In a city known more for grunge bands, coffee, rain and Nordstrom’s, there emerges a new phenomenon that has the citizenry buzzing.

Yup, it’s potholes. All that rain – and this winter, a good dose of snow as well – has to go somewhere. Where there are cracks in the pavement, that includes in and under the asphalt, leading to a proliferation of potholes that required filling 91 percent more chuckholes in January 2011 than January of last year. Unbowed, the city launched a new pothole-repair tracking website to keep motorists informed on the progress.

The problems with pothole-riddled pavement began earlier in December, when MyNorthwest.com reported the city was doubling the number of pothole repair crews, from two to four. The website reported on December 23 that city spokesperson Rick Sheridan place the blame on two factors: excess rain and aging infrastructure.

The election of Rahm Emanuel to the mayor’s office in Chicago without a runoff – he garnered 55 percent of the vote in the February election, enough to save voters and the city the hassle and expense of a runoff election – is regarded as a minor miracle in this most political of cities. And that’s a good thing, because the cash-strapped metropolis, like so many others, can use the money for other things. Not the least of which is repairs to the Windy City’s infrastructure – including the potholes.

But my own Chicago miracle came a few weeks earlier, and it had everything to do a pothole. Specifically, a big, gaping, Volkswagen-jarring pothole on the Foster Street rise on Lake Shore Drive. I hit it twice, two days in a row, as I headed toward downtown in the southbound side of the famous parkway. So after the second hit, I did what I heard we could do: I called the non-emergency 3-1-1 city services line.

There are two ways to attack the pothole problem. One is to fix the potholes. The other is to drive a car that is tougher than any chuckhole that comes its way.

With current technology and resources, neither is 100% possible. Potholes are inevitable, even if there are smarter and better ways to build and maintain roads today. Come winter and spring, in almost every town in every climate, there will be potholes.

The New York City Department of Transportation and motorists on Staten Island, New York experienced last fall what has become a common problem in an increasingly wired world: A utility cut was made to a recently repaved stretch of road. The cut was filled with temporary-patch asphalt, but it was deteriorating rapidly just weeks later – and drivers were not happy.

This has happened countless times in recent years, as businesses and residential areas demand greater access to broadband cable. DOTs and utility companies try to coordinate schedules to the effect that paving is done last, after the various utility lines are laid. But it doesn’t always work out that way. Paving and utility companies work on separate timetables for unrelated reasons.

This pothole was recorded in front of a Bank of America in downtown Stamford, CT.