So yesterday was the
2023 Fremont Solstice Parade and Fair, at which I took easily over 200 photos and videos, of which I kept 165—by far the most
I ever have at this event.
Shobhit had campaigning to do so he didn't come, but Gina and her friend Jennifer came up from Olympia to join me. Neither of them had ever been to it, but the idea came to me when a photo of the giant rocket in Fremont came up in my Facebook Memories from March 25, 2020 earlier this year. I added another comment to the thread, three years later, saying maybe now was the time. They both agreed, and I eventually did my due diligence following up about it with regularity just to keep it on their minds: letting them know in April that the exact date was June 17; then following up again on June 2 to make sure we were all still on; and yet again this past Monday to discuss transit details.
Most of those texts were over Facebook Messenger, and included Beth, as I thought Beth might want to join us. I actually haven't yet gotten a full sense of whether Beth really likes Jennifer—when the topic came up over Easter in April, Gina actually asked Beth "Is that okay?" when we talked about having Jennifer join us, although Beth was like, "Of course," and seemed almost confused as to why she would ask. That's all I have to go on though, so I could be reading way too much into things there. All I can say beyond that is that during our exchanges on June 2, Gina confirmed that Beth had a meeting on June 17 and would not be able to join us, so it would once again be just the three of us with Gina, Jennifer and me, just as it had been at the Washington State Fair in 2015, 2018 and 2021, this being a new thing for us all to do in an "off year."
Gina's plan at first had been to drive to Angle Lake Station and take Light Rail the rest of the way into Seattle. I didn't know, for a while, whether I'd have access to the car, and in the end Shobhit needed it for his campaigning. And then, when I texted Gina and Jennifer to share what the fares and the trip times would be, both or Light Rail from Angle Lake Station to Westlake Station ($3 and about 40 minutes each way) and the bus from downtown to Fremont ($2.75 and about 15 minutes each way), Gina evidently decided then that the public transit idea was too much trouble and decided just to drive after all. Jennifer drove over to her house in Tumwater and Gina drove up from Olympia.
I still took transit all the way there myself, taking the #11 from home to downtown, and then transferring to another bus from downtown to Fremont, arriving shortly after noon—for an event scheduled to start at 2:00. I had already figured out which buses go from downtown to Fremont, and three of them leave from the same stop at 3rd & Pine; all I had to do was get on the next one to come by once I got there. A #5 bus that was running 11 minutes late arrived within a couple of minutes, so that worked out perfectly.
Gina had shared with me her GPS ETA, and it had said 12:02 at Fremont Ave & 34th. My bus was scheduled to get to its closest stop to there, about seven blocks away, at 12:03. Somewhat predictably—not because of Gina but because of overall traffic yesterday, especially in and around Fremont—they arrived a good ten or fifteen minutes after I did. They wound up finding street parking at 34th & Wallingford, so, after meandering around on my own for a bit, I walked all the way to meet them over there.
Then, we all walked back together. Our pace had to be a bit measured due to Jennifer's apparently delicate knees; she said as long as she didn't have to do a lot of stairs she should be fine. I gave them the choice of killing time in the Fremont Fair or staking a spot with the blanket tote, and they chose walking the fair. In the end I never actually opened the blanket tote, which was fine. Better to have it and not use it than to need it and not have it.
I found a
great pair of earrings. I paid twelve bucks for them. I sae them at the first booth we looked at, took Jennifer's advice of looking through others too, and eventually bought these at that first booth after passing it again on our way out at the end of the parade.
Also, Gina was hungry, and Jennifer had never seen a PCC store, so we went into the Fremont PCC and got some lunch. which we ate at one of the PCC tables just outside. When we were at the self-checkout, I asked a lady working there if this was the store's busiest day of the year. She said, not really: they get tons of people through the store but not a lot of them actually buy stuff. I hadn't considered that.
From there, we made our way to the end of that first block of the Fremont Fair on 34th, which is also where the building the Fremont PCC is in is located, and then turned right to head up to 36th where the parade route was. Halfway up those two blocks we found the aforementioned rocket, and it seemed appropriate to get a group selfie there. I confused them slightly by how far away into the intersection I walked to get the shot, but that rocket is very tall (
53 ft) and I didn't want to be so close to it that it had to be at an awkward angle in order to fit it into the shot with us.
By this time, it was about ten till 2:00, and on this stretch of street, the crowd along the sidewall was already 2-3 people deep. How was I supposed to get good photos? I decided to lead us a bit further up 36th to the northwest, and we got all of about half a block before we actually found a small quasi-hole in the crowd, making us only two-people deep behind two people sitting in chairs on the curb, so it was actually perfect.
I guess I forgot that, although the parade technically starts at 2:00, the traditional nude cyclists lead the pack
before the parade—and so they were already riding in their circles in front of the crowd when we got there. It clearly hadn't already been happening for very long, though; the whole group rode in so many circles we saw the same people pass in front of us three, maybe four times.
The Fremont Solstice Parade's nude cyclists is a fascinating, local tradition. Plenty of other cities now have "Nude Bike Rides" and there's been a "
World Naked Bike Ride"
since 2001, but the Fremont Solstice Parade has featured its nude cyclists with body paint
since 1993. There's also a distinction to be made, as events like World Naked Bike Ride aim to make a political statement, and the Fremont cyclists, just as with all the other contingents in the parade, exist much more to make an artistic statement.
