Fremont was once a place within Seattle that put the hippie in grunge. Or maybe that was the grunge in hippie. Nowadays it is, like much of Seattle, at a cross-roads between its past written in the PBR-soaked sweat of folks who, in their twenties believed that dirt under nail and in hair was simultaneously both a political and fashion statement, are now in their forties and fifties with an economic clout they once directed their art-vogue-french-laden-Leninist angst against. In a word, they have become The Establishment, even if the PBR has not changed. This is not localized to Fremont or even Seattle, it is just the nature of economic growth. Still, Fremont is a place where its past and present mingle side-by-side with a steady-gazed aplomb, contradictions never colliding on most days of the year. Most days of a year except one day: summer solstice. This is the one day when whatever ironies and juxtapositions might normally cast their shade over Lenin Square is forgotten in the streak of body-paint, glitter and bicycle parts. On June 18, 2011 some 500 persons elected to wake-up, grab their bike and leave the shirt and the pants at home, instead opting for a bit of body paint to cover up their naked truth. More so, this year was a celebration made moist in the irony that is the Pacific Northwest: it rained on the start of summer. Or as a visitor from elsewhere might note it merely misted; just enough to dapple the hand and blush the cheek to what wobbled to and fro and bo-jangled up and down under the cycled beat of individual expression.
View the rest of 2011’s Solstice Celebration. And if you find tits and tats and bobs and babbles a bit too much then you might enjoy this instead.
Pretty evocative photography, Ward. Nicely done.