Where the streetcars went

I rode in one of those a year or two back, along the Embarcadero. Noisy but really charming.

That blows people’s minds? How?

It’s not even subtext- it’s blatantly a major plot point of the film.

If that makes people’s heads explode, then I’m not sure how they’d react if I told them that Monsters Inc. was all about Nuclear power, and the Californian electricity crisis.

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It usually the people who haven’t seen the movie since childhood. It never clicked for me until I was older, and moved to LA… And had to deal with true traffic.

But uh, you enjoy that smugness alright?

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I loved how Roger Rabbit riffed on the opening scene in which a heartbroken husband weeps over photographic proof of his wife’s infidelities.

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San Francisco is one the few cities that has retained its cable cars and trolley cars. We used to have street cars in my city but they are long gone and just a memory.

The main takeaway is not so much an exculpation of GM, but that public transit should not be run as a for-profit enterprise, much less a corrupt government-granted monopoly.

A lesson that has yet to take hold in telecommunications.

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Exactly—I mean, so what if the streetcars weren’t turning a profit? Neither do the roads! Transportation infrastructure is generally taxpayer-supported because it enables productive activities like “commuters getting to work”. Why should taxpayers have to shell out money to build infrastructure for automobile commuters but not streetcar commuters?

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