back to the future

When I was an aspiring urban planner but didn't really know it, I was in a university cluster course called City Life. At just 17 years old, I was a freshman in college (okay, only for a month...and then I was 18) and City Life was only offered to freshmen. And since we were young freshmen, we had to stay in City Life cluster courses with the same group of kids from Fall to Spring terms. My classmates and I explored international urban areas without ever leaving Oregon, and one of our last foo-foo assignments was to create a city somewhere in the world.

I can't remember what I did for my project. Seriously.

But I can remember another couple of students working together on the same project. Can I remember their names? No. But two guys worked on this project together. They loved computers. They were goth. One of them had surgically implanted fangs. He wore a cape, too. But they were really, really nice kids. Funny. Smart. And apparently genius clairvoyants.

Their futuristic city was The Dalles, Oregon. There is one thing you need to know about The Dalles: it is in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Well, it is right on the Columbia River (the river that divides Oregon from Washington) and about 80 miles east of Portland. Geologically, it's a straw-colored place. Socially and culturally, it's a zero. But these guys saw something about The Dalles that made their project presentation the project. They made The Dalles equal to or greater than San Francisco. In reality, we joked this would never happen. It could never happen. It should never happen. That was how we all felt about The Dalles.

And so I filed away their project in my mind like this:
Gothic kids
Do they still dress like that?
Fangs
Ouch!
City Life
The Dalles
Sir Master Bates (don't ask)

And I never thought about it again.
Until I read this tonight.

Holy crap!