A popular thing to do during a visit to the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle is to pay your respects to the Fremont Troll. I’m not one to ignore a little local color, so naturally I went to see the troll on the morning of August 28, making my way there on foot from the room I’d rented in the “Upper Fremont,” about a 20-minute walk away.

I wasn’t the only one enjoying the troll that morning.
Fittingly, the troll is directly underneath a bridge, one that carries traffic across Lake Union on Aurora Ave. (Washington 99) to and from downtown Seattle (it’s also known as the Aurora Bridge, more about which later). The troll is right where the bridge starts to rise away from the ground, so it has a cozy home.

Roadside America, which of course lauds the troll as “major fun,” reports that, “the Fremont troll — a big, fearsome, car-crushing bruiser — took up residence under the north end of the Aurora bridge on Halloween 1990. He was sculpted by four Seattle area artists — Steve Badanes, Will Martin, Donna Walter and Ross Whitehead — for the Fremont Arts Council. The head-and-shoulders sculpture is 18 feet tall.”

The nose is sizable, too.
As are the hands. Paws? What do you call troll extremities?

Roadside America again: “The shaggy-haired troll glares southward with his shiny metal eye — a hubcap? In his left hand, he crushes an old-style Volkswagen Beetle, which originally contained a time capsule of Elvis memorabilia; it was removed after the car was vandalized and the California license plate was stolen (the crushed car and out-of-state plate were meant as protests against ‘outsider’ development). There are plenty of places to pose, and interaction with the troll is encouraged as long as you’re respectful.” The entire entry is here.

Every year on October 31, the Fremont Arts Council holds an event called a Troll-a-ween. Not sure what that involves besides dressing up the troll.

Just to the east of the troll, I noticed a path running parallel to the roadway, through a patch of undeveloped land. No one else had shown any interest in it.
I soon discovered that the place was a residential pocket — an informal neighborhood for the homeless tucked in between Aurora Ave. and Winslow Pl. N., a surface street.
Afterward, I made my way to Fremont Center, if in fact it’s called that, though “Lower Fremont” would be better, since the land slopes down from Upper Fremont toward the water at that point. There were other things to look for there, and I found most of them. Such as the statue of Lenin.
How did Lenin come to be in Fremont? A long story, apparently. The statue wasn’t on display in Slovakia very long, since it was erected in 1988 by an unpopular government that didn’t know it was on its last legs. After the Velvet Revolution, an American found the statue lying face down in the mud, and connived to bring it to Washington state. Various complications ensued, not all of which are clear, but I can report that as of the summer of 2015, Lenin stands on Fremont Pl. N. near N 36th St. and Evanston Ave. More detail is (again) at Roadside America.

Like the troll, Lenin is the focus of an event, too. Fremont seems fond of events, the best known of which is the Solstice bicycle parade in June, which involves painted bicyclists in various states of undress. In Lenin’s case, at least according to the Fremont C-of-C pamphlet that I picked up, there will be a “Festivus Celebration and Lenin Lighting” in early December.

Not far away is the Fremont rocket.
Across the street from the rocket is the Saturn Building, which I had a special fondness for even before I came to Seattle this time, having written about it (see No 4). I was happy to see it in person. That’s one thing this country needs: more planet models on more buildings.
I also managed to see the Fremont artworks called “Waiting for the Interurban,” along with “Late for the Interurban,” which is just down the street. I’d never heard of The J.P. Patches Show, but I didn’t pass my childhood in Seattle, either. That statue immediately suggested to me that Dallas needs a statue of Icky Twerp.

I took a walk along the Ship Canal at the very southern edge of the neighborhood, which connects Salmon Bay with Lake Union, and admired the Aurora Bridge — formally the George Washington Memorial Bridge, the same one under which the troll resides — as it soars more than 160 feet above the water.

People who live in the area might not appreciate it for the fine bridge that it is. Or maybe they do. I didn’t fully appreciate it just driving across it. The view might be nice, but you can’t pay attention as a driver. Crossing on a bus, as I also did, was better, but even so there’s nothing quite like standing underneath an excellent bridge like this.
Crossing the bridge on foot is an option. The bridge is unfortunately notorious for despondent people taking a dive off of it. For non-despondent walkers, the pedestrian walkway looked so narrow and so close to the road, which is very busy, that a walk across would probably be made unpleasant by car noise and exhaust most times of the day.