SEATTLE, WA — The San Francisco Bay Area has BART. Portland, OR has MAX — and now Seattle, WA has the SLUT, no matter how much city developers may wish otherwise. The SLUT is the South Lake Union Trolley, only it’s not.

City planners desperately want people to refer to the new method of mass transit as the South Lake Union Streetcar, but SLUT has stuck. In fact, it’s even become the subject of clever grassroots marketing.

According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, commuters waiting for Paul Allen’s new project to round the bend, pick them up, and take them to work, play, or whatever else awaits them at the end of the tracks, can upgrade their fashion sense by purchasing a “Ride the SLUT” t-shirt at the Kapow! Coffee House on Harrison Street.

Still under construction, the SLUT is being welcomed with open arms by Kapow!, if no one else.

“We’re welcoming the SLUT into the neighborhood,” says part-time barista Jerry Johnson about the shirts, which sold a sweet 100 immediately upon release, with another 100 on order.

While Johnson and friends have injected plenty of humor into the situation, he admits that not everybody has been wild about the fact a trolley is going to run through the old neighborhood. “There was a meeting with representatives from the city several years ago,” he explained to the Post-Intelligencer, “They asked us what we could do for you. Most people raised their hands and said ‘affordable housing. Then the people from the city huddled together – ‘whisper, whisper, whisper,’ – and they said, ‘How about a trolley?’”

Neighbors have pretty much accepted that regardless of how expensive their houses and apartments may be, there’s going to be a trolley running near them – and removing their very identity by changing the name of the area from South Lake Union to Cascade, at least in the promotional brochures put out by Allen’s development company, Vulcan.

With SLUTS scheduled to start running on the streets sometime in December, neighbors have become pragmatic about the change in their world, thanks to the $50.5 million project. One local, Don Clifton, is quoted as saying that the residents of the area are coping because they learned a lesson from the development company. “We learned how fun it is to change the name of things.”

Seattle transportation representative Gregg Hirakawa, along with Vulcan spokeswoman Kym Allen both emphatically insist that the word “streetcar” wasn’t suggested because of the potentially embarrassing acronym. No, indeed. Hirakawa proposes that the real reason is because “trolley” just sounds too old fashioned. Streetcar, on the other hand, is hip and ever so modern.

Nonetheless, Clifton insists that although he and others have loved the dirty, noisy, and even fatal construction process, they’re ready for it to end so they can get back to selfishly sleeping their nights away. “We can’t wait to have the SLUT,” he assures.