Funicular — it’s as much fun to say as it is to contemplate, and it appears the concept is back on the table in Langley.
Mayor Fred McCarthy confirmed this week that city officials are once again considering the idea in the wake of controversy surrounding the proposal for an elevator on a raised platform, the latest machination for a mechanized shortcut between the marina, Cascade Avenue and the rest of Langley. At $500,000 it’s by far the cheaper alternative to the original plan for a funicular, about $900,000, but it’s hardly as much fun and earned wide-spread criticism for its view-blocking potential to boot.
Sure, sure, cost and maintenance are factors in the greater effort to ease the long walk up the hill along Wharf Street, but who can argue the merits of a funicular over a boring old elevator?
One’s a convenience, the other is a ride!
For that matter, my personal vote is for a funicular shaped like a whale. A gray would be cool, but an orca even better. Just imagine a black and white colored pod, perhaps with doors shaped like jaws, a fin on top and tail in back, shuttling people up and down the bluff. Businesses would sell T-shirts, cups and posters, all with messages such as “I rode the whale to Langley” or “I had a whale of time in the Village by the Sea,” or best yet, “Now I know how Jonah felt.”
Like Seattle’s Space Needle, Pike Street Market’s bronze pig Rachel and Egypt’s pyramids before them, Langley’s orca would become its identifier, its signature feature to the great, wide world. People would flock to that famous South Whidbey town where one gets to the beach or downtown in the belly of a beast.
No? Well, perhaps not. I ran into McCarthy at Ken’s Korner Thursday and broached my design ideas. Somehow I think the idea sank there, for there was a lot of laughing and I believe the conversation ended with, “You should come to the city council and propose the idea yourself, Justin.”
Fred’s a funny guy, if you didn’t know already.
There may yet be hope for my whale of a plan, however. The mayor may laugh off my brilliance, but I’ll leave you with this — the T-shirt slogan, “I rode the whale to Langley” was actually his.
