Here are some photographs of interesting things to see in the Fremont neighbourhood, which I took back in the autumn.
Here, apropos of nothing, is the Aurora Bridge, seen from beneath, from the Burke-Gilman Trail.
I took that on my way from Fremont proper to Gas Works Park, called such because back in the dizzay, it was the site of a coal gasification plant, whose rotting carcass still adorns the park, and whose toxic chemical output has rendered the park soil hazardous if eaten. I love it; it's like postindustrial archaeology.
Here is a view of downtown Seattle from Gas Works Park. Note how much prettier my city is than yours.
Between I-5 and Gas Works Park, on Lake Union, is moored the hulk of an ancient ferryboat, the M/V Kalakala. In the Thirties, the Kalakala was built on the burnt-out hulk of an old steamship, as a streamlined Art Deco ferryboat, not unlike a large seagoing aluminum slug, and had a long and glamourous career until newer and larger ferries put her out of work in the Sixties, when this quite striking vessel was sold, towed to Alaska, and turned into a seafood processing plant. Eventually she was abandoned, eventually discovered by a starry-eyed idealist, towed back to Seattle in the late Nineties, and sits here still, the Foundation which had hoped to restore her now bankrupt. Which is a terrible, terrible pity. I'd love to see her restored.
Just in time to be torn down when Communism fell, Emil Vontov created a striking bronze statue of Lenin in Slovakia, surrounded by stylised flames and rifles, walking into a stiff breeze of capitalist decadence. Lewis Carpenter of Issaquah found him lying face down in a puddle, fell in love with the poor abused Bolshevik, bought it up and brought him back to Seattle, where Lenin now stands proudly outside a burrito restaurant. The juxtaposition is breathtaking.
Certainly there are symbols of subverted US imperial power as well. The hull of a US military rocket from the Fifties somehow wound up in a junk shop in Belltown, and fell into the hands of the street artists of Fremont. The result is something from a Flash Gordon strip, which is perched on top of some sort of furniture or clothing or something store, and bears a motto in absurd bastardised Latin which I won't repeat.
And last but certainly not least, this concrete Troll beneath the Aurora Bridge, feasting upon a Volkswagen, decked out each Halloween in spiders and body piercings. Poor Volkswagen...
