Hike 9C: Meadowbrook

Dear Diary,

It was getting dark on January 20 as I approached Meadowbrook.  Now, if you were to look at the map I was hiking to check, say, today, it would show two symbols at that park - one for the playfield's restrooms, and one for the buildings a fair way east of those.  But in January the playfield's restrooms were closed, and since there were no "sanican"s near them, the map admitted they were closed.  Observe:

And on the other side?

Here's what I thought the best face of the restroom building, which was, as you can see, dear Diary, in January heavily covered with graffiti.

At least it was good graffiti on this side.

Now, as I said, this was January 20, and there were big doings in the other Washington.  But I'd kind of forgotten about them until I got to the Community Center, which the map then said offered restrooms and showers - and to which I'd been pointed for showers by an employee in June.  My attempt at a postcard shot:

The unexpected closed doors:

The unexpected extra-closed doors:

The dedication sign nearby, rendered deeply ironic by the previous picture:

How times change.

I actually needed a restroom by this point, so it was with deep disappointment that I turned away.  But as I was leaving I noticed a light in the direction of the building.

Well, it was pretty much full dark by then.  Above the picture sort of in the middle of the photo, though, I could see words then that I can't see in the photo, and those words included "Meadowbrook" and "Pool".

Now, obviously it makes sense for a pool to have showers, but this was the first sign I'd encountered that the pool was actually the building to go to.  Moreover, I was worried about a reception similar to the one I'd gotten at the Ballard library:  I only wanted a toilet and sink; the map claimed I could get those, but was it telling the truth?

It was.  Despite the signs' emphasis:

and the fact that I smelled pretty terrible (I was then only a week from the motel, but had been wearing the same clothes much, much longer), nobody considered it at all unreasonable for me to want only a restroom.  And what a restroom:

I'd just about forgotten that indoor public restrooms can be pretty nice.  Seems to me a pool, where people might have to wait in line to shower, is an unexpected place to find such a thing as a public restroom deserving the label "nice" - why encourage people to be slow?  But maybe the showers have some flaw that discourages lollygagging.

Anyway, the people staffing the place also had snacks on hand, and I left the building much happier than I'd found it.

Good night, dear Diary.  I'm actually not sure whether, that night, I went "home" to southeastern North Seattle, or just back to Green Lake and Woodland Parks, but anyway, the next stages in my investigation of those parks' restrooms' hours are the subject of the next page in the January story.

Hike 9B: Far Northeast

Dear Diary,

I'm going to try to consolidate two visits to Green Lake and Woodland Parks into one page, thus giving me a better chance of finishing with the January hikes before summer.  So hikes 8D and 9A are being postponed to accompany hike 10; all you need to know for now is that on January 20 I went northeast from Green Lake Park to Lake City.

Albert Davis Park and Lake City Community Center

Introduced May 28 in "Top of the City", part I, and later discussed November 17 in "Lake City Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us!"  Please assume these same pages for the rest of the parks in this page, dear Diary.  Each time I've visited this park, it's been the site of a large homeless camp.

All the "sanican"s here are in the park, but for some reason the map these hikes were meant to check thought they were in the community center, so I've used both names.

About the time I got to the main bloc of "sanican"s, so did a young man who informed me, as I puzzled over my first encounter with an SPU sink, that it didn't work.  Neither, quoth he (and I soon verified), did the hand-washing station.  Sensing a major story, I asked how long things had been this way.  "Well, that worked yesterday [the hand-washing station], and that [the sink] is new in general."  Nope, no story, just bad timing on my part and on my young informant's.  His timing was rescued by another guy who showed up with a small water bottle, which he tossed to my contact.  That gentleman then proceeded to do what ablutions he could do in public with maybe twelve ounces of water.

So I couldn't photograph that setup just yet, and instead started the surprisingly complex task of circling the community center so as to decide where to focus the postcard shot.  Along the way I came across a "sanican" that apparently had misbehaved enough to get it ostracised from all its peers, way off at the other end of the park:

By the time I got back, the group of young men was gone.

