Not many pieces of history are stuck to refrigerators.

But Peter Sherwin has two of them on his fridge in his home in Eastlake.

The blue refrigerator magnets, handed out by the Seattle Monorail Authority in 2004, say – seemingly optimistically now – "FREE RIDE TICKET.

"Opening Day
"December 15, 2007."

They are reminders of the heady days when it looked as if a monorail really might whisk thousands of commuters a day over the city's gridlock.

The idea was part "Jetsons" and part a look to the past and the short downtown-to-Seattle-Center Monorail built for the 1962 World's Fair.

And as it turned out, it didn't work out.

Just a year after the magnets were handed out – maybe in a show of confidence or of optimism – the monorail authority realized that it had overestimated how much it would be collecting under the car-tab fee voters approved to build the line.

The authority didn't have enough money.

Next Saturday, Dec. 15, 2007, a new transportation line will indeed be running. But it will be a South Lake Union Streetcar running in traffic.

All that came from the monorail project, the little blue refrigerator magnets.

Sherwin, who ran two of the three citywide votes to build what would have been a West

Seattle-to-Crown Hill line, recalled being unhappy when the authority began handing the magnets out.

Seemed foolish to put the opening day in writing, much less on magnets.

"Those were the kinds of things that gave me a punch in the gut," Sherwin said. "If you remember, back in the day, there was a saying I'd always use at the monorail (board) meetings, 'Promise less and deliver more.'"

But he said, the monorail authority under the leadership of Joel Horn, "moved into a corporate can-do mentality.

"But it leaves you hanging out there. And years later, here I am talking to a reporter about a promise made," he said.

Still, he kept two magnets.

"I was going to bring a date," he said.

And on Dec. 15?

"Maybe we all out to go down there" to the Seattle Monorail, he said.
Orthey can go to another city with a monorail.

"We can see if the Las Vegas Monorail will honor them."

Living in the city has its memoral scenes you find on the street, and its hassles like parking. "No Parking Anytime" is a periodic look at the times that describe life in Seattle. Let us know when you come across one of those moments. E-mail kerymurakami@Øseattlepi.com.