Fivethirtyeight.com just did a story Baseball Is Overrun By Adam Dunns. I'm not a baseball fan (dear God, no), but I know enough about baseball to know that Adam Dunn was a player for the Cincinnati Reds who struck out way too much but justified his place in the lineup by hitting a lot of home runs.

I mention this because this is how I feel about Charles Mudede's Stranger contributions. Sure, he strikes out often, and I'm finding that, with the rise of Donald Trump and the recent rash of police shootings, he's swinging and missing more than in the past. But every once in a while he manages to knock the ball out of the park, just often enough to justify his half-cocked pieces. Now comes this cold burn of an ode to the slowness of the streetcar. To me this is a 420-foot home run straight into the upper deck.

I can only hope that the contemporaneous leadership in Seattle who can "take credit" for the First Hill Streetcar will get a chance to read this and maybe feel a sickness in the pit of their stomachs.

And I'm not necessarily writing this as someone who's against streetcars. Mine is more a hold-my-nose ambivalence about this one mode of rail transit that all too often winds up as slow and exciting as--well, come to think of it--baseball.

Unfortunately, turtle-walking and all other forms of prolonged, affected idling are not hobbies available to the working poor. These pastimes, these ostentatious displays of utter disregard for labor, are suitable only for the very rich, for the rentier class and their docile pets in the "creative class" (their domesticated artists, actors, and scribblers).

Oh please, it's still better than walking up Jackson from Pioneer Square. That's what I used to do and now I happily used to do. It also gets me from the hill to Pioneer Square faster than bus routes that I tried. So... I'm actually pretty happy the First Hill Street Car.

I have learned to stop worrying and love the streetcar.

I used to ride the thing between the two ends before the Link station opened on Capitol Hill. But only if I had time to spare, since every alternative (including walking) was faster. It remains, however, just about the fastest way to get from either terminus to the mid-point... so there's that