The Lockerbie Syndrome

Lockerbie. Dunblane. Columbine. All of these places need to freakin' goddamn CHANGE THEIR NAMES. Because they're condemned.

Where else is afflicted with inescapable tragedy? What other fairly mundane towns will be synonymous with woe for evermore? And what can they do about it?

http://www.greenwich-guide.org.uk/assets/valley.jpg

Jonestown
Cambridge

Dammmn son I thought you were testing Robert Ludlum pastiche titles. xpost

ha NV, actually 'Hillsborough' is a good answer, also Cambridge?!

cambridge is pushing it, u might as well say oklahoma imo

LJ - we'll form a band together called 9/11 Never Forget!

Chornobyl

But maybe we shouldn't try to airbrush tragedy away?

Aberfan

New York

My friend just got a job in Dunblane and she's very pleased about it.

I'm not sure the OP's thesis stands either.

Seriously, those guys from New York need a rebranding real quick. How about "iCity brought to you by VitaminWater"?

Waco, Texas
Hiroshima

don't get me started on Vitamin Water!

Like changing the name of Dunblane to Happy Sunshine Smartieville wd not really be a good thing to do either? Also all places visited by "tragedy" over time?

Possibly apocryphal story. The wee town in which I grew up had a notorious 19th century poisoner called Dr Palmer. His trial and conviction brought the town so much notoriety that the council petitioned the Prime Minister to change the town's name. The PM said this was cool as long as they named it after him. Seeing as the incumbent was Lord Palmerston, the council decided to pass.

i lived in cambridge for 3 years and i do not recall waking up every morning and bemoaning the manifold horrors that the city had seen OH WAIT HANG ON

i think if we dressed as the twin towers and ended our first and only gig by self-immolating, that is the only way that band wd work

NV that is a good point, but my issue is with the nomenclature of the tragedies, and those of the towns, and how if things were a little more specific you wouldn't have entire places airbrushed WITH tragedy.

aberfan otm

andy murray is waging a one-man crusade to rehabilitate dunblane, this is true

hiroshima is kinda a monument for world peace these days isn't it? i'd say hiroshima should be proud of itself for regenerating, and should trumpet its history. it's different in cases of mass wartime destruction cf dresden, coventry

i think if we dressed as the twin towers and ended our first and only gig by self-immolating, that is the only way that band wd work

The gig would have to be at The Station in Rhode Island.

like, i'm not SERIOUSLY saying these towns should change their names! i do think the tragedies should have different stock names though. 'pan am flight whatever' rather than 'lockerbie'. 'name of killer(s)' rather than 'town where school massacre happened'

and I think that complex music in non-traditional time signatures should be called that, rather than "mathy" - but "mathy" is a lot more convenient to say, even though it has connotations that annoy me.

This is one of those Canutian missions to make people use other names than the names millions of people already use for a thing, isn't it?

I quite like history and tragedy and horror inscribing themselves onto places, memento mori and all that.

Lockerbie's the one that rankles most. In its case, the cause of the tragedy had naff-all to do with the town! It was a truly unwanted deus ex machina. Poor town! If a meteorite hits Goole tomorrow, christ.

People might even start saying nice things about it! ;-)

You're just trying to cheer me up because it's back to work tomorrow.

Does this syndrome apply to say Betjeman giving Slough an immediate and indelible connection in my brain btw?

nah, that was pretty lulz by betjeman

Hungerford

For alls I know Jordan, Minnesota is a pleasant little town.

snowtown

port arthur

canberra

(j/k)

relax they kicked trayce outta canberra

They were gonna rename Snowtown as 'Rosetown' before the locals had done up a few thousand of those "You'll have a barrel of a time in Snowtown" fridge magnets.

lool

San Ysidro

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wineville_Chicken_Coop_Murders

"Wineville changed its name to Mira Loma on November 1, 1930, due in large part to the negative publicity surrounding the murders."

"see dirt"

is that what mira loma means

no it means hill

relax they kicked trayce outta canberra

Lolll oi!

Port Arthur is a weird one though because it already had a taint of the macabre before the massacres, being a prison colony.

Love Canal

(aka Black Creek Village)

Windscale.

amityville

salem will forever be stigmatised by 'days of our lives' being set there.

Ha I was gonna mention Salem before but I don't know how many people are actively traumatized in 2010 by the comedy savagery of their distant ancestors. Can't imagine most murder towns being thought of primarily as "OMG TOWN OF DEATH" in 100 years or so.

hastings had a bad rap for a bit

kent state

still better than using up an entire calendar date imo, there's only 365 odd of those

Yeah btbf 9th of November is often Remembrance Sunday so you get a twofer.

chernobyl, no one wants to go there anymore

I mentioned it upthread in Ukrainian spelling.

Though the city today is mostly uninhabited, a small number of inhabitants reside in houses marked with signs stating that the "Owner of this house lives here". Workers on watch and administrative personnel of the Zone of Alienation are stationed in the city on a long term basis.

haha, no wonder it didnt' show up when i tried ctrl+f

silent hill ftw

Seriously, those guys from New York need a rebranding real quick. How about "iCity brought to you by VitaminWater"?

― striker, currently playing for Italian Serie A club Milan (King Boy Pato), Sunday, January 3, 2010 6:33 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

thisd be an excellent improvement most def - conversely we could go w/the original name new amsterdam and legalize drugs and paid fucking

dachau, 3 mile island

Hungerford

Seriously, those guys from New York need a rebranding real quick. How about "iCity brought to you by VitaminWater"?

― striker, currently playing for Italian Serie A club Milan (King Boy Pato), Sunday, January 3, 2010 6:33 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

thisd be an excellent improvement most def - conversely we could go w/the original name new amsterdam and legalize drugs and paid fucking

― ice cr?m, Monday, January 4, 2010 10:01 AM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i recommend you guys take this to the famous I LOVE CRICKET: THE CHINATOWN OF ILX: THE CHINATOWN OF ILX ten point plan for improving and rebranding new york city

jho showing worrying signs of being bill magill's sockpuppet

just sayin a new era of permissiveness might help new yorks overall brand

More like Manho'tann.

I have to admit this is the first I've heard of Lockerbie. I think this is understandable, as it happened in another continent when I was five, and not a particularly worldly child. (Por ejemplo, I remember thinking that the Berlin Wall's fall was at the hands of a rock-instrument-wielding Alvin & the Chipmunks.)

Here's a local city's rebranding from the 1950s.

I remember thinking that the Berlin Wall's fall was at the hands of a rock-instrument-wielding Alvin & the Chipmunks.)

awesome

A friend of mine moved to Selby and I think she got annoyed when I said "oh yeah, where the train crash was".

lol hatfield and southall are best known for big train crashes

I like the End of Decade list.

germany
poland
san diego (still rattled by heaven's gate cult)

looooool NV