Lurching "undead" liven (the Seattle neighborhood of) Fremont

Lurching "undead" liven Fremont

It's hard work being the undead.

Staggering to the grocery store takes so much longer than walking. It's hard to make conversation with friendly passers-by when your primary instinct is to lunge and attack. And who knew life as a zombie could be so messy?

More than 150 zombies — or rather, software developers, structural engineers, administrative assistants and other upstanding folks oozing fake blood from a variety of costumes — lurched across Seattle's Fremont neighborhood Sunday afternoon, groaning through a third-annual Zombie Walk.

Sometimes referred to as "The People's Republic of Fremont," and at one time a center of the counterculture, Fremont has somewhat gentrified in recent years. The neighborhood remains home to a controversial statue of Lenin salvaged from Slovakia by a local art lover who was teaching in the area at the time. After the 1989 fall of the Communist government, he brought the statue to Fremont with money raised through a mortgage on his house. In addition to Lenin is the Fremont Troll, an 18 foot (5 m) tall concrete sculpture of a troll crushing a Volkswagen Beetle in its left hand, created in 1990 and situated under the north end of the Aurora Bridge. The street running under the bridge and ending at the Troll was renamed Troll Avenue N. in 2005. In addition, signs throughout Fremont give such helpful advice as "Set your watch ahead five minutes", "Set your watch back five minutes" and "Throw your watch away." Other landmarks include an old rocket fuselage and the outdoor sculpture Waiting for the Interurban.

Since the late 1990s, some Fremont residents have been referring to their neighborhood as "The Center of the Universe" (which also appears on a large "Welcome" sign). An unofficial motto, one which nonetheless appears in brochures and websites about the area, is "Delibertas Quirkas".

The Fremont Arts Council sponsors several highly attended annual events in Fremont. One of those events is the Summer Solstice Parade & Pageant, which has made Fremont famous for its nude Solstice Cyclists. Another event is the Troll-a-ween.

-- Wikipedia article for Fremont, Seattle, Washington