Group Hopes to Rename Street After Douglas Adams 223
interstellar_donkey writes "Despite the recent brouhaha over the renaming of 4th Ave after César Chávez, a Portland group is pushing to rename a local street after the late writer Douglas Adams. The street? Why, 42nd Ave, of course. According to their website, the renaming will reflect Portlanders' commitment to the arts, respect for the environment, desire to provide technological access to all, their passion to further education to all people, and most importantly remind Portlanders DON'T PANIC. This appears to be a serious movement, with preliminary paperwork already in the works."
Holy Crap! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Respect for the environment? (Score:5, Interesting)
Adams was pretty famous for his environmental activism, in particular campaigning on behalf of endangered species. There's more info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Adams#Environmental_activism [wikipedia.org]
The point they're trying to make is that by renaming the street in his honour, they are both showing respect to the man and what he stood for.
Re:I Am Against This... (Score:5, Interesting)
The metropolis of London has no numbered streets, no grid system and numerous name conflicts - the number of 'High Streets' is - if I remember correctly - in excess of 50 and we Brits manage fine. And how can you live in a town which hasn't, at some point in its history, featured a 'Gropecunt Lane'.
In the spirit of "keep Portland Weird" (Score:4, Interesting)
Why do hippies move to Portland? (Score:5, Interesting)
Question: Why do hippies move to Portland? Answer: Because there are no jobs.
The world's smallest park [roadsideamerica.com] is here, and the world's largest bookstore [powells.com].
The spirit of Douglas Adams lives on in the body of Linus Torvalds [wikipedia.org], who lives in Portland, creating artistic chaos for commercial operating systems. Douglas Adams loved technical gizmos [wikipedia.org]. "Douglas was a keen technologist, writing about such inventions as e-mail and Usenet before they became widely popular, or even widely known." Linus Torvalds makes technical gizmos happen.
Re:42 (Score:2, Interesting)