Fremont: Seattle's Williamsburg

This is the first of two Fremont posts. It seemed best to break up the Fremont posts because of the pictures (there were too many for one post)(I'm trying not to repeat the Chicago River Tour post from 2009 and it's dozen pictures).

This first post will have a few of the major attractions that people check out, and some that my cousin Liz told us about.

The first is the Fuselage, and old rocket put up on a coffee shop and music venue:



A few blocks away is the largest statue of Vladimir Lenin in the United States, standing at 16 feet:



It was made by a Czechoslovakian sculptor who bucked the Soviet edict of how to depict Lenin in statue form. By Soviet decree, Lenin was to be shown as a philosopher or teacher, bringing the light of socialism and communism to the masses and enlightening them. That's why most statues of Lenin are of the standing and solemnly dressed nature. This sculptor chose a working class motif, representing Vladdi as a laborer, bringing the revolution itself to the people through action.

A few more blocks away, under the Hwy 99 bridge, is a large sculpture (seen in a few films) known colloquially as the Fremont Troll. I'm posed with the Troll for a semblance of scale:



Underneath the hand on which I'm standing is an actual VW Beetle, part of the sculpture.

Here's a quick view looking up the street away from the Fremont Bridge and into the heart of the commercial section of the neighborhood. I like the fiery reds of the turning autumn trees:



We found a bookstore open after dinner and located a pair of rare books:



Amory Lovins is one of the leading luminaries on sustainability, and this book is hard to find. Denis Johnson is one of my favorite writers, and I've never seen any of his poetry books anywhere. It was cool, supporting a local independent bookstore and finding rare books to cherish.