The city’s been going round in circles for years, so it’s only fitting that it’s got a Great Wheel to commemorate that civic trait. But what a wheel of fortune it is. Soaring 175 feet above Pier 57, the 280,300-pound Wheel, which opened June 29, 2012, has magically reshaped our skyline in ways incomparable—unless you consider what the Tacoma Dome has done for the City of Destiny (kidding). Sometime this month, the one-millionth rider will plunk down $13, hop aboard one of its 42 fully enclosed gondolas, and take that 12-minute ride out over Elliott Bay and up into the stars. And like the wheels on the bus, it goes round and round.