An Idea Whose Time Has Come:

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It is only a matter of time before the San Fernando Valley gets a final divorce from lumbering L A. - and a good thing too.

But there is one problem, and it is one brought up constantly by opponents of secession: what to name the new city.

San Fernando is already taken and so is the name of the Valley's most famous Boulevard, Ventura. San Fernando Valley City is cumbersome and confusing. C'mon Guys - you wouldn't call it Van Nuys, would you? Van Nuys is, besides unappealing, flat - I mean the sound, not the town (although that is rather flat as well.)

Reseda is seedy - even the Northridge earthquake, the epicenter of which was actually in Reseda, wanted nothing to do with Reseda, and is everywhere called the Northridge earthquake. And as for Northridge, this name deserves to be grouped with Sherman Oaks, Chatsworth and Devonshire as inappropriate developer-driven anglophile brandnames, designed to sell desert property as if it were in Merry Olde Englande. Such crass pretension should not be rewarded, even if such names were not laughable in our hot dry climate.

Pacoima is not a pretty word - or a pretty town - and one of the worst examples of what happens when you're a low income suburb of a city that Doesn't Give a Damn - and Arleta is what you call yourself when you're too colorless for Pacoima. North Hollywood's glamor is strictly borrowed, and Valley City sounds like the name of some city in a high school exposé or 50's teenage exploitation film with Mamie Van Doren. It's also extremely "whitebread," and would give credence to those critics who, ignoring the Valley's large minority population, insist that any attempt to detach oneself from corrupt and elitist L A is racist, racist, racist.

The Valley has been regarded as an upstart, born-yesterday sort of place, with too much money and no regard at all for those so unfortunate as to live in the big city over the hill. We need a name to counteract the stereotype. Something with history, poetry, heritage!

Now for some proposals. Sun Valley's original name, Roscoe - in local legend named for an outlaw - is more interesting - it is unique; it has local history and local color. In the 50s, my parents bitterly opposed the adoption of the blander "Sun Valley" (skiing anyone?) - and the sad deterioration of a once lively small town into a sullen crosroad proves their wisdom.

Tarzana is another good choice. It has a nice sound, some history and a tie to what may be the Valley's only real literary giant. Or ape man.

Winnetka, an Indian name, has a nice sound to it, but I am convinced that the best choice is TUJUNGA!

Tujunga: for the two magnificent canyons - Big Tujunga and Little Tujunga - and the waters that flow through them. Tujunga for the Indian Tribe of that name that once lived here. Tujunga for the street that already runs right through the Valley, and Tujunga, for the once independent little town that is one of the oldest communities in the area.

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