Death -- well, OK, changes -- comes in threes. That may be the case here, even though I might only be arranging that in my mind.
This first one is coming late; even though I knew the date was coming and I made plans to be there on the last day, posting in time before it closed for good slipped my mind. I am talking about the Brooklyn Park Library, which is the library across a parking lot from the community center I work out at. It closed for good Memorial Sunday, and I was able to take in one final computer session that afternoon in commemoration. (I would have stayed till the bitter end, 5 o'clock, but I had to hightail it home at 3:45 because my brother, sister-in-law and niece were having dinner at home.)
It may have been a good thing that I spent about 15 minutes there. As usual in a place that's about to be shut down permanently, they didn't turn on the air conditioning, so even though they ran fans, I didn't feel all that comfortable sitting there, either the 15 minutes on Sunday or the 45 minutes-or-so earlier that week. Can't imagine how the workers sticking it out there the whole frickin' day felt.
It wasn't as if the library was falling apart, but it was old. It was built in 1976, the year I was born. It doesn't have the bells and whistles of modern libraries, and frankly, I could use a coffeeshop like some of the more new-fangled ones around town. But there was a roof that held, and the people there were almost universally nice every single time. There were plenty of computer workstations for me to use, at least most of the time. And they had a small quiet study area that I used often. It was good to get away from the rabble and share time with people who at least also wanted to be quiet.
There were two glaring things wrong with the library that I think I can attribute to its old age. First, and this probably is the less forgivable, is that the Internet browsers on the computers went buggy, especially lately. I don't know how a library would allow something that so many people use to not be updated or fixed. It was sometimes maddening when I try to bring something up and all I get is that circle. When I was in El Paso I tried going to a library and it took minutes to load up a page. Sometimes at its worst, surfing the Internet at the BP Library reminded me of the even worse El Paso Library Internet access.
The other thing is just stranger. There was one bathroom, in the foyer between the double-doored entrance. There are no doors in the men's bathroom. Instead, there is a half-wall separating the door to the bathroom from the two sinks. Then, there is another half-wall, although I saw a hinge attached to the wall that makes me think there once was a door there. On the other "side" of this half-wall, at the very end of the men's room, there is both a urinal and toilet. Side-by-side. Without a partition between them. Oh, and the door to the bathroom doesn't lock. So if there's a guy who needs to poop, there's nothing preventing another person from just going in and peeing right next to him.
I remember once when I was not familiar with the floor map of the men's room that nature was calling and I had to go. I then see this and look back to note that the front door doesn't lock. So I held it and drove like heck back home.
Guess this was one of those 1976 things, or the people who decided to take down this hypothetical door didn't think about the implications of the lack of privacy. However, for this reason alone, I think closing this library down is a very good thing.
So I assume that when this brand-spankin'-new library opens next month (several minutes further away from the gym, unfortunately), they will have doors (if not single stalls) for every single bodily fluid receptacle and their Internet browsers will be fully updated and working 100%. Progress!
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