The Fremont Fair

[saavedra77]

On Saturday, I finally managed to get to Fremont's annual Solstice Parade, which I've consistently missed for each of the past five years. Alas, I didn't have my camera with me, so a few words of description for the unitiated: Fremont still has the reputation of being Seattle's "hippy" neighborhood, land of things mellow and tie-dyed. The neighborhood's Solstice Parade is best known for its naked, body-painted cyclists, and of course features the usual parade stand-bys: floats, bands, dancers. Somehow, I seem to have missed my former co-worker Sara amidst the belly-dancing brigade ...

I went back to Fremont today with sleepwhenimdead, sarrabellum and some friends of theirs from Bremerton for the associated, weekend-long Solstice Fair. This comprised a veritable forest of restaurant stalls and arts-&-crafts booths, spread from Fremont Avenue (the neighborhood's main strip) about ten blocks west along the Ship Canal.

In addition to the commercial stuff were displays like the "fun cars", vehicles--mostly VWs--that have been painted or decorated or even extensively re-engineered to look like hanted houses or airplanes or high heels or various funkier things. My favorite of these was the car done up with a few hundred rubber talking fish and lobsters that all turned and sang en masse--things like "Bohemian Rhapsody," "Rawhide," and the like. sleepwhenimdead and I hung around talking to the fish car creator for awhile, who muttered ruefully about the wiring nightmare involved in achieving this effect ...

Wandering among the restaurant stalls, that day, I was surprised to discover one from an actual Puerto Rican restaurant: Sofrito Rico. God knows, there are other places in Seattle where you can get plátanos fritos or empanadas or arroz con pollo, but it was great to happen upon a Puerto Rican bandera fluttering in the breeze and a menu with so much sofrito on it.

The restaurant itself is in Ballard, so that's one more reason to find my way up to that northerly neighborhood, this summer--besides the fact that Ballard has Seattle's most passable beach.