[NJD]

I love historic names... not the ones named to honor people, but the tradtional historic names... I like Front Avenue, it is a rich historical name for the actual city's 'front' during Portland's centralized shipping days. I like Interstate, Capitol Highway, Main Street, Union and Grand Avenues for they each hold a part of Portland's history. Some call them just bland names, but that is not why people named them that in the first place; there is reason to their naming. Why does Portland, along with every single medium sized city in America, rename streets for noteworthy figures from other places. In my travels abroad cities with direct connections to the figures name streets and squares after them. This makes common sense, but no, there are 100's of MLK's all across America making the name less meaningful. No one stands up for these renamings because they fear they will appear racist. Now, we are forced to name something after Chavez because little white Portland could never be racist, could we? Bah, Naito has more of a right to be named after a street because he did stuff here, but I still would prefer Front Avenue. If we name 4th, we might as well rename all the numbered avenues with labor leaders, minority leaders, activists and the like... who started this whole mess, and how did we get conned into accepting it?