Bet this never happened in Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook. The Seattle monorail took a little nap this morning, losing power near Fifth and Stewart. Riders were able to disembark down fire department ladders, and so far there’s been no word about the cause. You owe it to yourself to see the KIRO interview with eyewitness Sharon Sherpa, who has been a flight attendant in Nepal and had a phobia in Japan.

Bob McGrath has passed away. One of the original cast members of Sesame Street, Bob was 90 years old and is remembered for some of the show’s best songs, including “People in Your Neighborhood” and “Sing a Song,” which I had on vinyl as a kid and would drive my parents absolutely insane by playing over and over.

What housing crisis? A developer trying to build 170 homes on 12th Avenue was rejected by the Design Review Board back in September. The board’s reason for delaying construction? They wanted more “visual interest,” among other demands. The developer will be back before the board this Thursday with a refined proposal. No rush, folks! Take your time!

Would you benefit from a smart bag? Alaska Airlines will offer a new method for checking bags: you’ll have to pay $75 to get a wireless tag, which you then put in your bag, allowing it to be wirelessly tracked through the baggage system. The goal is to speed up the boarding process by eliminating the need to stop at baggage counters for a label. 

Bike opinions wanted. SDOT is working on building bike lanes on Beacon Hill, a process that, if we’re lucky, will conclude sometime before the heat death of the universe. Currently, they’re conducting a lengthy campaign of open houses and an online survey about which configuration folks prefer. OH MY GOD YOU’RE THE ENGINEERS JUST BUILD IT.

We don’t have to live like this. Following up on the numerous deaths and serious injuries caused by drivers over the weekend, today we saw a Jeep rollover on 10th Avenue East near St. Mark’s, with occupants briefly trapped in their vehicle. In Edmonds, two drivers crashed into each other at an intersection, careening into pedestrians standing on the (unshoveled) sidewalk. Both were sent to the hospital, one with serious injuries.

Just incredible. Chevron has still not deleted a tweet in which they appear to have sewn their corporate logo in the AIDS Quilt, an absolutely disgusting desecration of one of the most powerful pieces of folk art in American history. Chevron has given money to the National AIDS Memorial, but having the gall to insert themselves into the quilt is a shocking, shameful new low for a company with a decades-long history of environmentally catastrophic spills, explosions, and poisonings.

The Seattle process: pit to parking lot to maybe-park. The twisty tale of the Belltown Hole in the Ground continues! The empty lot near the waterfront belongs to Seattle City Light (whoops, no, it belongs to SDOT), and a few years ago there were plans to turn it into a pleasant little park. Then City Light decided that it should be a disappointing parking lot instead. But now the parking lot plan has been scrapped due to insufficient funds. So what does the future hold? In an ideal world, they’d go back to the old plan to build a neighborhood playground, but I wouldn’t underestimate the city’s ability to find reasons to delay any sort of progress for decades.

Behold, the latest installment in the tale of the Healthy Street sign. After weeks of getting trashed by unknown assailants, SDOT has replaced a Healthy Street sign at 46th Avenue South and South Cloverdale Street with a small concrete cylinder. The sign is quite a bit smaller than the barricade that was once there, and it is now having no effect whatsoever, with cars zooming past like before. Great work.

Meet your new Washington Transportation Commissioner. Jay Inslee has appointed Nicole Grant to the state commission. Grant has a background in environmental and labor organizing, and was previously active in efforts to eliminate leaf blowers, expelling the Seattle Police Officers Guild from King County’s largest labor union, supporting a progressive revenue tax to fund social services, opposing the hiring of scab ambulance drivers, and expanding access to housing.

The kind of discovery archivists dream of. A Stephen Sondheim collaborator who recently wrote a book about the legendary composer was putting away some documents when he came across a misplaced CD. On it was a recording of what is probably the first Sondheim cast recording, dating back to 1948. The recording will eventually be donated to a publicly-accessible research collection (the ambiguous legal status of the recording complicates its release), and for now you can listen to some clips of the music here.

Something’s under the beach. Nobody’s exactly sure what the large wooden and metal object, revealed by recent erosion in Florida, could be, though the prevailing theory is that it’s an old shipwreck or possibly a pier. It’s 80 feet long, and seems to be made of a series of staggered struts. My theory: a giant music box built by Stephen Sondheim.

Kirstie Alley has passed away. She was great on Cheers and Veronica’s Closet, a memorable Vulcan, and a source of endless agitation in tabloids and on Twitter. A complicated individual, she passed away after a short battle with cancer.

How are those protected bike lanes around Green Lake working? Just fine, thanks.