Portland By A Wire

You'd think it was the Second Coming or something. TV news shots, front page of the local dailies, big story in the New York Times. It's a fucking ski lift, for chrissakes. You get on, you ride in a gondola for five minutes, you get off at the top. But it's in Portland, you know, so it's got to be terrific. Even Amy Jenniges, former Stranger staffer now at the Portland Mercury, thinks it's hot shit. What are they calling it? An icon for the Rose City? Like the Eiffel Tower?

The Portland tram cost 60 million or so, about what the Sculpture Park cost, give or take. If we built a gizmo like that here, it could go from the Pig at the Market to the top of the Space Needle, same distance up and across. Whee! With a ride like that, we wouldn't need the monorail, either. Oh, wait...we already have the monorail.

Footnote, as it were: the base if the tram is in a "neighborhood" officially called South Waterfront. Portlanders refer to it as So-What.