By Golly!

By John & Susie Pratt in Miscellaneous on Feb 1, 2005 6:07PM

Chicagoist loves people who like to make themselves laugh, and we are certain that such a person exists on staff at the Chicago Trolley Company. Have you ever noticed that the vast majority of the free trolleys that circle the Loop are named? And not just named, but named to rhyme with “trolley”? Check out the wooden name plates located just beneath the windshield.

We first noticed this about five years ago when Polly and Dolly trolleys shuttled us up and down Southport for a winter open house. Next we noticed Molly carrying a load of drunk bachlorettes, and Wally waiting patiently outside the Art Institute. And we thought it couldn’t get any better when we saw Pasquali making its way West on Adams one afternoon.

Oh, how wrong we were! Next we spotted Folly and, in a fantastically ironic moment, a broken down, flashers flashing, hood-up Melancholy Trolley on Michigan Ave. It wasn’t long before we saw Orchestra Hall-y, Big and Tall-y, and, of course, Kukla Fran and Ollie trolleys.

We think the higher-ups at Chicago Trolley must have thought that these latest round of names were a bit of public whimsy gone too far, and we fear that our favorite trolley-namer has been let go. Lately we have seen Dusty and Lovey and are afraid that we are in for years of boring sports celeb names, past and present. Who wants to ride a trolley named Walter?

Happily the website does not list the full fleet by name (we are sure this was another brilliant decision of our namer who understood the important treasure-hunt/obsession quality of all of this), but we want to know what other names are out there. More importantly, we are confident the well hasn’t run dry on the rhyming names. Come on people – dust off your rhyming dictionaries and get to work.

To get things going, we would like to note the obvious omission of Salvador Dali trolley.

Image: Chicago Trolley Co.