Green Hornet

I'm on sort of a streetcar kick this afternoon I guess (maybe I'm wishing I'm there and not here). I agree with one of the comments on the video, they need to advertise it a little more.

If you live in Chicago and you want to ride a Green Hornet streetcar, you have three choices: Go 70 miles to the Illinois Railway Museum, where the only survivor of a Green Hornet fleet that once numbered 600-plus trundles around a short loop. You can go 2,000 miles to San Francisco and ride the F Market line, whose fleet of antique streetcars includes one painted to look like a Green Hornet.

Or, you can take the UP North Line Metra train 90 miles north to Kenosha, where a fleet of five PCC streetcars, including this replica Green Hornet, awaits you. On a warm, beautiful summer day, with the windows open and the Lake Michigan breeze kissing your face, there's no better ride.

And, it's wheelchair accessible! How much better could it get?

The best 75 cents I've spent

The Kenosha Streetcar is very unpopular among certain segments of the Kenosha population, but articles like this support my thinking that it makes Kenosha a destination. I only wish maybe he had spent a little more among local businesses, but at least he had a very positive view of the city.

The best 75 cents I've spent
By Bobby Tanzilo RSS Feed
Managing Editor
Published April 7, 2008 at 11:02 a.m.

OK, I'm not including the cost of gas or the coin I dropped at Tenuta's grocery store, but a trip to see the dinosaur eggs exhibit at the Kenosha Public Museum and ride the streetcar loop cost me a total of 75 cents for three people.

Considering my son loved the ride, enjoyed seeing not one, but two lighthouses and also enjoyed uncovering dinosaur eggs with little paintbrushes in the museum, it's the best 75 cents I've spent in a long time.

The Kenosha Public Museum is pretty small, but in a lovely building, with interesting natural history exhibits and a collection of cool dioramas of ancient Greek and Renaissance Italian artists' studios. It's also got a great view of the lake, has free parking and free admission. And the streetcar stops practically at the front door.

The vintage streetcar loops downtown Kenosha, so a single ride around the circle doesn't last very long, but no one says you've got to get off after one loop. The driver is friendly, the bell clangs to the delight of children and it's a good way to see Kenosha's nice city center. And it costs 25 cents per person. (And I'm not even sure I needed to pay for the little one. I didn't ask, just tossed in three quarters.)

Like great American small towns, Kenosha has a town square with a fountain that's surrounded by the court house, the post office and other municipal buildings. But, these days, it looks like Kenoshans are focused more on the lake -- where there is a lot of residential development and a new Civil War museum opening soon -- than the old town square.

There's also a museum dedicated to dinosaurs and run by the UW-Parkside paleontology department, but we didn't get there this time. Mysteriously, even though it appears to be aimed at kids, that museum doesn't open until noon, even on weekends, which means we've got to return another time.