After a few weeks of writing about our neighborhood, I’m beginning to rethink the name I gave this blog: it is a bit of a mouthful, is hard to remember, uses grammatically incorrect French (I should have used “la” instead of “le”), and the use of “slum” connotes bad things about our neighborhood while I generally focus on the positive. So now I need your help: you’ve read my posts; what do you think this blog should be named? Here are my top picks presently, and I would love your input. I’ll leave voting open until next Monday (12/18), and I will announce the new blog name (or the "no change in name" status) next week. If a suggestion in the comments is particularly intriguing, I will amend the poll to include it.
Vote and/or comment to let me know what you think (and please vote only once. . .)!
FYI, I picked the “slum historique” moniker mostly because I found it humorous. The neighborhood is not a slum, but there are aspects of it that people rightfully point to as slum-like. I liked the idea of embracing everything that is Shaw—-even the slum-ish stuff—-and celebrating it for what it is and what it could be. But, as stated above and by a few comments I've received, maybe that wasn't a great idea. What do you think?
6 comments:
"slum like" = astro-turfed front porches/steps, concreted over front yards, thugs loitering in front of the grocery store, and shiloh's boarded up annexes.
What about Shaw Nouveau? You can hold onto your French fetish, and it communicates your tagline: "A New Take on Shaw".
Or, keep the first half of the neighborhood's iconic mural: "Bienvenue a Shaw". Good or bad, most Shaw rezs will get the reference.
I've amended the poll to include Shaw Nouveau as an option. I like the sound of that!
Although Shaw has been home to diverse ethnic groups throughout its history I can't think of anything particularly frenchy that comes to mind. Shaw is an old family name of mine and I believe its etymology is Old English. "Nueva York" has worked for NY because of the latin influence and popularity with spanish jet setters.
That said, I like the blog title the way it is. It's fun. It objectifies and pokes fun at the term "le slum" so folks don't take things too seriously. The tension between the words "le slum" and the uppity Francophilia of "historique" cancel each other out.
But call it whatever you like. A good blog by any other name is still good.
Until Shiloh, Sendar and others turn their rotting vacant properties into housing, the tagging is painted over, the thugs and murderers (killing at Ninth and French this weekend) leave with the drugged-out vagrants (found two of their feces-soiled underpants in gutter raking leaves, and have a look at the piles of vagrant-deposited bags behind the abandoned pizza place), we remain a handy Slum Theme Park for reporters eager to do stories on the ghetto, a font of funding for worthless church "programs", and a model of bad city governance. Slum Historique we should stay until it gets better.
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