an editorial by Kirby Lindsay, posted 10 July 2013
The aging of Fremont’s citizenry is interesting to watch. And we are aging. Look at the Board Members of the three primary representative organizations – the Fremont Arts Council, the Fremont Chamber of Commerce, and the Fremont Neighborhood Council – and you see some participants who have been involved in the organization for twenty, even thirty, years.
However, the community of Fremont does not age like its human inhabitants. The character of Fremont presents as youthful vitality, with an immaturity, lack of restraint, willfulness, and flexibility that can be annoying. Perhaps this young, fresh attitude has contributed to our recent rise in popularity – in a national culture that values youth.
Fremont has a youthful attitude that has also, arguably, been a part of the character of this community for over 100 years.
Throughout History
Early on, Fremont remade itself every few years – with the buildings, the people, and the institutions here changing with each decade. Part of that was a general flow, as people came to try us on and then moved to where they thought the grass might be greener. Part of it was the force of development.
In 1894, a local farmer named Erastus Witter organized a library for the Fremont community. In 1903, the Seattle Public Library took over operations – with Witter as librarian for the Fremont branch. Yet, it wouldn’t be until 1916 that the Fremont Commercial Club petitioned for an actual structure for our library (Witter originally kept the books in his home,) and 1921 until the building opened. We wanted a library, but the details about how to do that and correct process kind of eluded us.
Legend has it that ‘the Fremont Tavern building’, where the Red Door now operates, has been moved three times – and that its first location was where the Lake Washington Ship Canal flows through our community. In 1911, Chinese immigrants dug a Ship Canal out of what was little more than a stream called ‘the Outlet’ that trickled into Lake Union. This huge engineering feat drastically changed the topography of the area, but barely shows in the stories of the area.
In 1917, the topography changed again. Before then, our bridges (and we had many different ones,) were built at water level. With the Canal, and actual shipping able to move through the area, the Fremont Bridge was built higher. The roads were raised to meet it – and buildings around Fremont were raised, reconfigured (the space occupied by Dusty Strings Music Shop is the first floor of the McKenzie Building,) or replaced by buildings designed for the new topography.
Our community has often adapted to new circumstances (the canal, the bridge,) but not always in adapting ourselves to the will of others. We can adapt, but we are not push-overs – that is not the Fremont character.
Idealistic Solutions
Even when the community fell into a commercial coma during the 1940s, the youthful hopefulness and willingness to make the best persisted – and may be why it went on well into the 1970s. By then, the commercial district had fallen into disrepair, disrepute and distress. Fremont had become a place to find cheap liquor and, unfortunately, cheap company (aka prostitution.) It had also become a place for cheap drugs.
It would be young, idealistic people – and those with an ability to deal creatively with problems – that found ways out. When Armen Stepanian, the Mayor of Fremont, started the Fremont Street Fair (in 1972,) he wanted to help the community with a Fair of ideals over merchandising. A big concern he had was the incredibly high infant mortality rate here. The mothers – too high, malnourished or simply poor – couldn’t breast feed, and their children died.
For even then, we attracted kids from the University of Washington, looking for a place to party. Again, it isn’t in our population that Fremont exhibits its young age, but in its creative non-conformity and lack of convention.
This past June, Fremont celebrated its Fremont Fair for the 42nd time – along with the 25th Solstice Parade, the Fremont Fun Run & 16th Briefcase Relay, and the 15th Seattle Art Car Blowout – with everything going remarkably well, and everyone having a grand ole time. This week, the 21st Annual Fremont Outdoor Cinema season opens (along with another installment in the 9th Annual Music In The Sculpture Garden concert series.)
While many of those who started these events – and even those who still run them – have aged, the events have a youthful vitality, and attract a youthful energy.
More importantly, to me, those events exhibit an inventive adaptability that I call young. Fremonsters can be fuss-budgets, finicky, and fuddy-duddies, but not usually and rarely collectively. We are young or, at least, not capable of settling into ruts and redundancies, or insisting it be done this way because it has always been done this way…
We’d like to, but often more like a child who demands his treat because he always gets one. The most difficult part of the 2013 Fair for many people I met on the sidewalk seemed to be the shift from Costas Opa to Chase Bank. Can’t say that I blame them, and their fury is far from singular, but this drastic change didn’t keep this community from celebrating. The change didn’t cause us to hear a death knell or react as if to a fatal diagnosis – we treated it more like the divorce of our parents, as something to process that while we prepare for prom… This community often appears to react more like high school seniors than senior citizens.
It means that sometimes wisdom, affluence, comfort, and consistency elude us. Maybe Fremont can be too noisy, too busy, and too brash. I’d still say, one of the many, many reasons why I love Fremont, this week and this lifetime, is that this has been, is and could always be a place forever young.
Related Articles
- Costas Opa Is Closed
- by Kirby Lindsay, November 19, 2012 (on Fremocentrist.com News page)
- Meet The ‘Fremont Tavern’ Building
- by Kirby Lindsay, October 10, 2012
- Meet The McKenzie Building
- by Kirby Lindsay, July 7, 2010
- Long Live The Mayor Of Fremont
- by Kirby Lindsay, October 18, 2006 in the North Seattle Herald-Outlook
- Open for Business ‘As Usual’
- by Kirby Lindsay, April 20, 2005 in the North Seattle Herald-Outlook
©2013 Kirby Lindsay. This column is protected by intellectual property laws, including U.S. copyright laws. Reproduction, adaptation or distribution without permission is prohibited.