Neighborhood Renaming and the Gentrification Wars: Whatever Happened to the Ghetto Peacemaker?

My friend Steven and I had a fantasy basketball team called the DC Ghetto Peacemakers. This was started a few years ago, and it was lots of fun. I didn't actually care all that much about the trading and the points and the winning; what I liked about it was that he and I made up a Head Coach/General Manager who bordered on insane and was named, simply "#1". He had a propensity for uttering famous movie lines like, "Get your hand out my pocket!" and traveling with a bonsai plant named Henry, whom he deemed his spiritual adviser. He regularly threatened the other teams' players and coaches, and would make outrageous predictions about the future of the team.

We got the Ghetto Peacemaker moniker from the time that I put down a slap fight in the nail salon I used to frequent on 14th Street. It was in the now demolished Nehemiah Shopping Center. It was a place where I used to love to people watch-- the intersection of cultures was kind of cool there and I got to know the staff fairly early on because my office was located in the same strip mall. The fight was between two young ladies who couldn't have been out of their teens yet. Sadly, it was over a guy, and I leapt up to stop the physicality of the altercation because I a) don't condone fighting, b) don't condone fighting over a guy and c) was horrified by the looks of horror on the faces of the mostly Vietnamese (and mostly inter-related) staff at the salon. In telling my friend Steven about the episode I said, "I guess I'm just a ghetto peacemaker." We both laughed hard about it.

Cut to at least 6 or 7 years later, and I'm not laughing anymore. It seems like interaction in the public domain of my neighborhood has become a seriously unpleasant and unfun thing to do ... where previously it was great to live at the cultural crossroads for the city, it now seems that every movement and decision in Columbia Heights is as laborious and time consuming as turning a ship. With no wind. In the middle of an ocean.

The recent attempt to put up "Tivoli North" signs  from Monroe to Shepherd on 14th seems like a naked power grab to me; there isn't anything useful or helpful about it.  The argument from the newly minted "Tivoli North Business Association" is that rebranding will help the businesses struggling in the corridor.   This makes no sense to me-- mere blocks away we have the first revitalized/regenerated neighborhood commercial corridor.  Business is booming, even in a recession. There is big box retail, there is small box retail, there are tons more people living in the neighborhood, which is what actually provides the impetus for retail to return to the once-dead corridor.  Why would a struggling business want to identify itself as being in a different neighborhood-- one that no one has heard of?

Stepping away from the logical argument and getting to my emotional one-- since when is the area from Monroe to Shepherd "no man's land"?   Columbia Heights is Florida to Spring Road, 16th Street to 11th, but people kindly let the boundary go to Sherman (which is where Pleasant Plains Begins.  Columbia Heights does NOT go to Georgia Avenue.  It just doesn't).  The next neighborhood up is Petworth, folks.  There's a Metro stop, and everything.  

I keep seeing posts from people, on other websites where this is being discussed, and they seem to be genuinely confused about the place name.  It doesn't make any sense to me.  What's with the mania for renaming place?  It feels a lot like Columbus' discovery of the new world.  We were already here, man, what you mean you're renaming the joint?!