an apology to, which, yes, means it's also the one with a water fountain.

In this case, as of today I still can't find any furniture that isn't metal.

Peace Park

I continued south on 9th, which means I reached here.  I decided to see whether Sadako of the Thousand Cranes had been given Christmas candies, but to my surprise found a few actual (and rather bedraggled) cranes, so took a picture.

Northlake Park

This was my main destination today.  One main reason I introduced it badly is that I wanted to complain about the parks department page more than I actually wanted to introduce the park.  The page's text indeed is gibberish to the uninitiated (such as me when I wrote "Down by the Canal"), and focused on things of no interest to most:

"The 7th Avenue NE Street End is not on 7th Avenue or a street end. The property is part waterway, part street right-of-way for NE Northlake Way. The site is located on the southwest edge of the University District, between I-5 and the University bridge, at the intersection of Lake Union Waterway 14 and NE Northlake Way, and across the street from the terminus of 7th Avenue NE. The upland portion of the waterway is owned by the Washington State Department of Natural Resources and the remainder of the property is street right-of-way owned by Seattle Department of Transportation. The property was included as part of the 2000 Pro Parks Levy to “Develop park at 7th Ave NE street end at Lake Union.” "

I wanted to complain that Northlake Park is not on the official lists of either street ends or waterways.  The writer's cute opening sentence shows that he (I'd bet this paragraph was a man's mistake) anticipated that.  Most of the park is textbook 7th Ave NE Street End, but since 7th wasn't on the list the city adopted, that doesn't matter.  (Now I'm probably speaking gibberish to the uninitiated.  See, please, "North Seattle Street Ends:  Introduction", December 20.)

As for waterways?  With ashen face I discover that the map of Lake Union which, in "Lake Union's North Shore:  Waterways and Street Ends" (October 8) I recommended as listing all the waterways, omits five of them:  7, 10, 12, 13 and 14.  Oops.

So.  I think this is the "upland" part that could have been a very steep waterway (i.e., place to put boats into the water or take them out):

That's on the left as one faces the water.

Thinking as I went there that it really was a street end, I took my standard three photos.  But the street that ends is no beauty, and the land the city claims (though not under the street end law) doesn't look like much in my photos.  So that leaves only the park's main point, its view.  My third try:

Good night, dear Diary.