Before opening Charlie’s, my wife and I would scout potential neighborhoods by sitting at cafés and just watching people mill around. It did not take more than 10 minutes to see that Fremont is hella gay. All the attention is paid to Capitol Hill for being Seattle’s queer neighborhood, but queer people are spread out in Seattle. It’s not just Capitol Hill anymore. 

When the concept of a queer bookstore was still a pop-up cart, my wife and I would load books into our Subaru (because, you know, gay) and drive around to different markets to test if Seattle wanted this, if readers wanted this, if the queer community wanted it. And it was clear, pretty much off the bat, that Fremont was the ideal neighborhood.

Fremont, with its art centric mindset, its embrace of individuality and of difference, speaks to queer folks from a safety, comfortability standpoint. And it has kept some of that kookiness that I think we all love about Seattle.

Yeah, Fremont gets overshadowed by Capitol Hill and by Ballard, but I think that our neighborhood almost embraces that. We’re not looking for flash and show: Ballard has hipster bars, Fremont has dive bars; Capitol Hill has Capitol Hill Block Party, Fremont has cool, intimate venues like Nectar Lounge and High Dive. 

I definitely think Fremont is slept on, but it almost adds to its mystique. When you get there, you feel like you’re discovering something. Before moving here, I had known about Fremont mostly because of the Troll. But when I visited the Troll, I walked down the hill and got to explore all the shops, the vintage mall, and the Sunday market. So you may come for the Troll, but you’ll stay for the art and the small businesses. 

Charlie Hunts opened his very-pink-and-purple Fremont store, Charlie’s Queer Books, in November 2023. He’s collaborating with neighborhood booksellers and Seattle Public Library’s Fremont branch to craft the Fremont Neighborhood of Books.