It might have sounded like I was joking when I said naming it "Blunt Park" will turn it into a marijuana smoking hangout. I wasn't. That really will happen, at least at a very low but ongoing level. It will be treated as an inside joke among some of the younger crowd that the park will attract, just enough that every single event hosted there will reek of weed. It doesn't take much to stink up a large area, given that any nonsmoker can smell it in their own car with the windows rolled up when a smoker happens to drive by. There's going to be elevated maintenance costs from cleaning up after graffiti taggers affixing little marijuana leaf stickers to light poles and other fixtures, scribbles of '420' from sharpie markers, etc. Picture a future Cordish and Downtown Council trying to establish image, programming, branding, always with that unending juvenile noise in the background.
We should treat that outcome as the given, absolute certain result of naming it Blunt Park, and treat it as a bad joke ourselves. In doing so, help derail a bad naming idea if only by appealing to the ego of those involved. Roy wouldn't want a weed-smoking park as his legacy, and those hoping to curry favor by suggesting the name will hopefully stop when they realize the end result will be a tongue-in-cheek insult to the conservative values he represented in his political career. Find a more appropriate way to honor Roy at a future time.
