American Beauty

America has always had a different approach to progress than her progenitors across the Atlantic. While we in England in the 1920s were spending civilized weekends at the National Trust, Ezra Pound was shocking the world by proclaiming "Make it New." In the 1870s, Alfred Lord Tennyson was turning to medieval romances and the Classics for inspiration, while Walt Whitman was singing odes to progress and industry. In his Song of the Exposition he writes:

"Here shall you trace in flowing operation,
In every state of practical, busy movement, the rills of civilization...
You shall see the crude ores of California and Nevada passing on and on till they become bullion...
You shall mark in amazement the Hoe press whirling its cylinders, shedding the printed leaves steady and fast,
The photograph, model, watch, pin, nail, shall be created before you."

Whitman's love of the mechanical, the leaves of print as much as the leaves of grass, puts him in a position of sympathy with Thomas Eakins -- and in fact the two were friends. Eakins was trained in the clear-eyed accuracy of mechanical and anatomical drawing, and his 1871 painting of the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, entitled Max Schmitt in a Single Scull, shows the influence of this realist approach. The architectural detail of the Girard Avenue Bridge and Connecting Railroad Bridge in the background is flawless, the reflections exact, the rowers neatly precise.

The result, despite being in stark contrast to the contemporaneous Impressionist movement, is beautiful: the sheer functionalism of the sculls and bridges gives them elegance. It's a particularly American aesthetic, and one that is just as applicable to Seattle's bridge-spanned waterways. Indeed, as Seattle author Bernice S. Moore wrote in 1947, at the height of the Northwest Arts and Crafts movement (with perhaps a very slight excess of enthusiasm), "One may get the same feeling of beauty from the smooth streamlines of an airplane or an electric iron that one may get from a beautiful piece of sculpture."

A Selection of Statues

Lenin
In Fremont, the time-honored practice of erecting a statue to commemorate a historical event or honorable person is turned upside down. The 16-foot-tall and seven-ton bronze statue of Lenin is a case in point: part accident, part experiment, part provocation. The sculptor was Emil Venkov, who labored over it for ten years, and the statue was installed in Poprad, in present-day Slovakia, in 1988.

After the Velvet Revolution of 1989 the statue was quietly taken down, and was due to be melted for its bronze when it was discovered by Lewis E. Carpenter, a Washington native who was teaching English in Poprad. Recognising its artistic value, he remortgaged his house and bought it, and shipped it back to the States -- much to the consternation of the Seattle community. There was then an unexpected twist: In the midst of all the uproar, Carpenter was killed in a car crash.

The statue was left lying in his backyard, and his family have been trying to get rid of it ever since. They got it off their property and set up in Fremont in 1995, and it is currently for sale for $250,000, proceeds to go to the Fremont Chamber of Commerce for community art projects. In the meantime, its controversy is a source of glee for the community, which alternates between promoting it as Art, and dressing it up as John Lennon.

Troll
Familiar to us all from Scandinavian folklore, the myth of the troll has been made quite literally concrete underneath the Aurora Bridge. The two-ton creature squats in the darkness, single hub-cap eye gleaming, and crushing a Volkswagon Beetle -- with a California license plate -- in its left hand. It was created by a team of four local artists in 1990, with the aim of rehabilitating the space. Today, instead of a dark corner for dumping tyres and dealing drugs, it is a tourist attraction. The moral, we must assume, is bring on the trolls.

Dinosaur
What more could Fremont want? Well, a true-to-scale topiary model of an apatosaurus was a notable absence until 2000, when the Pacific Science Center serendipitously decided to sell its pair of ivy-clad dinosaurs for the bargain price of $1. They were relocated to the edge of the Ship Canal, where they forage happily today just as they did 150 million years ago.

A Very Short Introduction to Fremont

"Welcome to FREMONT, Center of the Universe," reads the sign. Located at the north end of Lake Union by the Ship Canal, this neighborhood is also referred to as "The People's Republic of Fremont," a name whose ironic relevance is reinforced by a large and controversial statue of Lenin. Historically a bohemian and artistic gathering place, Fremont's recent gentrification has not dulled its embracing of the eccentric.

