So, apparently there's a town near Buffalo, NY that's called Hamburg. I didn't know this. (Astute readers might mention at this point that there's also one in Germany. I wonder if the following has also happened to them.) It's been called Hamburg for a long time, since 1812. But now, according to the couple-of-weeks-old article I'm going to link to at the end of this little rant, A Particular Group Of People want that to change.
They're prepared to make the city an offer, too. They're going to offer $15,000. Or, stated more correctly, the equivalent of $15,000. To the city's schools. In non-meat patties. Which they seem to be under the impression that the students in the city's schools would enjoy eating. And all this, because they don't like the name. So, what would they prefer the city to be called, you ask? Veggieburg, of course! According to Joe Haptas, a spokesman for The Group, "the town's name conjures up visions of unhealthy patties of ground-up dead cows." Thankfully, Hamburg officially declined.
But, just when you thought you'd heard something incredibly odd, I'm going to tell you that something really incredibly odd happened several years ago.
Now, any of you who have traveled at all in upstate New York, particularly in the Hudson Valley, have noticed that a lot of place names there end in the word "kill." There's a perfectly logical explanation for this, too. It's Dutch for "stream." The area was settled by Dutch. See? It makes sense.
Well, the small Hudson Valley town of Fishkill received way back in 1996 a request, from the same Particular Group Of People, to change its name to Fishsave, because the original name "conjured up violent imagery of dead fish." I, on the other hand, feel the Particular Group should change its name to Pathetic Whiners.
So, who's responsible for all of this nonsense? Go on, take a guess. You're probably right. I'd just like someone to tell me where all of their vegetables magically appear from.
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