Oktoberfest: Fremont Style

Yep, that was our Saturday afternoon/evening: Suzie and I decided to attend the Fremont Oktoberfest 2009 event in Seattle.

Let's back up just a tad.

Friday night we were poking around on the web and I read about it. It was rated one of the best in the country. The more we read about it, the more interesting it sounded. A little expensive at $25 to get in, we still thought it sounded like fun. We had gotten past the point of deciding we would go and settled down to the business of what to do for dinner. Keith was here so the three of us headed up to Jimmy Mac's Roadhouse in Federal Way, assuring him he would like the place (peanut shells on the floor & good food). While we sat waiting for our happy hour food selections to show up, we whipped out our iPods and made use of their excellent free wireless. Searching more info about the Oktoberfest, we again turned our attention to the advance tickets. The website initially said it was too late to buy advance tickets that would save us $5 each. As we dug around a little, we found the listing of vendors that were selling the advance tickets, and as luck would have it, the last one on the list was 99 Bottles (I blogged the place a while back), and they were right there in the same parking lot as Jimmy Mac's! Needless to say, we bought our advance tickets, opting for the "gold" version instead of the regular (10 tasting tokens each instead of 6) version.

When it came time to go Saturday afternoon, Suzie got herself into costume by selecting various items from her costume stash. When I tried a couple things of mine (a much smaller stash to pick from), we decided that I just looked "costumey" instead of Bavarian so I opted for t-shirt and jeans.

While I wouldn't call it a great Oktoberfest, it was a great event. I would call it more of a "beer-tasting" myself though. There was little or no Bavarian flavor to the place at all. The crowds of people were all mellow and friendly, but very few were dressed in anything festive. Suzie got lots of admiring looks, as did all of the folks that had decided on wearing costumes. At one point a couple of gals came running up and asked me if I'd take a picture with them and Suzie with their camera. Another time she got a compliment on her cape. We were having a pretty good time all in all. The crowd was very tolerable in size, but did get noticeably thicker by the time we were ready to leave.

The whole event was outdoors in an area of Seattle's Fremont district (Center of the Universe as locals like to say). Right next to a waterway, it was two parallel streets about a block long each, and they had the whole thing cordoned off with entrance/exit gates at each end. When you arrive, you buy (or trade your advance ticket for) your official commemorative miniature plastic beer stein and your tasting tokens. Each time you got your glass refilled it cost one token. We both looked at the little glass and laughed about the size, but in retrospect we both agreed that the size was about perfect. It afforded you just enough of each beer to really get a grasp of it--I'd say about 4 drinks (or two if you're a gulper). By the time our ten were finished, we were winding down ourselves. I took my camera and spent the whole time taking pictures of anything and everything, so be sure to visit our pictures site to check em out! They're under the "Events" category.

Speaking of pictures, did I mention that we went out last weekend to the Puyallup Fair with Sarah on a photo junket? Well we did, and there are a lot of pictures on our site from that as well. We went with the sole intention of taking pictures (mostly nighttime). We picked Sarah up at her dorm at PLU on that Friday afternoon and took her to the fairgrounds from there. We bought her a tripod (essential for night shots!) and presented it to her upon our arrival at the fair. We had a lot of fun there, and took several hundred pictures between the three of us. We noticed that when we had our cameras on tripods and would stop in the middle of an area for pictures that most people would give us a lot of room. I guess we looked like important people! At any rate, check out the pictures from that event too, posted under the "Photography" heading. What's posted are just from me and Suzie, but trust me, Sarah had just as many great ones as we did!