Tangent

Kirkland Parks

/ Seattle Park Lover / Leave a comment

I’m not sure how much, if any, exploring of parks I will be doing on the eastside. A couple days ago I was studying a map, wondering about some of the lakeshore parks in Kirkland. (Maps have a strange power over me and I can get lost in them for hours, even when looking at areas I’m already familiar with.)

With serendipitous timing, I ran across a post from another blogger yesterday about Kirkland parks. She gives a few tidbits of info about several of them.

https://singlesouthernerinseattle.wordpress.com/2015/06/17/falling-in-love/

Thank you, Gypsy Givers!

/ Seattle Park Lover / 2 Comments

I just wanted to give a public shout out to these two young women who did some backbreaking volunteer work at Magnuson Park.

For those who are not already aware, a lot of work at our public parks is done by volunteers.  This is especially true at the offleash dog parks, and in parks that have plans underway in the areas of vegetation control and habitat restoration.

Invasive species of plants have been a constant problem for decades, but was a problem ignored for a long time. Now all parks with natural areas usually have some plan in place for remediation. This leads to longterm health of the area by bringing back the proper balance of flora and fauna native to that habitat type for our region.

It’s not easy work, but it is work that benefits everyone in the city in myriad ways. It even benefits those who never step foot in a park, though they may never know that. So we all owe a large debt of gratitude to all volunteers who do their part and our part.

The reason I am singling out these two women though is because they don’t even live in Seattle. They are vagabonds, traveling around the country doing good deeds. If I were 30 years younger I might consider asking to join them, because they appeal to my old hippy wannabe nature. If you see their van wave hello and tell them thanks!

Here’s the link to their blog post about Magnuson:

http://gypsygivers.com/2015/06/05/not-your-ordinary-day-in-a-park/

If you would like to volunteer at your local park, go to the appropriate city park page in the Links section. The park websites have info on volunteering.

Who are parks for?

/ Seattle Park Lover / Leave a comment

3-8-2015 002

I recently read this article on a Toronto news site. It’s discussing disagreement regarding public park focus and amenities. In it a local architect is disagreeing with the premise that Toronto parks have become too child-centric and need more adult-friendly features, like benches. (There is a link to the original op-ed piece at the beginning of the article, and you can read that too for context.)

The architect says that she’s been to the parks with her children and sees them as successful parks that everyone is happy with. I suspect the fact that she is using the parks as a mother, and not for her own interests, has dramatically skewed her perceptions.

The architect goes on to say that polarizing people into groups isn’t effective. “If you start to break people into groups then you’ve got the dog people, the kid people, older people, and the people who just want to eat lunch.”

My response to that is: Yes. Exactly.

Continue reading →

But, what about Greenlake?

/ Seattle Park Lover / 2 Comments

IMG_20150526_073939_e

 I have a few previews currently in progress, and a small list of a few more places to get started on, and then I will be done with what I intend to cover in north Seattle. Which is the area of the city easiest for me to do.

Previewing takes more effort than it probably appears from just reading my posts. I usually visit a park a minimum of three times before finalizing my preview. For some parks it’s quite a bit more than that. (For small viewpoints that aren’t close to me I sometimes cheat with just one visit.)

Sometimes that’s because there’s a lot of ground to cover in larger parks and I don’t feel like doing it all in one visit. A lot of times I look at my photos and realize I left something out. Some of the need for multiple visits is to make sure I have a good feel for a park, especially in terms of typical usage and parking conditions.

When going over my To Do list a couple days ago I realized it will eventually be a glaring lack that this blog has no Greenlake preview amongst all my north end coverage.

Pretty much everyone in Seattle and the suburbs has at least heard of Greenlake. When I was in high school in Edmonds we used to come down to rollerskate around the lake. And when I was in my early twenties, living on Capitol Hill, I used to swim at Greenlake as part of my training for a one mile open water swim event.

So it seems only natural that I would do a nice big write-up about the park. But nope. That’s not gonna happen.

The reason is: Greenlake is a park for the robust.

Continue reading →