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Monday, June 11, 2012

City / Life No More Power to the People in Cal Anderson

Posted by Eli Sanders on Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 4:24 PM

The Cal Anderson outlet: Good for tattoo guns, cell phones, laptops, electric razors, and more!

Joseph Staten
The Cal Anderson outlet: No longer good for tattoo guns, cell phones, laptops, electric razors, and more.

We heard a rumor of this in the comments, sent trusty intern Joseph Staten out to confirm, and... it's true. Our beloved Cal Anderson outlet has been shut down. And it sounds like its fate was sealed long before we started trumpeting its usefulness.

Parks Department spokeswoman Dewey Potter explains:

The grounds crew noticed a lot of private use of it recently, so the crew chief put in a work order and it was turned off on June 4. The crew can turn it on for their purposes and for special events.

The public ultimately pays for this power, and as Parks’ budget continues to shrink (more than $12 million since mid-2010), private use of electricity intended for a specific use will ultimately have an impact on park operations. We won’t know the magnitude of that impact until we examine upcoming City Light bills and compare them to bills for the same period a year ago.

Potter also said she doubts that charging cell phones and laptops in park outlets amounts to much of a drain, but she draws the line at "personal appliances and such." For example, Potter once saw people set up in Woodland Park with a mini-fridge and a television plugged into the public power outlet.

We're talking about places to charge cell phones and plug in the occasional tattoo gun, people, not mini-fridges! And we're still taking tips for the Google map at powertothepeople@thestranger.com.

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Comments (24) RSS

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Tragedy of the commons strikes again.

Posted by decidedlyodd on June 11, 2012 at 4:30 PM

I think you mean Tragedy of the Comments, @1.

Good thing the grounds crew outlets at WalChinaImportMart still work.

Posted by Will in Seattle

on June 11, 2012 at 4:37 PM

Nobody could've ever predicted this outcome.

Posted by Proteus on June 11, 2012 at 4:43 PM

Well, there goes my plan to bring a projector to the park and have an impromptu movie night in public. :(

Posted by Tiffany

on June 11, 2012 at 4:47 PM

And the grumps win again! Remind me to never tell the Stranger about anything under the radar!

Posted by CbytheSea on June 11, 2012 at 4:53 PM

@5:

I don't think "under the radar" means what you think it means.

For one thing, it DOESN'T mean: "something you're trying to keep people who already know about it from finding out"...

Posted by COMTE

on June 11, 2012 at 5:13 PM

@5 You could always rent a generator.

Posted by pragmatic on June 11, 2012 at 5:33 PM

@6 I kid. I was trying to avoid using the term on the DL.
In all honesty I always found outlets just chilling in public places a quirky element of any city. It's like finding on of those old fashioned apple vending machines or a public phone that works.

Posted by CbytheSea on June 11, 2012 at 5:35 PM

Oops, that should be @4

Posted by pragmatic on June 11, 2012 at 5:35 PM

@9 no worries your post is applicable to mine as well. I'm pretty sure both posts were done in jest. I've found this series infinitely funnier than Greenlake Watch, mostly due to the odd bunch who somehow are upset that these things exist.

Posted by CbytheSea on June 11, 2012 at 5:38 PM

I don't know why anyone would want to get a tattoo from someone operating a tattoo gun at a park off of a public utility outlet, but whatevs.

They should rig that thing up to a pay meter and make some money off of it.

Posted by madcap on June 11, 2012 at 6:07 PM

@11 I think you're on to something. Based on Dr. Awesome's math, at a buck an hour (seems reasonable) the city would make a killer margin. Though I think it'd work better on the commuter transits, whether it be metro, link or the sounder. Not sure if they can spare the power though.

Posted by CbytheSea on June 11, 2012 at 6:38 PM

In case anyone cares, a laptop charger and a small mini-fridge use about the same wattage @120v (90 watts), so they cost about the same to run per hour. Just sayin'

Posted by seattlebikeguy on June 11, 2012 at 7:09 PM

If we're going to go the entrepreneurial route, someone could just rig up a generator to a stationary bike to do the job; people get their phone or laptop charged while somebody else gets a good cardio workout - win-win!

Posted by COMTE

on June 11, 2012 at 7:17 PM

And it sounds like its fate was sealed long before we started trumpeting its usefulness.

Nice. For fuck sake. Of course it got shut down because you "trumpeted it's usefulness."

Just wait and see as all the other "free" outlets get shut down one by one.

Could you guys play into the "freeloader leftist" stereotype any more?

First: None of these outlets were "free." Second: it's precisely "hey let's rip off the man" bullshit that provides fuel and justification for both a ridiculous sense of entitlement on the left, and a justification for dismantling public infrastructure on the right.

Posted by tkc on June 11, 2012 at 8:05 PM

This is unbeilevablly fucking stupid. If someone put a portable space heater there drawing the max 15 amps from that outlet they would draw 1188 kwHr. At 8c a kwHr (approx the city seattle rate) that is $95 a month. Of course actual use would be a tiny tiny fraction of that.

A full size refrigerator/freezer uses about 5kwhr per day, or $12 per month.

But no one will do that either.

Finally, in this atomic age there is something too cheap to meter...

Posted by 8Way on June 11, 2012 at 8:26 PM

Sorry, that's a 20A outlet. So you could pull $126 of electricity heating free space right there.

Posted by 8Way on June 11, 2012 at 8:27 PM

I had a hobo charger in my parking lot for a while and therefore also had a bunch of train-jumping gutter-punk looking little shitheads sitting next to my clients' cars all day. I am thinking I should bring my pit bull and stolen ipad down to the stranger offices. I'm sure you all have an unused outlet somewhere. I hate disagreeing with Eli Sanders.

Posted by billytwotimes on June 11, 2012 at 8:46 PM

How power power did those double ended anal vibrators draw in Cal Anderson?

Now, if they banned smoking in smaller parks maybe the fucking hobos would move back to CA.

Posted by Freeattle on June 11, 2012 at 10:24 PM

The infection possibilites of getting tattooed in a park, with no easy way to clean/sterilize etc don't bear thinking about.

To say nothing of the issues of dirt blowing around, and all the charming tetanus possibilities that that affords.

Posted by Andrew_Taylor on June 11, 2012 at 10:53 PM

21 Comment Pulled (Spam) Comment Policy

Most of the outlets in the Pritchard cafeteria and Dome Deli on the Capitol campus in Olympia were covered during the last Legislature - likely in an attempt to discourage lobbyists and others from sucking up 'free' electricity.

Posted by SuperSteve on June 12, 2012 at 7:44 AM

weren't there some illicit shows going on at the Rag Haus (or whatever it was called after that) that got shut down right after the Stranger wrote about them too? THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS!!

Posted by genevieve on June 12, 2012 at 9:29 AM

@14 Harness the bike polo players!

Posted by capicola on June 12, 2012 at 2:08 PM