The bus system was extremely confusing to me so Dad and I decided to walk to Capital Hill. This area was described as a "multi-faceted neighborhood". Its known as the gay center of Seattle and filled with students. Sounded like an interesting place to visit!
On the walk to the neighborhood there was a wall that seemed to border the street. Each block on the wall was filled with words to create a poem. It went on for a block or so and was a nice piece of public art!
Our walk also gave us a great view of Seattle!
Capital Hill wasn't exactly what I expected. I should have realized that going early Saturday morning would result in not much being open. Hello?! Student area. However, we did get to see some cool sights.
Seattle has tons of public art and Capital Hill was no different. One of the first pieces we came across was the Cha-Cha-Cha Dance Steps.
The dance steps were created by a man named Jack Mackie. The city was moving electrical wires underground along Broadway St. and it was decided to put art into the new sidewalk that was being installed. But it wasn't that easy to just install it! Engineers thought it would be dangerous and people would trip on the items in the sidewalk. Dancers wanted to money to be spent on dance performances and not the sidewalk art. Mackie heard that there was going to be a formal protest against the art and showed up in a tuxedo! While watching people on the sidewalk he noticed how people turned and shifted to avoid each other and created a type of dance. He hired dance instructors at the Arthur Murray Dance Studio to show him the dance and then outlined their shoes as they did the dance on the street. The dance steps also hold a secret! There used to be a doughnut shop across the street from the dance steps. When he was making the steps he bought a box of doughnuts and threw them in the hole before he closed the art up! The result...
Another piece of art is the Jimmy Hendrix statue. Its located on Broadway right across from Seattle Central Community College. Its a popular site for tourists to visit and apparently you can find cigarettes, flowers, beads, etc on the statue on regular basis.
The next stop on the the fancy bus system was Fremont to visit the troll under the bridge. The travel books stated that Fremont was the perfect town for walking around and doing a bit of shopping. Our first shopping stop was the local street market. It was interesting pieces of pottery, hand knitted items and the crepe lady. That was a first! A crepe lady!
She made little pieces of art with her crepes and then we ate them up! Talk about art appreciation.
Dad had read in one of his fancy tour books that Fremont was home to a troll. Well, we had to see the troll! We started to walk around and weren't exactly sure what we were looking for. Finally, we took a little shortcut and looked to the left...we found the troll under the bridge!
The Fremont troll has been a part of the community under the Aurora bridge since it was sculpted by four Seattle artists in 1990. The troll is 18 ft. tall, has a shiny hubcap as an eye and he is crushing a beetle in his hand.
Dad hanging from the Troll's nose.
I don't do gross booger joke photos.
The troll sculpture isn't the only huge sculpture in Fremont. There is also the huge Lenin statue. Weird!
A straight shot from the troll was the "Ice Cream Tour". It said you could see the Sleepless in Seattle house from the boat. MY DREAM COME TRUE!!!
Dad and I caught the boat just as it was pulling off but they were kind enough to come back for us to get on. There were just four of us total and a dog. A personal tour in Seattle!
Sleepless in Seattle house
Views from the boat.
The boat had some cool art downstairs too. The summer help had painted the stools and they looked amazing!
On the way out of Fremont we saw one more piece of public art, Waiting for the Interurban.
This sculpture is made of cast aluminum and it shows six people waiting for public transportation. One piece of the scuplture as a piece of controversy...
The dog that is show has the face of a man. Apparently this man was the original sculpture artist's friend. He disagreed with this piece of art and this hurt the artist's feelings. The artist got back at his friend for his hurtful words by permanently putting his face on the dog.
Dad and I had seen our fair share of Fremont so we hopped on the bus back to Capital Hill for some lunch/dinner at the famous Bimbo's Bitchin' Burritos. This place is full of weird day glow paint, glitter and other strange paintings (including a photo of Chuck Norris!). The burritos were huge and the margaritas perfect.
Bimbo's!