The open door at the end wasn't a malfunction, just an airing out:

Anyway, here's what I thought the community center's best face:

and here are the (mostly) closed doors:

Lake City Mini Park

Oops.  Apparently this one isn't in the page from November?  Anyway, also a big homeless encampment served by "sanican"s:

Of course I checked, and yes, this hand-washing station had water:

God's Lil' Acre

This not being a park, I haven't brought it up before.  It appears to be one of the crutches allowing the city to get away without proper park restrooms in Lake City during this pandemic, like the Dick's Drive-In mentioned in the November page.  It also appears to be more of an all-around charity, as opposed to the primary focus on hygiene of the two North Seattle branches of the Urban Rest Stop.

Anyway, my main interest in the charities was verifying that they were open, or more precisely documenting that they were open, giving the map that listed them credit where it's due.  So here's my best attempt at a postcard shot:

And here are the open doors:

Cedar Park

Not, that I've observed, a campsite.  But it does have a "sanican":

Just as the map said, then and today.

Little Brook Park

I've also observed no camping here.  Like Greenwood Park, covered January 25 in "Hikes 3C and 6A", it has only one restroom, designed so as to be latchable but with that capacity usually impeded, with nice big holes for peeping Toms to look through, oh, I could rant for days about these rooms' blatant inadequacies, but what's relevant here is that as simple boxes, they aren't at all winter ready, so:

My best try at making this bad building look good:

Now, arguably Meadowbrook Pool, Community Center and Playfield, and maybe even Matthews Beach, are in Lake City, but I took far too many photos at Meadowbrook, and didn't get to Matthews Beach at all that day.  So I'll stop here for now, dear Diary, but may still get to Meadowbrook tonight.

Park restrooms in North Seattle: Some numbers

Dear Diary,

Some time ago I acquired a list of Seattle parks.  This list is said to list the parks with restrooms that can't stand up to the winter.  There are ten in North Seattle:

1. Burke-Gilman Playground Park
2. Cowen Park
3. Greenwood Park
4. Little Brook Park
5. Meadowbrook Playfield
6. Meridian Playground
7. Ravenna Park
8. Ross Playground
9. Soundview Playfield
10. Woodland Park

In Ravenna Park, the "upper" restrooms are meant.  In Woodland Park, I'm not sure whether the "Cloverleaf" or "lawn bowling" restrooms are meant.

Since Greenwood and Little Brook Parks each have only one restroom, this is 18 restrooms closed because they weren't built for winter.

In addition, two parks - Magnuson and Woodland - have restrooms that had to be closed this past winter because of vandalism.  They are Magnuson's "Tower" restrooms and Woodland's "Rio".  This gets us to 22 restrooms that had to close.  One might wish to add the boarded-up restroom at Matthews Beach to this list, but in fact there's been no announcement as to why it's boarded up, so I won't add it.

Notice that two restroom pairs on that list - Ross Park and Soundview Playfield - were open yesterday, and Meadowbrook Playfield's were advertised as open.  Considering that we got down into the 30s Fahrenheit last night, and the National Weather Service predicts several more such nights to come, this suggests that some of these could have been open much of the winter.  So does the fact that all of Woodland Park's restrooms except "Rio" were in fact open this winter, which means we're down to 20 restrooms that had to close anyway.

Restrooms that were closed this winter but aren't on that list were closed because of "historic low usage".  In several cases it was reasonable to infer usage this winter from past years; in others, either because of changed circumstances in general or because of homeless campers specifically, it was not reasonable.

1. Ballard Community Center
2. Bitter Lake Playfield
3. Gilman Playground
4. Licton Springs Park
5. Loyal Heights Community Center
6. Magnuson Park
7. Matthews Beach
8. Northacres Park
9. Salmon Bay Park
10. Sandel Playground
11. University Playground

Bitter Lake, Gilman, Licton Springs, Sandel and University all had campers.  Ballard, Bitter Lake, Gilman, either Licton Springs or Sandel, either Loyal Heights or Salmon Bay, Matthews, and University would have filled significant geographic gaps.  Magnuson Park normally has many restrooms available inside public buildings that are closed; both its "sport" restrooms and those built into the "Brig" should have been open this winter.  Note also the winter-ready water fountains at Northacres Park shut off by the shutoff of water to the park-side restroom building.

