Time to stop the teeth-gnashing at City Hall. SLUT is here to stay. Without an ounce of forethought, Seattle has stumbled onto one of the hallmarks of a proper big city: a memorable mass-transit name.
The Underground, Metro, Desire, BART, Sky Train, Broadway Local, The MTA.
These are names that stick in your brain. Names that evoke citizens on the move in important cities. Names that mean something. Not a tortured acronym in the lot.
Enter SLUT. The South Lake Union Trolley. A name made for Seattle. If only we jump on it. So to speak.
Memo to Seattle bureaucrats: Don't waste time trying to cram SDOT or "South Lake Union Streetcar" down our throats. Take a lesson from New York. You can put the unwieldly "Avenue of the Americas" on the street signs, but to locals, it's always Sixth Avenue.
Remember, too, that great transit names can become cultural hallmarks. Tennessee Williams used a New Orleans streetcar to give the literary world Blanche Dubois and Stanley Kowalski and himself immortality, plus a Pulitzer Prize.
Duke Ellington knew a good transit name when he heard it. (Trivia question: What's the quickest way to get to Harlem? Answer: "Take the A Train.") The Kingston Trio drove Boston's MTA into a generation's consciousness, for better or worse. Sang Judy Garland:
Clang, clang, clang went the trolley,Ding, ding, ding went the bell.
If dozens of Seattle musicians aren't licking their chops over SLUT, there ain't no Middle C.
SLUT has a host of virtues. It rolls off the tongue. It's geographically accurate but politically incorrect, and can't we all use a little more of each these days?
SLUT also has a certain port-city raciness. No travel writer will resist a mention. We gave the world Skid Road. Why stop now?
"But we're not a logging town anymore," I hear you say. "We're a knowledge city, and SLUT is so ... so ... not knowledge." Really? Let's ask Google, the ne plus ultra of the knowledge society. What do we find on page one of search results? Our Fair City's new trolley. Imagine the competition in that metadata shuffle.
So buy a T-shirt - the entrepreneurs have obviously figured this out already – hop on the SLUT, and enjoy the ride. And as you gaze out the window at the heart of Vulcan's real-estate empire, consider this: The name will drive Paul Allen nuts. Now there's a point worth savoring.
Ding! Ding!
