David Holt, aide to Kirk Humphreys, says the move is intended to promote Bricktown as a tourist destination. But is the proposal as well thought out as it could be?
Charlie Christian was a famous 1930s Deep Deuce jazz musician whose work inspired an annual festival that kept alive the memory of the once thriving black business district just north of Bricktown. So why not honor him with a street in the now revived Deep Deuce?
Holt responds Bricktown is more visible than Deep Deuce, and points out Christian attended the old Douglass High School, which was located on the current site of the AT&T Bricktown Ballpark.
All this started last week when the city council decided to rename a section of Byers Avenue so that the same stretch of road known as Lincoln Boulevard remains named that way as it goes south of Reno Avenue and over the Oklahoma River. The renaming left a stub of Byers Avenue that dead-ends at Reno Avenue, a block west of Lincoln, as an opportunity to be renamed in honor of Christian.
The same opportunity arose with an isolated two block section of Central Avenue between Main Street and Reno. The city proposal calls for the block to be renamed in honor of Vince Gill.
The final renaming also raises questions. An alley that runs between the Burlington Northern/Santa Fe railway tracks and Central Avenue currently has no name and Holt wants to rename it in honor of the Flaming Lips, whose lead singer, Wayne Coyne, still lives in Oklahoma City. The alley is littered with open dumpsters, and is poorly lit at night. Holt says the Grammy-winning group's management has given their blessing to the name change. But will fans visiting from around the globe see this alley as a tribute or an insult to the group?
Holt thinks the name change might inspire a clean-up and development along the alley.
Back in 1961, Grand Avenue was renamed Sheridan Avenue. The city council initially wanted to name the street Sheraton Avenue in honor of the (now demised) Biltmore Hotel being branded as a Sheraton, but rival hotel operators objected. So the council named it Sheridan instead, wiping out one of the few street names that dated back to the city's very first day of existence.
More recently, the city council renamed a section of Stiles Avenue adjoining the ballpark in favor of Joe Carter, an Oklahoma City native whose game-winning home run as a member of the Toronto Blue Jays ended the 1993 World Series against Philadelphia. Advocates of the new name talked an upcoming visit by the player and a statue that would be erected in his honor.
The statue never materialized and Carter never made a public visit to Bricktown. Visitors, meanwhile, show no confusion about the identity of Johnny Bench or Mickey Mantle, whose names adorn two other streets around the ballpark, but are sometimes clueless as to Carter's identity.
So what do you, the readers think? Email or call me with your ideas.
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