Just in time to ruin our commentary on the issue, Blogtown PDX is reporting that Portland City Commissioners Leonard and Adams are stepping in to save the day (to be clear, it looks like Adams is playing Robin to Leonard's Batman on this one) on the big debacle over renaming Interstate.

From the extremely delicious article on Blogtown:

My immediate thought is that there will be pushback from the Chávez committee, which has understandably dug in its heels and has explicitly said they refuse to compromise on Interstate. To that end, Adams will be speaking with the Chávez committee today. (And, Leonard points out, the committee has already won, as their original goal was to rename a street in Portland for Chávez. As to which street it is, ultimately “it’s not their decision to make.”)

That's pretty awesome. "It's not their decision to make." Don't take no guff, Randy! Thatta boy!

There are a lot of great choice quotes in the Blogtown article. Go read it. The comments are also interesting.

Some other options mentioned for streets to be renamed that have been thrown up are Vista, in Southwest, and 82nd Ave. Vista would be great simply because it would be in an affluent (and white) part of town and is also a rather important street. It would be going all the way. 82nd, on the other hand, is kind of the opposite, though it is still a major street. 82nd is already dual-named though. The other name for it? Avenue of the Roses. I know, I laughed too.

Speaking of which, I'm still not sure why they're not going to dual-name a street. Or maybe they will.

Regardless, I still don't think this is nearly enough, and I personally encourage the City Council to take more drastic steps - make the renaming of a street one part in a larger package addressing these problems.

I can say though, it's nice to feel good about your City Council - this is something that has been happening less and less lately.