Hangin' in Fremont

I crashed overnight at Zoltan's place in Fremont, due north of downtown Seattle, where street parking is abundant.

 

He crosses this New York Mets-colored bridge over the "cut" twice a day en route to work, 15 minutes away from his cheap and comfortable digs in a former boarding house.  A man who can walk or bike to work is a happy man, indeed!

A neon Rapunzel inhabits one of the bridge towers.  She's not the community's only fairy tale character but she's a lot more photogenic than the troll that lives under a bridge.

We dined, deliciously, at a sunlit-table in Rock Creek.

The meal may have cost more than a week's worth of road trip food--mostly grab & go Walmart salads and wraps, Cajun trail mix, fruit and cookies--but it was worth every penny. Only the espresso martini disappointed.  

Cauliflower & Cabbage Salad

Neah Bay Rock Fish & Shell Stew

Key Lime Pie

If I had known there would be a statue of Lenin in Fremont,  I would have worn the Trotsky t-shirt that I bought in Mexico City last year.   A Seattilite who had been teaching in Poland imported the toppled statue from Slovakia after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. He recognized its unusual depiction of one of communism's co-founders as a revolutionary rather than a bookworm.

No doubt business suffered at this ironically-named restaurant after Russia attacked Ukraine.  Angry reactionaries, who had difficulty separating current events from the proletariat revolution that deposed the oppressive Romanov monarchy more than a century earlier, also covered the head of Lenin's statue and painted his hand painted red. 

This fragment of the Berlin Wall suggests that the People's Republic of Fremont is committed to the dialectical interpretation of history.

Seattle Place may have the attention-hogging Space Needle, but funky Fremont boasts both a rocket ship and Saturn.

The mellow neighborhood vibe is countercultural without being obnoxiously hip.

The more we wandered around, the more I appreciated Fremont's twilit beauty.

Google must have felt the same way.

Houseboat life doesn't come cheap, however.

Our last stop of the evening was at Gas Works Park with these twinkly views of Seattle's skyline beyond Lake Union, and the Space Needle to the right. I had taken a photograph from the opposite perspective just a few hours earlier.