MonNOrail

We spent Sunday morning sitting in front of Top Pot donuts downtown just watching the world go by. There were tall people, short people, a lot of white people, but absolutely no monorails. The concrete tracks which whisk people safely from Westlake Center to Seattle Center ---and, thank the good Lord, nowhere else in this city (oh and by the way, we're being sarcastic)---remain unused as a result of the humpin' and bumpin' of two trains back in November.

Although the cause of the accident was ruled to have been operator error, the Seattle Times dubbed the placement of the two tracks so close to each other "the number one engineering mistake in city history. " Number two, of course, was covering the Kingdome with dynamite and then detonating it. What were they thinking?

Not only has the monorail collision once again raised the issue as to whether the world actually needs engineers (we've put together an Ikea dresser many a time, so how hard can making a bridge be?), but it has also hurt businesses on Westlake Mall's third floor, where the monorail would dump off its passengers.

Third floor business owner David Woods told the PI, "Right now the mall is virtually dead. Usually in December it's so busy, it's hard to walk through it."

The monorail: Crashing and putting the Sunglass Hut out of business since 1962.