At any rate, that's 24 restrooms (two pairs at Magnuson) that could have been open but weren't.  (People who trust that there's a good reason for the boarded-up restroom at Matthews Beach should say 23.)

Why weren't they open?  Well, the parks maintenance staff have several important things to do in winter with the time they aren't spending on opening, cleaning, supplying and closing restrooms.  That's when they tend the playfields, try to restore damaged lawns, and above all remove graffiti.  We all know that graffiti is much more dangerous than hygiene problems, don't we?

Anyway, they still were opening, cleaning, supplying and closing a bunch of restrooms:

1. Dahl Playfield
2. Golden Gardens Park
3. Green Lake Park
4. Laurelhurst Playfield
5. Magnuson Park
6. Maple Leaf Reservoir Park
7. Northacres Park
8. Ravenna Park
9. Wallingford Playfield
10. Woodland Park

The number is even greater because at Golden Gardens two pairs of restrooms were involved, at Green Lake two or three, and at Woodland two to four.  Conservatively, let's call this 28 restrooms.

In addition, they cleaned and supplied an amazing number of restrooms that they didn't open or close, that stayed open 24 hours:

1. Carkeek Park
2. Gas Works Park
3. Green Lake Park
4. View Ridge Playfield
5. Woodland Park

In Green Lake, there were usually two pairs, also in Woodland, though less reliably.  Still, call this 14 restrooms, an astonishing 1/3 of those that were open at all.

How does this compare to winter 2019-2020?  Fewer restrooms were open:  the openings of Woodland Park's "lawn bowling" and "Cloverleaf" pairs didn't outweigh the closings of "Rio", Loyal Heights Community Center, Matthews Beach, and intermittently Green Lake Community Center.  More were open 24 hours:  certainly Gas Works and probably Woodland; I'm not sure about Carkeek.

In North Seattle, the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation's default response to the winter of 2020-2021 was to ignore the pandemic.  Give them full credit for helping the campers at Woodland Park, but note that they didn't help those at Gilman or University Playgrounds or Bitter Lake Playfield.  And don't even ask how they treated the general public at Magnuson Park.

It's probably a passing grade, but not a good one.

Good day, dear Diary.  Tonight back to the January hikes.

Hike 15: Northwest

Dear Diary,

Wonder of wonders!  The map actually told the truth about at least nine restrooms!  Let me explain.

This morning I checked the map the hikes in January were checking on, and found six parks whose restrooms were clearly announced as re-opened.  (There may have been others hidden by the lying setup whereby a "sanican" is mapped the same as an open restroom; I didn't spend long enough with the map to investigate.)  The six:

1. Ballard Community Center.  Previously covered April 4 in "Hike 8C".
2. Loyal Heights Community Center.  Previously covered February 8 in "Hike 4B".
3. Meadowbrook Playfield.  Still to be covered in hike 9C.
4. Ross Park.  Previously covered March 23 in "Hike 8B".
5. Sandel Playground.  Previously covered January 25 in "Hikes 3C and 6A".
6. Soundview Playfield.  Previously covered February 13 in "Hike 5A".

Well, I had an errand in Ballard today, so I figured I should check on the five in Northwest.  Then realised this left only two parks there with regular restrooms to look at, and they were both convenient, so why not?  (This omits, of course, Golden Gardens and Carkeek Parks, which aren't on Ballard's street grid, are way downhill from the rest of Ballard, are time sinks, and were open all winter anyway.)

So here goes:  Which park restrooms on Ballard's street grid opened today?  Wonder of wonders, the map was almost entirely truthful.

Sandel Playground

This is the only place where the map was off.

So far so good, but...

Soundview Playfield

I'd gotten a newspaper before starting, but forgot to use it at Sandel.  Here's its front page, for easier recognition:

So.  Soundview has two effectively all gender single user stalls.