Retro-futurism reigns in Fremont. A fusion of 50s and 60s style with 23rd-century chic is what's in, with vintage clothing stores comfortably abutting rocket-fusillage glam. The supermarket is entirely organic, the Solstice Cyclists infamously nude, and the recording studio the site of Nirvana's first recorded demos. What's unexpected about this hippy vibe, though, is its quietly chortling self-consciousness.

The unprepared visitor is likely to feel that he or she has unwittingly stepped into a creation of Douglas Adams or Monty Python. Fremont is enthusiastically zany, highly entertained by its own slightly geeky jokes, and keen to deconstruct normality at every turn. Within three blocks of the center you will find a deluxe junk store; a subversively graffitied courtyard; a classy wisteria-clad boutique; and a Cold War rocket erected at the corner of a restaurant. The rocket itself bears the neighborhood's unofficial motto: De Libertas Quirkas, or, Freedom to be Peculiar.

Add to this description a line-up of outdoor summer movies that includes Shaun of the Dead, Edward Scissorhands and Mamma Mia, and I think we can safely say that the style we're looking at here is high camp, with all the "perversely sophisticated appeal" that Merriam-Webster allows. Irony is the tone du jour, and in case the bohemian surface has taken you in, I should add that Google, Adobe and the world headquarters of Getty Images are all located in Fremont. Indeed, in typical Fremont style, that area has been promptly dubbed the Silicon Canal.

George Pocock: Gold Standard

Portage Bay is a privileged location when it comes to rowing. On one side is the University of Washington, which has had an enviable reputation on the water since the 1920s. Earlier this month, for example, the UW team swept through the 107th American Intercollegiate Rowing Association's championship regatta, claiming gold for the men's varsity eight, the second varsity eight, the freshman eight and the open four, and silver for the varsity four. On the other side, just by the University Bridge, is the Pocock Rowing Center, named after Seattle-based boatbuilding legend George Pocock.

Pocock was born in England in 1891, son of Eton College's head boatbuilder. He began sculling when he was 12, won his first race at 15, and shortly thereafter signed on as an apprentice in his father's boatbuilding shop to learn the trade. He continued racing on the Thames, however, and won the prestigious London Bridge to Chelsea race in 1910. His prize was £50, and with this he and his brother headed west, booking passage on a cattle boat bound for Canada, and arriving in Vancouver in 1911 with $20 to their name, determined to make a career out of building racing shells.

It took a few years. Pocock's first break came when Hiram Conibear, the UW coach, rowed over to his workshop to commission an eight-man shell. Moving to Seattle to carry out the commission was the first step, but it was not enough to live on, and so Pocock began working for a Mr. William Boeing, building float-plane pontoons. It was not until 1922 that he returned to work for the university. The very next year, the as-yet-unknown UW racing team competed in the Intercollegiate Rowing Association's championship regatta, and won -- in a Pocock shell.

Over the next 50 years, Pocock built racing shells for almost every competing college in America, and several abroad, keeping his prices low even as his name grew, so that high schools and small colleges could continue to afford them. Olympic golds for eights were won in Pocock shells in 1924, '28, '32, '36, '48, '52 and '58. Pocock's son gradually took over the shop in the 1960s, moving from cedar shells towards fiberglass and carbon fiber, and managing a reputation that kept the shop overwhelmed with orders. Today, Pocock Racing Shells, Inc., is located in Everett, owned by the Pococks' long-time friend Bill Tytus. It is still the industry leader.

Pocock's story is as much about talent and craftsmanship as about the storied rewards of building a new life in the New World. Pocock grew up being told to aim for perfection, and worked his whole life on streamlining and improving racing-shell designs. Even today, the Pocock shell is considered the Gold Standard against which all others are measured.

In a recent (and excellent) Seattle Times article on the peculiar attractiveness of rowing as a sport, Steve Kelley quotes the current UW racing coach, Michael Callahan. Rather than deifying the secrets of rowing, or describing the search for the ideal split time, Callahan takes an angle that surely recalls Pocock's own. "I think our sport is a little like architecture," he says, "where it's art and it's also engineering."