In Praise of Peculiar: Starbucker in Fremont

My wife and I started a 9 day vacation in the Pacific Northwest yesterday in Seattle, where we discovered a community that bills itself as the “center of the universe” – with its collective tongue in its cheek. The place is called Fremont, and it’s motto is “De Libertus Quirkus“, meaning “the freedom to be peculiar”.

And peculiar it is, along with funky, friendly, and flat out enjoyable. To top it off, there was a totally gluten-free bakery there that was awesome, called the Flying Apron.

Of course, I couldn’t resist snapping a couple of pictures to share with you – the first is me under an old 54 foot high rocket from the 50’s that somehow made it to Fremont. Now that’s a statement I never thought I’d ever put on paper!

In the center of the community there’s yet another eye-catching piece of art, a very large statue of none other than Vladimir Lenin. I would say this picture is about as good of a visual representation of “peculiar” I could come up with – me, a taco stand, and a statue of Lenin.

All in all, the place had a great vibe and a lack of pretentiousness that was quite refreshing – it was like the citizens here have enthusiastically endorsed one of my favorite lines by Elbert Hubbard – “don’t take life too seriously, you’ll never get out of it alive“.

Here in the center of the universe, that’s pretty easy to do – and those gluten-free muffins are a little slice of heaven. Bravo Fremont, thanks for getting our vacation off to a wonderful start.

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