I used the one shown with door open.  It turns out to have the kind of sink that sends water mainly horizontally to soak the user's clothing, a kind of sink I've noticed more of recently.  That one is the one that faces south towards NW 90th St.  (I didn't try the other sink, which may or may not do the same.)

Loyal Heights Community Center

No, the map didn't announce that the Community Center had re-opened.  Both Community Centers in Northwest have restrooms that open to the outside, and are effectively the restrooms for their parks, in this case Loyal Heights Playfield.

In winter 2019-2020, Loyal Heights was announced as staying open for the winter, the only one of these so announced.  This winter, it was on the map as open, but closed anyway; I speculated that this might be because of construction nearby in the playfield.  The construction is now uphill from these restrooms, and this time they really are open when the map says so:

Salmon Bay Park

Previously covered February 8 in "Hike 4B".  Has yet to be shown as open on the map, and I've yet to find it open since October.

Yes, I forgot the newspaper again.

Ballard Playground

Obviously, one reason I came back to Northwest in such a big way today was embarrassment at having to say, over and over as I wrote three days ago, that I didn't know the current situation.

Well, these doors should have been open all winter, but they're open now:

One of the things I was unsure about was a "sanican" at the east side of 26th Ave NW, across that street from Ballard Playground.  It's gone now:

Ballard Commons

Previously covered April 4 in "Hike 8C" with some similar uncertainties; the other of the two places still to be covered in hike 11A, besides the Ballard branch of the Urban Rest Stop.

In the page from April 4 I made a mistake.  I said there were two buttons on the side of the "Portland Loo", for washing water and drying air, and neither worked.  This was inobservant of me in January.  Look:

I'd only noticed the left lower button, not the right lower one, which as you can see, dear Diary, in fact draws water.  The upper one, for air, and the lower left one, probably for soap, are the ones that didn't work in January nor today.

In fact Ballard Commons is overflowing with water.  It has a working water fountain, running now:

And on top of both those sources, I'd speculated it might have gotten an SPU sink.  Nope, but it does have a much bigger hand-washing station, and it was working today:

Notice all the wet pavement.  The green object in the corner is a bottle of hand soap.

Gilman Playground

Previously covered March 23 in "Hike 8B".

Apparently the restrooms here opened back up sometime when I wasn't looking and have already closed again:

I wonder who vandalised them.  There are again plenty of tents in Gilman Playground.  Oh, and yes, I forgot the newspaper again.

Gilman Playground does still have running water:

Ross Park

It only takes one picture to show both restrooms as open:

And yes, that's the mosaic I've complained to you, dear Diary, so many times, that I couldn't photograph.  So even before taking the shot above, I took this one:

This goes to show something important about recent photos I show you, dear Diary.  My phone has decided that the proper way to respond to sunlight is to get very dim.  As a result, when photographing by day, all I can do is point, pray, and shoot.  I'll have to go back to Ross Park with some other camera some day.

Meanwhile, I'd obviously better get on with telling you about hikes 8D through 11C, from January, before everything has re-opened.  But not tonight.  Good night, dear Diary.

Some Odds and Ends

Dear Diary,

There's so much left to tell you about my January hikes, and so little time left - probably less than a decade, and maybe less than a week - before things warm up enough that the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation starts re-opening the restrooms and water fountains whose winter closedness I documented.  But some current observations don't fit into the story and still need to be mentioned.  So...

1. The only street water fountain I knew to be still running in Seattle, on N 45th St near Wallingford Ave N, has stopped.  It's a few days since I was last there, so maybe it's re-started, but I'm dubious.

2. Not long ago I found the water fountain in Gilman Playground running.

3. On March 23, shortly before noon, I found the men's room, but not the women's, in Cowen Park, open, with running water.  No park employee seemed nearby, nor did I see a park truck.

I haven't been back; sorry, dear Diary.  Good night.

Hike 8C: Near Northwest

Dear Diary,

Of course I didn't hike to Ballard on January 19, as recounted in "Hike 8A" March 21 and "8B" March 23, and then skip downtown Ballard.  I actually had to go there twice, and one reason I've dawdled so much to tell you about those hikes, dear Diary, is that I wanted to present the two visits in one page.  But I haven't found a way to make that work.  So this page is strictly about my first visit, in mid- to late afternoon of January 19.

