I always wondered if someone painted on the round sunglasses much later, as some sort of art prank. They always looked like they were added post-facto.

Amusingly, the "Cafe Art" style is a rather 'flat' style, which has now come into vogue with all the computer designers pushing their vision these days (Windows 8, Android 4.x, WinPho "Metro" interface, etc.)

I do not like that mural at all - it is really unappealing to the eye. Yet, I must say that the Henry murals are even less attractive - - those things are just plain eyesores.

one of the first murals i ever observed as a child. even then i disliked it...something about the rotund cartoon man in a rotund cartoon universe smoking a cigarette bothered me. i've always wished there was a "rotating" quarterly or yearly mural renewal there. public art doesn't have to be forever. there are a lot of artists out there itching to do work FOR FREE.

I use the 'Ur-Father big-E Engineer' description from that essay pretty often to describe one of my bosses.

Murals are so weird since they're so eminently replaceable yet intertwined with a locale's aesthetics and collective nostalgia. Also, as always, there's no accounting for taste. Case in point, growing up in Shoreline my favorite mural on NE 205th St was of the "Michael Jackson Children," wherein identical, alien children with enormous eyes and cheekbones clutched droopy flowers near a sad tree. I loved it ironically but, in retrospect, passionately. It's gone now and I'm surprised how many real feelings that evokes.

Also, I tend to get that overpass confused with the one near Woodland Park Zoo where the rad lion mural was gray-scaped by city workers. So I always see the flat blob people and mistakenly think, "They replaced the neon lions with THIS?"

I really preferred the previous mural with the zoo animals.

The best mural in the city is on the side of the pho bac on Rainier. It is just a perfect representation of Seattle. To me at least.

http://www.seattlepi.com/news/slideshow/…

But it's whimsical, and it looks as if children might enjoy it (though they categorically do not), so Seattle must preserve this hideous garbage for eternity, even if that means paying hippies in purple fleece to fix it.

There was another mural under Aurora at 63rd street which was brutally tagged so many times it became unrepairable. So they painted it gray. Which means that the hideous tags really stand out now for the week or so they stay up before it goes back to gray again. I'm tempted to go down there some night and write a bad word in ultra-clear block letters.

I'm not a fan of taggers but I would love it if an army of them hit this thing some night and transformed it Tubs style. What they should do, of course, is find someone in this city with some soul and paint a proper mural on it, like they do in LA. Surely there has to be at least one talented Mexican-inspired muralist north of the ship canal? Or, you know, get real local and paint it to look exactly like a six-story mixed-use condo building.

I found the blasted rollerblader:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uc0sJ2fZSX0/TY…

I have an idea - why don't we have elementary kids paint a new mural in place of this one? or jr. high kids? they always do a great job.

@5: Me too!

@9: Love.

Looks like a mural out of a kindergarten playroom for white kids in a suburban school. Perfect for Fremont.

Everything said in this column about me is a lie and many facts twisted by the FremoCentrist and many other heresayers. I wrote a letter to the editor of the Seattle times looking to help any other artist paint over that mural. Go to my website : patrickgabrielartist.com pg. 18- 22. as I will only have the posting about the Aurora Bridge Mural for a short time including pictures in its original state. The mural is long past expired as the paint was only to last 7 -10 years....not 20 and I condemned it so that another artist can paint over it. The FAC had "lost" the mock up chart and used up all of the paint that was left behind to maintain it... as they were responsible to clean off grafitti .... Just because the Fremocentrist is a blog does not mean any of it is supported by facts. So even your comments that show up publicly is considered defamation of charachter. I am writing the Seattle City attorney to end all of this cheap talk and will starting writing my own blog, . I was never interviewed by anyone. I will close down that arrogant FremoCentrist ...like you guys think the whole world revolves around you....Fremont is not the center of anything important. And You're not a Stranger....you're just strange....and I think you all are smoking way too much dope. - Patrick Gabriel