See Seattle Odyssey

Millions of impressionable Seattle kids grew up with J.P. Patches and Gertrude. The Emmy winning J.P. Patches Show aired for 23 years on KIRO TV and at one time had a viewership of over 100,000.

J. P. Patches

When it left the air in 1981, it was the longest running, locally produced children's program in the country. Even today, J.P. Patches continues to entertain his Patches Pals in the Pacific Northwest.

Elephant Car Wash	Flower Shop Elephant	Faux Needle
The Elephant Car Wash sign rotates on Denny Way near Seattle Center. Enhanced with neon and "flowing" incandescent bulbs, the sign was constructed in 1955.	The Flower Shop Elephant was built in 1926 on Aurora Ave. (just north of Green Lake) on the roof of a onetime flower shop. Why an elephant on the roof you ask? The former shop owner said: "Elephants have a great memory -- do you? Don't forget your wife's birthday!" Now you know!	Faux Needle, AKA Renton U-Haul Space Needle, is located on Rainier Ave across from Renton Airport. Sorry, no rotating restaurant but the lines aren't as long as the real deal. :-)

Lenin

You bet. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin--a 7-ton bronze statue of the bearded Bolshevik designed by noted Soviet artist Emil Vontov and erected in Poprad, Slovakia in the very twilight of the Communist era--faced a bleak future. He was torn down by angry counter-revolutionaries in 1989. An Issaquah native, Lewis Carpenter, who was teaching in Poprad, found Lenin lying face down in a puddle. Carpenter bought the statue (real cheap, rumor has it) and brought it back to Seattle. Then, in 1994, Carpenter passed away, leaving the statue to an uncertain fate. After briefly presiding over the grass-roots capitalism of Fremont's Sunday Flea Market, Lenin was taken out on his back when flooding caused serious erosion under the pavement supporting his immense weight (the weight of history, no doubt). Now Lenin has found a new home at the corner of 36th and Evanston with a new concrete pedestal firmly underfoot. It's not there to tout communism, but to serve as a reminder that art outlives politics.

Fremont Rocket	The Troll	Waiting for the Interurban
The Fremont Rocket was constructed using a 1950s rocket which had graced a defunct surplus shop in Belltown. Local artists added metalwork, neon, paint and a mural of blast-off clouds and whirling galaxies. The Rocket was erected with much fanfare in 1994. Its nozzles ooze clouds of vapor at regular intervals through the day. It graces the corner of the Ah Nuts junk shop, overlooking the lot where the Fremont Almost Free Cinema screenings take place during the summer, and which hosts the Fremont Sunday Market and Flea Market.	The Troll is lurking under the Aurora Bridge in Fremont. And yes, that's a real Fahrvergnugen (as in Volkswagen) he - or it - is clutching- or is it crushing! Constructed in 1991, weighing 2 tons and standing 18 feet tall The Troll presides over Trolloween every Halloween. Glowing jack-o'-lanterns, hand-made luminaria, costume skits, and uninhibited drumming and dancing kick off the festivities. For this event, The Troll is bathed in eerie orange light, with a gigantic spider crawling over his shoulder and decked out with a nose-ring (actually made from the rim of a bicycle wheel).	Waiting for the Interurban is memorial to the trolley/rail line that once ran between Everett and Tacoma. Standing at the north end of the Fremont Bridge, these five aluminum commuters (and one dog) have waited since 1978 for a ride that never came. Decorating the statues with seasonal apparel, political signs and other props has become a Seattle tradition. Look closely and you'll notice that the dog has a human face. The sculptor modeled the face after a character once known as the "Mayor of Fremont," because of a dispute about the sculpture the two were having at the time.

Kalakala
kalakala.org

Before Seattle had the Space Needle, the "Silver Slug" was the most unique looking thing on the Sound. The m/v Kalakala (Chinook for "flying bird") was the world's first streamlined ferry boat, entering service in 1935. Like the streamlined steam trains, Pan Am China Clippers, and aerofoil automobiles of the time, she drew juice from the Art Deco style to drum up a thumping great business for the Black Ball Line in service from Seattle to Bremerton (a 30-minute ride across Puget Sound) until 1967. Then it was relegated to Kodiak Island, Alaska as a fish processing plant for 30 years. Now it is now berthed in Tacoma's Hylebos Waterway.

P-I Globe	Hat 'n Boots hatnboots.org	Toe Truck
Atop the Post-Intelligencer building on Elliott Bay sits a huge 18.5-ton steel, neon-lit globe bearing the slogan "It's in the P-I." The 30-foot steel globe consists of two hemispheres joined at the equator. Pacific Car and Foundry and Electrical Products Consolidated built the globe in 1948 at a cost of nearly $26,000. The slogan, "It's in the P-I," is mounted on a raceway that revolves around the globe. Capital letters are 8 feet tall; small letters are 5 feet tall. The eagle that perches atop the globe is 18.5 feet tall.	The "Premium Tex", Texaco gas station, better known as the Hat n' Boots opened in 1954. Located in Seattle's Georgetown neighborhood, it was only one part of a larger shopping complex called Frontier Village. Rest rooms were in the Boots (which smelled that way), and you paid under the Hat. It is was located just north of Boeing Field and was constructed of reinforced concrete in 1953. Now the former landmark is a decaying relic, sadly in need of preservation.	The Lincoln "Toe" Truck, parked in the Museum of History and Industry since 2005, used to be seen by gazillions of commuters exiting and entering I-5 (Exit 167) at the corner of Fairview and Mercer. It was constructed in 1979 with a fiberglass cast of five fat pink toes added to the cab of a miniature tow truck. At Christmas time it was seen under tow by illuminated reindeer. There are actually two Toe Trucks - the second, built in 1996, is in front of Lincoln Towing's Aurora Avenue lot, and is the one frequently seen at Seafair parades.

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