The Urban Rest Stop, Ballard branch

My first stop was a dud.  Because I hadn't checked the map first, I hadn't looked at this place's open hours, which turned out to end at 2:30 P.M. that day.  This is certainly as good a postcard shot as I could reasonably hope to take:

but because I got there at 3:21 P.M., gives a mistaken impression.  This is one of the two reasons I came back to downtown Ballard on the night of January 21, as a future page will recount.

Ballard Commons

Rachel Schulkin, communications manager for the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation, had finally filled me in on why the department claims there's a "restroom" at Ballard Commons:  they mean the "Portland Loo".

Now, dear Diary, when I've told you about this sad little park before, June 25 in "History and Parks", part II, and December 16 in "The Water Fountains of Ballard, mid-October 2020", I've mocked that "loo" as a fancier "sanican".  This turns out to have been untruthful of me:

An outhouse retains our excreta indefinitely.  A "sanican" retains them for a few days.  A toilet removes them promptly.  Clearly, the "Portland Loo" offers a toilet.  My apologies.

Ballard Commons also does have "sanican"s:

but I didn't find that hand-washing station working.  Nor were either of the push buttons on the side of the "Loo", which apparently are supposed to deliver water to wash with and air to dry with:

Fortunately, this is the last of the three parks in northwest Seattle whose water fountains had been left running:

I haven't been back to check its current status, but have noticed SPU sinks replacing hand-washing stations elsewhere, so hope that's happened at Ballard Commons too.

Seattle Public Library, Ballard branch

When I got there, there was an actual crowd - you're too young to remember crowds, aren't you, dear Diary? - anyway, a crowd waiting to pick up library materials.  There were also a lot of tents along the edges of the sidewalks.  Navigating my cart among all this was challenging, and I just couldn't find evidence that the restrooms there were open.  I also found taking a real postcard shot hopeless, but here's the best I could do:

Anyway, after several minutes of confusion, I decided to knock on the door to the restrooms, which I found locked.  A library security guy answered; he had to spend a few seconds doing something that sounded like removing tape before he could open the door.  I introduced myself and you, dear Diary, and said I wanted to take a photograph that would demonstrate that the restrooms were open (even though they plainly weren't!).

His reply was nearly classic.  He pointed out that a pandemic was happening.  And then said "So if you aren't here to pick up library materials, and you aren't here to use the restrooms, I'm going to have to ask you to move along."

You could tell how gratified he was to have an opportunity to use that last phrase on an actual homeless person, just like before the pandemic.  Although I generally consider it a little presumptuous of me to claim the title "journalist" on the basis of you, dear Diary, I do find myself wondering whether a housed journalist would've gotten quite such a reply.

Anyway, soon thereafter, I had recovered enough from my confusion to notice this:

It was adjacent to the front of the pickup line, which may or may not have been optimal placement.

So there it is, evidence that the Ballard branch's restrooms were open in mid-January, whether or not they actually were.

Ballard Community Center and environs

Well, hully gee!  The map I took these hikes to check on had seemed frozen for some time.  Now it's getting populated with what looks like summer data.  In particular, it claims tonight that these restrooms are open.

But that doesn't mean it's incorporated all the info I e-mailed to the people responsible.  My last e-mail, covering all my January hikes not already summarised, was sent February 15.  (I figured I should give them a chance to digest what I'd sent before publicly calling them all liars, which is why I put that off until February 18.)  But the map still doesn't show this:

It was across the street from Ballard Playground, in which Ballard Community Center with its then-closed restrooms sits, on January 19.  It was also in the street, which means it was on city property.  I should think, then, that it was there because of a city contract with the Honey Bucket people, but it wasn't and still isn't mapped.  I wonder whether it's still there.

Anyway, the Ballard Community Center.  An attempt at a postcard shot:

The closed door:

The closed doors:

I think my return to Ballard a little over two days later is about five pages away in this story.  I'll probably write another page tonight that isn't part of that story.  Until then, dear Diary.