About "The Fremont Solstice Celebration"

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Fremont is a Seattle neighborhood just north of the canal that connects Lake Union to Puget Sound.  Once a blue-collar area of ship fitters and chandlers, stevedores, and fishermen it is now the hub of a vibrant arts-and-crafts neighborhood of galleries, ateliers, and live/work studios. 

 

It’s annual solstice celebration is legendary even among the many wonderful, eccentric festivals that are one of the reasons I love Seattle.  Held on the weekend closest to the summer solstice, it is three days of music, dancing, food, drink, an extravagant street fair and on Saturday a parade — the hit of the celebration — followed by a pageant. 

 

The parade, usually well over two hours long, has only a few rules: no motorized floats or vehicles, no commercial sponsorship, no printed material or signs.  It is goofy amalgam of Mardi Gras and an old-fashioned neighborhood parade.  People from toddlers to grandparents turn out in outrageous costumes (or lack thereof), on elaborate human-powered floats, on bicycles, unicycles, tandems, stilts, skateboards, and on foot.   

 

Fremont is evolving into a trendy city neighborhood and high-technology center.  Each year I fear that the Solstice Celebration will be the last one — or that the crowd will become so thick that I cannot photograph.