There are NAKED PEOPLE climbing on Lenin!

Is what my neighbor standing next to me in the line shouted. We were at the Fremont Solstice Parade-Fremont being a very artsy neighborhood with a fantastic parade, similar to The Cleveland Museum of Art's Parade the Circle. (They have a huge statue of Lenin in the center of the neighborhood and the sign entering the neighborhood says "Welcome to Fremont, center of the Universe.")And yes, it's known for it's nake people. Mostly it's naked bikers (bicycle bikers) who start off the parade and for years were told would be arrested by the police but I think they've given up on that. Speaking of police, some of them were dressed as bright pink - um - clowns? They were blocking of sidewalks, giving very confusing directions to people like me and Pygmy who lost our great seats twice because we kept being told to move. But then, finally, the parade started - with the naked bicyclists. They had great body paint on; there was a NY Times crossword puzzle, Nemo and a Shark who cycled around and around, an earth mother type, suns, moons, pirates, and other fun types. There was a Bubble Man, using mesh plastic utensil racks attached to batmitton rackets, filled the streets with thousands of bubbles.

Samba music filled the street as the first float come by complete with dancers - this was the first of three samba groups! There was a school group playing instruments on a floats, environmental messages from snow enthusiasts; 4 very politically charged floats - most fun being a group of "exterminators" going after "bugs". One bug was a cockroach with W's head and they tried to exterminate him with love but that didn't work so the audience yelled impeach, and a giant Uncle Sam beetle on stilts came by and burred him with a giant peach. There was a group mocking the NSA and a "Day of the Dead" group dancing. There was a gay/lesbian marching band, a zytco band, an India group heavy with male dancers. We were weirded out by some interpretative dance (luckily we hadn't paid $20 at the theater for this confusion); followed by a mock funeral of some famous mystic we didn't know, followed by a caterpillar (directed by more naked people) and another band. There was a pyramid type structure with a pregnant woman statue at the top that opened up to "babies" spilling out into the street. Their huge grotestque heads/masks were reflective of world leaders, basically acting like children, not sharing, hitting, fighting and were only calmed down and called together when "milk" sprayed from the mother statue's breasts. An hour and a half later, the paraded ended with a fantastic Jamaican group under clear sunny skies and the first warm day in ages.