Living in Texas one of the things we missed most about living in Seattle was the Fremont Summer Solstice Parade. We’d gone many times in the past and always had a great time. Now that we are back we made sure to go this year. The parade is a little different than most. They have a few rules: no motorized vehicles (people power only) and no words. So what you don’t see are boring cars and political signs. What you do see are very clever human powered floats, cool interactive art and lots and lots of naked, body-painted bicyclists. Men and women (and a few little kids). Some of the paint jobs were pretty cool and often involved multiple people. So fair warning, this post contains some nudity. Here are some of our pictures (we took 551) from, as Wesley calls it, The Naked People Parade.
We headed to the U-district and picked up Pat and then to Fremont in the drizzle (it didn’t last). We found our spot for watching the parade and then waited. Being a solstice parade it starts exactly at noon. We had an hour to kill. Luckily a guy was walking around giving kids chalk. So Wesley and I partook in one of his current favorite activities: hopscotch.
The bikes, and their naked riders, are only sort of semi-official it seems. They lead off the parade before the real parade begins. So shortly before noon Wes and I gave up our game (I was leading 5 to 3) and took to watching some naked people ride bikes. Seeing the men, you realize just how much everything gets squished. Here are a few examples of probably a hundred or more different riders.
Probably Wesley’s favorite part:
Jillian couldn’t take her eyes off this bathtub and its ducks.
After the bicyclists, the parade gets going in earnest. You never really know what you are going to get. The floats, puppets and entertainment are all hand made by volunteers. You don’t know what you are going to get, but you’re probably going to like it. I’m not sure if this guy was the master of ceremonies, but he was throwing beads (we caught some gold ones) and was on stilts that made him about 10 feet tall.
The banner and mostly naked women always lead off…
Wesley got to spend most of the time on my shoulders. It gave him a better view and me, well, I’m a little shorter now.
Belly Dancers.
Huge, human powered puppets.
This guy (and a bunch of others) were giving out hugs. He tried to hug Wesley on my shoulders. I leaned forward and Wesley leaned as far back as he possibly could to avoid the hug. Cracked up the crowd. I got a nice hug though.
While he didn’t want to have a hug. And didn’t want to play kickball in the street, he jumped at the chance to get run over by a giant beach ball. He was awesome. He had a great time and a huge, huge smile on his face. Click for bigger pictures of him.
Because the parade is human powered and because there are so many interactive things going on, the flow can be a bit messed up. It moves in fits and starts. Sometimes people just breeze on by and other times they get stalled in front of you and you get a really good chance to see what they are up to. One of the times the stopped in front of us we got to listen to some good Mardi Gras style music. Another time we got hula hoopers.
The military presence is a little different in Fremont.
There were lots of dancers, but this group had the most coordinated effort. We were lucky that they stopped in front of us for a bit and we got to see most of the routine.
No Solstice Parade would be complete without the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. This picture doesn’t do them justice. They are always a big hit and do some good charity work, too.
Jillian fell asleep on the walk from the car. When she woke up, she was interested, but grumpy. On the way back she was upset because she wanted “to hug someone in a costume”. We found several people in costume and they agreed to a hug, but I guess they weren’t the right people because Jillian refused and then repeated that she wanted to hug someone in a costume. She was pretty upset.
After the parade we headed to the U-district to have lunch at Fondi. Really good pizza and yummy gelato at a reasonable price. I’d recommend the salted caramel if they have it. Wesley and Jillian (who did perk up at lunch) really liked their birthday cake flavored gelato. And it really did taste like birthday cake. Wesley insists my blackberry tasted more like raspberry. I won’t argue with him, but it was good either way.
Here is a gallery of 47 pictures (including the ones above) that we’ve uploaded to our server. We also have 551 photos in our 2010 Fremont Summer Solstice Parade set on Flickr. Already (only about 3 hours now since they all went up, we’ve had about 16,000 hits on those images. Update: After 1 day Flickr is reporting 42,000 views). A little nudity sells(even body painted public nudity). If you check it out, remember you’ll see breasts, butts and penises. Just so you know.
Tags: Amber, Fremont, Jillian, Joshua, Parade, Pat, Seattle, Summer Solstice, Wesley