Fremont aka: The Center of the Universe

Whenever I visit friend Brian there I love walking across the drawbridge to shop, get something to eat, whatever — it’s right there and it’s cool.

Statues: Lenin, the rocket, the Fremont Troll

Restaurants: Silence Heart Nest, a decent gelato place

Stores: Deluxe Junk, Bitters Co.

And many more things I’ve since forgotten. One of my favorite areas of Seattle.

(OK, technically, I’m one of the poseurs who lives just feet south of the drawbridge, technically making me a QueenAnne-ite, but Fremont’s where I do all the local after-work errands and walk to relax, so it’s home.)

The five years I’ve lived here, I’ve always been in this neighborhood, and I plan to keep it that way — hoping the upcoming Fremont Bridge construction won’t put a hamper on the lifestyle here too badly in the interim.

Unless you live directly off the main crossroads, it’s relatively quiet, even just houses away. There’s plenty to do here: eat, drink, shop, do errands, take an urban hike, show friends around, trade, etc.

It’s also the second most tourist-y part of Seattle outside downtown and the Seattle Center. There’s plenty of public art — some of which is good-naturedly ridiculed and adorned much of the time.

There are more thai restaurants and brew pubs per street corner in this neighborhood than I thought humanly possible… A friend of mine visiting from Boston felt “at home” here, in a good way — subtract the chowder, add the thai. (though you can take that as good or bad.)

Sundays with good weather = mass crunch to the Fremont Flea Market, and hence Fremont. No fleas, really.. mostly antiques and home-made stuff though. If finding rare stuff is your game, get up at the crack of dawn and go; otherwise, arrive at your leisure and take a walk.

The places you’re most likely to find me: PCC (the co-op market), Jive Time Records, Sonic Boom records (CD and vinyl parts), Tawon Thai, Blue C Sushi, the Gilman-Burke trail to Ballard, Rudy’s Barbershop, and crossing the most active drawbridge in North America — the Fremont Bridge. Perhaps it’s because I rarely have or had to drive across it — or, more to the point, wait for it to go down — but I still love walking across the drawbridge every day. I have not gotten tired of it, after five years.

Same goes for Fremont, even through its ups and downs… Given that more nightclubs featuring concerts are opening up, I’m hoping I will have at least another five years of fun here.

Lenin says hi. He’s not as cranky as he looks. Don’t be shy.

I moved to Fremont summer 2005, and it is not only worth visiting, it is worth sticking around for awhile. I kicked off my new life here with the Solstice Parade, thinking maybe next year I would be in the parade. Probably not naked (I have’t lived here that long, yet), but possibly doing something artsy to join in the festivities. I live right by the Troll under the Aurora Bridge, walk to the Sunday market regularly to buy flowers, live in a the cool upper apartment of an 1898 house overlooking Lake Union, stumble home from Dad Watsons, the Dubliner or the Ballroom depending on what kind of weekend it is, run Greenlake and Burke-Gilman trail, eat breakfast at the Essential Bakery or Varsity Inn and wander the shops, usually only buying from Ophelia’s Used Books and drooling over creative stuff at Frank and Dunya’s. I love it here!