Squidfry 11.17.16: Name Game…

NAME GAME… Squid got an email recently announcing that, in a new neighborhood in Marina called Sea Haven, homes would be for sale in early 2017. Sea Haven? Squid’s never heard of it. But Squid read a little further, and learned it was formerly known as Marina Heights, a housing development approved by Marina in 2003.

It’s just like The Dunes development in Marina, which was approved with the name University Villages. Point being, it doesn’t matter what a city wants a development to be named, it’s the developer who ultimately decides.

Seaside City Council, however, in its Nov. 10 meeting, renamed the mega-development long known as Monterey Downs, changing it to “Monument Village.” City Manager Craig Malin calls it “placemaking,” and says the new name will replace Downs on the city’s paperwork.

It would also replace Downs on a referendum about the project. Squid sees what you did there.

SHADES OF BEIGE… Speaking of “placemaking” techniques, Squid has long been an observer of the city of Monterey’s limited color palette. Namely, beige – there’s even a shade called “Monterey beige.” (At least it’s not “Seaside Beige,” which could’ve generated a similarly contentious renaming process to the one Seaside City Council just went through.)

The latest casualty of Monterey’s beige-making is the wall of the Dali17 museum above the tunnel. The museum’s gone through name changes of its own: Before it was devoted to surrealism, it was the Museum of Monterey, and before that the Monterey Maritime and History Museum. Back in 2011, the Monterey History and Art Association commissioned “The Wave” from L.A. artist Andre Miripolsky, part of a $80,000 contract. The other day, the mural was covered over with, you guessed it, beige.

SHELTER SKELTER… Squid’s evening oozings along the Rec Trail take a different tone when it’s dark by 5pm. It also takes a different tone for those who live outside: longer and colder nights with damp air leave blankets and sleeping bags soaked and chilled by morning.

Squid would open up Squid’s lair, but it’s not really hospitable for warm-blooded creatures. Squid has an excuse, but so does everyone: The homeless need services… but not in my neighborhood, Squid often hears.

The city is required by the state to zone an area for a homeless shelter, to the chagrin of NIMBYs. A recent proposal to zone the North Fremont area to allow a shelter was shouted down by neighbors and tabled by officials. City Manager Mike McCarthy quipped that it might be easiest to just zone the whole city for a homeless shelter.

Squid wonders how the NIMBYs will react to that idea: Whose backyard is it, anyway?