Restock: July 2026

Welcome to the Restock!

Updates and Changes

This month has been challenging. In May, we updated the public device charging system to a more robust one in a tamper-resistant metal box. Before doing that, people would occasionally come and sit at LFFC while their devices charged, but leave within 20-30 minutes. After the upgrade, the frequency of people hanging out, and the average length of stay, increased substantially.

Most of them have been lovely. A few were not:

• One gentleman took the existence of a charger as license to smoke meth in the driveway, in a manner obvious not just to us, but to passersby and neighbors. When confronted (while holding the meth pipe and lighter in his hands), he accused me of “racism” and refused to leave for quite some time.
• One gentleman took the existence of a charger as permission to organize a large folding wagon of stolen merchandise, spread out across our entire driveway. When confronted and asked to desist, he accused me of “racism” for “assuming” that the merchandise was stolen, assuring me that he “had paid for all this.” Mildly, the four pairs of women’s leather boots (none in his size) gave me cause to doubt the veracity of his claims.
• In the week of July 5-10 alone, there were six major trashings of LFFC, scattering everything from LFFC-provided supplies to a huge number of syringes (with needles removed) around the area. The final incident involved someone removing trash from our trashcan, mixing it with new LFFC supplies and zines, and coating the lot with toothpaste, as well as squirting toothpaste all over our driveway (using between four and six tubes of toothpaste for the idle pursuit). In frustration, after the last trashing, we skipped the first night of restocking in two years: we closed LFFC entirely for the night of July 10, with signs announcing the reason.

The situation cannot continue in this manner; a change is, regrettably, thus called for. We have removed charging entirely (both USB and AC), and will not restore it, in an attempt to make LFFC not a place to remain (and then mess with out of boredom); that’s our current best theory for why the long stays, and then bad behavior, shot up so rapidly in sequence.

Candidly, we hate doing this. Removing services hurts people who use them and have come to appreciate them. Making changes or rules that hurt the majority, to curtail bad behavior by the few, is precisely the action we have sought to avoid for almost two years; unfortunately, circumstances left us with few other options, since the status quo was so untenable. The number of incidents since the change (about three weeks) has been zero, however, which is at least an initial sign that we’ve achieved our aim. We will continue to monitor the situation, and to think about how we can offer charging without the substantial negative side effects.

In unrelated news, the site host for our Connections and Seattle Community Fridge (SCF) site in Dunlap is moving away, and thus we removed the phone and WiFi as part of the SCF teardown. Over the 11 months since it was installed, the Dunlap site had 556 completed phone calls—but more importantly, during the seven years that the site hosted a community fridge, it helped many thousands of people. Thanks to the host for all the good they did for the community with their years of SCF hosting and near-year of Connections hosting!

In more fun news, we’ve rebuilt the lights on LFFC; the kiosk now provides useful white lighting when someone is present, and cycles between various Pride flag color schemes otherwise.

Finally, a new item: thanks to a bulk buy with SCF, we are distributing simple reusable water bottles for the first time. Given the heat this summer, we’re glad to be able to do it. We’re distributing two a day at the moment, and we have enough to last through July and August; if they’re still proving useful, we may continue the experiment, or return it next summer.

Monthly Usage

This month, we had 21 outgoing completed calls made from our Futel phone, as well as 68 and 824 calls made from our Connections phones at the Estelita’s Library Seattle Community Fridge (SCF) site and Cafe Red site, respectively. That’s more than one call every hour, all month, at Cafe Red!

• 291 pairs of socks
• 1280 Band-Aids
• 80 CoBan rolls
• 63 ABD gauze pads, and 64 non-adherent pads
• 585 nitrile gloves
• 172 packets of Vaseline
• 132 sunscreen packets
• 190 masks (N95 and KF94)
• 239 doses of ibuprofen
• 93 pairs of earplugs
• 56 ponchos
• 75 pencils
• 183 body wash/shampoo/shaving gel packets
• 237 toothbrushes
• 191 tubes of toothpaste
• 178 tampons
• 111 menstrual pads (across all sizes)
• 507 packets of hand sanitizer
• 90 paper bags
• 181 razors
• 479 condoms, 23 internal (“female”) condoms, and 295 lubricant packets
• 33 boxes (66 doses) of naloxone nasal spray, and 29 kits (58 doses) of injectable naloxone

Our COGGA for this month is $891.40, not including naloxone, condoms, or lubricants (all of which are provided by outside groups at no cost to us).

We received donations this month from Harley LaRoux, Angharad Caceres, Rebecca Francis, Diana Kroemer, Bill O’Connor, and Andrew Smart. Thank you all so much!

Conclusion

That’s it for this month’s Restock! If there’s more information you’d like to know, please feel free to use our Suggestions Form or email us at info@lffc.us.