Fremont's cyclists had become such an established, annual tradition by 1998 that when police actually arrested a couple cyclists, the city did not file charges,
reportedly quoted as saying, "in order to prove indecent exposure, it's necessary to show the person's intent was to be obscene and cause alarm." According to Wikipedia, continued controversy of varying degrees continued to surround the nude cyclists at the Fremont Solstice Parade
through the early 2000s, but they have been such a reliable part of the parade for so long now, that they are inextricably linked and just as much of a local institution.
All that said, I think there may have been fewer cyclists yesterday than usual, for no other reason than the weather. Luckily for everyone, the weather was dry, if still slightly cool at around 60°, for the entire duration of the parade—but, although thankfully there was never a heavy downpour, it was wet and misty clear through the point at which we all arrived at Fremont. The misting dried up shortly after that, but with weather like that, it presumably lowered the numbers of cyclists (many of whom probably started their body painting while it was still misting) and spectators alike. Based on my photo archives, it would appear that yesterday was indeed the wettest of all days throughout the years that I made it to this event.
There is an unfortunate trickiness to my sharing the photos of the parade, and particularly the nude cyclists—because of Flickr's limits on sharing photos of nudity. I took so many photos yesterday that, although I still created
one photo album for all 165 shots, I actually have them
separated out into four different albums, for easier navigation: "Fremont Solstice Fair," "Fremont Solstice Parade: Nude Cyclists," "Fremont Solstice Parade," and "Fremont Solstice Fair: Seattle Art Car Blowout." Once I find the time, I will likely go back and do the same to my photos from previous years.
Anyway, you can really upload everything you want to Flickr—even sexually explicit content—but they have strict rules about nudity, even if the nudity isn't in the least bit sexual (this part is the most irritating to me, basically puritanical), and what can be publicly accessible. Any other Flickr member can see anything I upload; they will just encounter a pop-up warning for "sensitive" content that they can choose to click through to see, if it is flagged as either "moderate" or "restricted." "Moderate" is required if breasts or bare butts are visible. "Restricted" is required if genitalia is visible. I learned the nuances of these rules the hard way a few years ago when someone reported so many of my photos apparently "incorrectly moderated" that my account was locked until I fixed them all–which took some doing. Neither "moderate" or "restricted" photos are visible to anyone who is not a Flickr member.
So, if you aren't on Flickr, and you were to click
my nude cyclists photo album, you'll only see an album with 16 shots on it, some of those only "public" (unmoderated) thanks to strategic angle positioning of handlebars in front of a crotch, or something like that. If you are on Flickr and click that link, you'll find an album with
seventy-six shots, a vast majority of them with nudity of varying levels of severity.
I can tell you this much: the people who are on Flickr
love these photos, making nude cyclist photos from over the years (dating back to 2006)
eighteen out of my twenty all-time most-viewed photos. This is the only event I ever go to that features a ton of naked people, though, so it's not all that surprising that my nude photos are by far the most popular on my account.
I actually enjoy the rest of the Fremont Solstice Parade, which Shobhit has in the past shown no interest in whatsoever, wanting to leave as soon as the nude cyclists are past. But, the rest of the parade features a great deal of creativity in its own right, and honestly I can understand some historical resentment of the nude cyclists stealing their thunder. Probably my favorite this year was the
human wind turbines.
I did miss part of the beginning of the parade behind the cyclists, though, because I had to pee so desperately that I needed to go in search of a bathroom. I wound up back at the Fremont PCC, where there must have been 15 women in line for the ladies' room, but I was able to walk right into the men's room, waiting only about a minute for someone to finish in the stall. I was pleased to be able to get back to the parade within ten minutes. The time stamps on my photos indicate that the nude cyclists rode in circles in front of us for a good 35 minutes, and the rest of the parade lasted a solid forty minutes.
After that, we went back to browse the several blocks of booths of the Fremont Fair, and I'm not sure we even covered them all. We did all thoroughly enjoy the "
Seattle Art Car Blowout." We made our way back through the booths in the direction we came, stopping at one place where a spinner on a necklace read "Happy Birthday" but for some reason Gina thought it said "Butthole," and she even asked: "Does it say butthole?" The vendor lady was so amused by this she said she might indeed have to make one that said that, and Jennifer was literally laughing about this for the rest of the day.
I had a slightly embarrassing moment of my own, at the booth where I bought the disco ball earrings. I could not find the vendor person to make my payment to, and when a woman walked into the center area of the tent where I was standing, the keys hanging off her belt made me think perhaps she was who I needed. But when I suddenly said, "Do you work here?" she immediately said in an embarrassed tone, "Oh I thought I could walk through here!" I laughed and said, "I'm sorry, I'm not challenging you—I'm just looking for whoever I can buy these from." Clearly I need to work on my tone, which can really change the perceived meaning of something said or asked. (Gabriel used to complain about this in college, the way I said "Gabe!"—back when "Gabe" was still how I knew him—whenever calling for him, in a way he thought made it sound like I was unhappy about something.)
I finally found the guy, bought my earrings, and then we made a mutual decision to walk over to Gasworks Park, which I wanted them to see. Gina had said she had maybe another hour in her before she'd want to head back home. Jennifer said
The Amazing Race had shot in that park once; I wouldn't have known that. We were only at the park for maybe twenty minutes, where both Jennifer and I took a couple of pictures, and then we all went back to their car, as Gina offered to give me a ride home. They made a brief pit stop to get a light dinner at Dick's in Wallingford on the way.
