Thin ice

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Auntie Ruth knows this because her posh Midtown office overlooks the temporary ice-skating rink that’s been set up on 20th Street between J and K streets. In fact, the rink opened for business last Friday and immediately began blaring Christmas music, a syrupy racket your Ruthness will be putting up with between the hours of 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. until SN&R moves to its new building on Del Paso Boulevard next month. Auntie has nothing against Christmas music per se, but it seems to her that inflicting it on innocent people who may or may not be Christians must be a form of noise pollution.

Auntie was once a figure skater with Olympic ambitions, until an ill-advised locker-room romp with all the members of her high school’s hockey team. She’d like nothing more than to pirouette on Good Day Sacramento host Mark S. Allen’s stretched-tighter-than-a-drum face, which appears on the Channel 31 advertisement buried beneath the sheet of ice outside her window. Other than alleged noise pollution, she has been assured the ice-skating rink is safe and green, with nothing but chilled saltwater running through the refrigeration unit and the tubes that keep the sheet of ice frozen. That’s a good thing—it could have been antifreeze.

SN&R’s move to Del Paso has put a crimp in Auntie’s transportation scheme. The move will double her commute to 5 miles, but fortunately, the light-rail line runs directly from the front door of her house to the front door of the new building. Pretty cool, until Auntie found out how much RT has raised its ticket prices in the last year. It costs $5 for a two-way trip these days, and $100 for a monthly pass. At that price, RT simply can’t compete with the Ruthmobile, which gets 45 miles per gallon. It’ll cost her just 67 cents per day to drive both ways, or $20 per month. Rumor has it that SN&R employees may be eligible for discount passes. That would be nice, but Auntie wishes they’d lower the price for everyone.