Arguello Boulevard used to be called 1st Avenue, back in the day. (That makes sense since it’s right next to 2nd Avenue.) The story of how it got its name changed to honor José Darío Argüello a century ago can be found in the SF History Encyclopedia.
Check it, there was an official San Francisco street renaming commission with a sweeping proposal:
“The scheme called for First Avenue to become Arguello, Second Avenue to become Borcia, Third Avenue to become Coronado, continuing for all 26 letters of the alphabet. Starting with Twenty-seventh Avenue, the streets would be designated by male or female saints, starting with San Antonio and ending with Santa Ynez at Forty-Seventh Avenue. Unable to find Spanish saints with names beginning with K, Q, W, X or Z, they chose first Alcatraz, then Ayala for Forty-eighth Avenue and La Playa for Forty-ninth Avenue.”
See? So when you talk about your favorite new restaurant on the 200-block of Clement, just tell your friends the joint is between Borcia and Coronado – they’ll love it.
This cartoon from the ‘Xam certainly is irreverent, borderline snarky:
And The Embarcadero used to be called East Street?
“Lost! Lost in barbarous Mexico”
But the renaming scheme ran into a little blowback from racist NIMBY landed gentry residents and insular neighborhood associations, much as it would today.
“The neighborhood newspaper, The Richmond Banner, editorialized on November 19: “If the wishes of the twelve of our “patriotic” supervisors are carried out, our Sunset and Richmond districts will soon be known as the Spanish Town of San Francisco, and ‘The Spanish will then have taken San Francisco’ notwithstanding Dewey’s victory at Manila Bay several years ago.” The editorial contrasted the twelve who voted for the name changes against the five “true Americans” who resisted the proposal to “Spaniardize” the districts. “The people of Sunset and Richmond are fully aroused and will never submit to the insult and injustice heaped upon them by the majority of the Board of Supervisors.” In closing, the editor pledged, “Sunset and Richmond districts will stand together and fight this miserable surrender of American names to a finish.”
O.K. then.
But, as you probably already know, everything got worked out in a Grand Compromise:
“Bowing to the pressure, the Commission agreed that the avenues could remain unchanged except for First Avenue and Forty-ninth Avenueand the alphabetical cross-streets would be the only other western district streets to be renamed, except for the Geary Street extension. The name of Point Lobos was removed from most of the Richmond, but would be given to the curving road that extended from Fortieth Avenue to the Cliff House.”
And here’s the conclusion:
“The street naming of 1909 started with the noblest of motives. It soon took on the atmosphere of a farcical comic opera. The outraged citizenry made exaggerated claims rife with bombastic racism, nationalism and religious partisanship.”
Same As It Ever Was…
Occupy Oakland Update: Google Maps Now Shows Oakland’s Frank Ogawa Plaza as “Oscar Grant Plaza”
Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011Editor Jon Brooks of News Fix, “KQED’s bay area news blog,” has this today:
“So our morning anchor, Joshua Johnson, was doing a story on the Clorox earnings report, and in the process of finding exactly where their headquarters is located, came upon this:
Click to expand
Try it yourself – type ”Oscar Grant” into Google Maps:
Oscar Grant Plaza, of course, is the name that the Occupy Wall Street people have given to their tent city location.
KQED has made a call down to Mountain View saying, “Hey Google, what’s the deal?”
We’ll see.
(I’m sure no one intended any dis for Frank H Ogawa.)
Great catch, Joshua Johnson.
Great post, Jon Brooks.
[UPDATE: Get more details right here. "NAParish" took steps to change the name back to Frank Ogawa Plaza at 8:44 AM this morning but that action is still pending. (It's like a Wikipedia editing war. Remember those, back in the aughts? Just like with that tiresome "Violet Blue" woman - I guess you can do the same thing on Google Maps. See below.)
[UPDATE II: Oh no, now, per Google Maps, Frank Ogawa Plaza has two names. See?
I imagine that "Oscar Grant Plaza" won't be on Google Maps at all in the very near future.]
[UPDATE III: And now it's back to normal, back to plain old Frank H Ogawa Plaza. "Google Reviewer Sanjeevi" has, once again, put the big DENIED stamp on the idea of any political name-changing. Google's "Local Names" feature is being abused no longer. Case Closed.]
Reason: The edit could be misleading
This is not an “official” name, and this edit should have been denied. See commentary on previous edits.”
Reason: The edit could be misleading
There are two problems with this edit. One is that Google doesn’t seem to allow this type of political commentary by “renaming” an official feature. The name that some Occupy Oakland protesters are using doesn’t fit into any of the categories Google allows (Local is for the name in the local language, like using La Tour Eiffel as the “local” name for what speakers of English commonly call the Eiffel Tower). See http://goo.gl/gCf78 for the types of names that are allowed. The other problem is that the official name is Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, not just Frank Ogawa Plaza — and the official name should not have been removed a few edits back.”
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