Statue of Lenin

This guide to the Statue of Lenin in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood opens at a Slovak scrapyard in nineteen ninety-three, where a sixteen-foot bronze Lenin was minutes from the cutting torch. An English teacher from Issaquah mortgaged his own house to buy and ship it home, then died in a crash before he ever saw it stand. You'll hear how Fremont, a neighborhood that never worshipped the man it depicts, built its own odd rituals around the statue instead, from holiday lights to a Pride Week costume. Look for the traces of whoever visited most recently.