California For Sale – Naming Rights to Everything in Sight!
I watched my local city council meeting the other night and was dumbfounded by the suggestion of our city “thinkers” to begin selling naming rights to every public piece of land in sight. These guys are either nuts or geniuses in finding ways to fund those rising pension costs of retired city employees. The logic is that if a ball park can get big bucks for naming rights, why not a pier, a beach, a park, a building…why not the sun and the moon, as well?
Living in one of the first California beach cities (Huntington Beach) to sell vending rights on beaches and piers to Coca Cola, that money apparently didn’t last. Car dealers have supplied new trucks to our lifeguards for quite some time and Hurley paid for lifeguard shacks and shirts for the lifeguards to wear that say “Hurley”. Our city collects fees for cams that broadcast the beach and waves in Hollister shops as far away as New York City where they sell the “Cali” line of clothing. (Hollister is the clothing company that had the nerve to sue the city of Hollister, Calif. for selling t-shirts to locals and visitors with the town name on them.)
The sell-off of assets is not bringing in enough revenue, so our wise marketers want to amp up the program another notch, putting a list of physical, public entities out there to the highest bidders to see how much money they can collect to slap names on things. Is everything for sell in this meaningless, noisy world where you can’t just go to “the beach” or walk on “the pier”? The proposed concept could even rename already named parks, stripping honored and esteemed citizens’ names from plaques and selling out to the highest bidder.
Here are sponsors they may want to go after:
- Tampax or Charmin Huntington Beach Restrooms
- Depends Senior Center
- Jose Cuervo Main Street
- Amazon Public Library
- Hollister Huntington Beach Pier
- Sparkletts Pacific Ocean
- Huntington OxyContin Beach, Burger King City Beach, Burnt Bun Restaurants Beach (endless sponsor possibilities)
- Purina Dog Beach
- Progressive Car Insurance Public Parking Lot
