those were the days. (from the 3 October 2002 issue [stranger])

There is the saying about death and taxes being among the few certainties in life. As long as I’ve lived in Seattle, I could count on the Stranger being truly, madly, deeply in love with building a monorail. Through all of the votes and re-votes, they were like a true north on the issue. ¹

“Build the Monorail” they said over and over again. While they still like the idea, the finances have finally caused a rift in their dedication for the project.² This afternoon, on the Stranger Blog, Erica Barnett announced that the paper is going to call for a re-vote on the project. [#] It seems that the honeymoon is over long before the wedding march started.

I’m glad that they pre-announced the story. Finding out about this all at once by picking up the paper might have been too shocking to handle. This way we have a few hours to prepare ourself to this reconfiguration in local worldview.

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(1) This might not actually be true. A google search for “monorail site:thestranger.com” returns over 4,000 results and I’m still sort of on vacation^aand in no mood (or position) to do extensive fact-checking for a quick weblog entry about another weblog’s post.

(a) which is why the weekly weekly reader is still on hiatus
(2) To be fair, the “What Seattle Needs” article did end with the phrase “That’s worth $1.7 billion right there.” [stranger] Since the latest cost estimates are about 10 times higher, this sort of thing might qualify as something of a prenuptial agreement.