an open letter to the city of fremont, ca
Dear Fremont, CA:
Though a series of circumstances, most of them directly out of my control, I have been living in your fair city, on and off, for the past two or three years or so. Therefore, I think I have a right to make any judgments and opinions about you. And that assessment is this:
You totally fucking suck.
Too harsh, you say? Perhaps. Your high density of Chinese-Americans attracted my parents to move to your city. And they, in turn, convinced me to purchase a condo here, in part due to cheaper housing in the Bay Area, but mostly due to that little-known-to-white-people thing known as “Asian familial responsibility.” So I’m stuck here, if only temporarily.
Why yes, I HAVE read up on the history of your city; enough to know that it was a small enclave of five former townships, each with a distinct community and personality of its own. Then in 1956, someone had a bright idea to merge these towns into the immense suckitude that is Fremont, California.
You don’t have a downtown so much as a series of attached strip malls. I am walking distance from at least five franchised fast food restaurants, staffed by a plethora of Indian and Taiwanese families, eager to pursue the American dream. Which would be great, if my version of “fine dining” was Quizno’s. When your fair city was planned, was your idea of “night life” for people to drive 20 minutes south to San Jose? And don’t get me started on what it’s like to live as a single gay person living in Fremont. If the only option of gay life here is anonymous sex with strangers in the bushes of Niles Canyon, let’s just say that I have a gut feeling that I will be single for a very long time. A. Very. Long. Time.
Oh yeah, and you being the new home to the Oakland A’s? I live in Fremont, and even I think it’s a bad idea. You know that YouTube video where those guys protest the A’s move by ghostriding their Volvo? The part where they say that Fremont is “a parking lot with a mayor?” Yep. Totally agree.
In conclusion: your city sucks and I want to move somewhere with gay people my age. Hell, I’ll settle for people my age. And a restaurant that isn’t a Carl’s Jr, because I’m SO fucking tired of eating cheeseburgers with onion rings in them. That is all.
- Ernie
PS: Okay, the fact that there is a Fry’s isn’t horrible. But it doesn’t have a cool Egyptian motif like the Fry’s in Campbell. The mere fact that Campbell is infinitely cooler than another city says a LOT.


31 Comments