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Saturday
June 18, 2005

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A sunny day for the Fremont Solstice Parade. The best entry by far was the 200-300 naked body-painted cyclists who kicked it off. What was I doing sitting on the sidelines? Drinking beer and enjoying it with friends on the porch of Fremont Coffee, I guess. Afterwards, I made it over to the parking lot of Priceless Works for a pavement picnic. Jesse and Adria were peddling their wares as others literally cooled their heels in two plastic kiddie pools. With the help of Craig, Jesse, and Olive Burd, I assembled Flattened Can Spiral 2, which by Olive's count consisted of 439 traffic-smashed units. (The first one had 163.) It's a temporary sculpture I look forward to re-creating, but this one came to an even more premature end than I intended when Craig fell while being chased by 9-year-old Olive and neatly bisected the spiral. After that it became merely a question of where to drink next.

In the past few years, Fremont has become overpopulated with overpriced, tacky bars which attract hordes of drive-by drinkers--recent college grads with big new auto payments looking for a fight or a fuck. It's ugly. By midnight it was just me and Jesse looking for a place to cap off the day with a quiet drink when it occured to me that one of Fremont's first bars, still undiscovered, might be the best, and it was. The Asian Wok and Grill is a huge space with delicious inexpensive food and a cozy little bar tucked in the back where the drinks are tall and owner Danny Wong is generous with his talk. You might want to check it out. Jesse and I closed it down, hit a gas station for a couple of talls and rounded out the evening by watching the traffic from the Hwy 99 41st St pedestrain overpass, the just-about-summer night still and warm.