The Art of Business

The Fremont Troll in Seattle, Washington

When I was a child, and I lived in a small town in the Northwest, my parents would venture the two hundred and forty-odd miles to Seattle, Washington, the largest city I knew about, to buy a new camper shell for a pick-up or simply to see the sights, such as the Seattle Space Needle or Puget Sound.  There’s one sight, though, that exists in Seattle that wasn’t there when I was a kid (and as a kid I would have loved to see it): The Fremont Troll, which crouches below the Aurora bridge at the north end.
 
The troll is a gigantic sculpture, created by four area artists for the Fremont Arts Council (Ross Whitehead, Will Martin, Steve Badanes, and Donna Walter).  This object of art consists only of the troll’s head and shoulders, but he’s still eighteen feet all, suggesting an immense creature lurking under the bridge.  Its hair is shaggy and he has a gleaming metal eye that stares to the south.  He’s holding in his left hand an old Volkswagen beetle.  Every October 31st, the local community celebrates with the troll in a kind of movable feast known as “Trollaween.”  The party starts at the bridge next to the troll, then moves along to other art sites in Fremont, such as the biggest statue of Lenin in the United States.
 
If you’re traveling out to Seattle for a vacation, seeing the Space Needle or taking the Underground Seattle Tour, be sure to include the Fremont Troll.  You can visit it during daylight hours at N. 36th St. in Seattle, beneath the Aurora Avenue Bridge (also known as the George Washington Bridge).  There’s plenty of spots in and around the troll to pose and take pictures, and that’s fine to do.  I know that if the Troll existed when I was a child, I’d have insisted on going, because who can resist the opportunity to stand in front of an eighteen foot tall monster?