Wednesday, March 5, 2008

A restaurant & the now "Quicken Loans Arena"

When I was growing up, there were a few places where this occurred. In the town where I lived in and still do, Westlake, Ohio, a few of the restaurants had changed their names. For example, Spaghetti Warehouse took the place of a new restaurant Viva Barcelona and that was just because there was a switch in managerial and ownership. I would still call this restaurant by the other name, because the building looked the exact same and the letters of the new name were identical. A few years later, I ended up working at this restaurant for about three years and the inside of the place had not changed in any way, shape or form. They did expand the back somewhat and added a closed in patio, which was large enough to fit approximately 100-200 people.
The place itself did not change drastically, like I said about the name had the same exact letters just placed differently, obviously and there was an expansion of a patio behind the building, but was closed in and surrounded by another building and trees. This provided for privacy so that people could not just randomly walk in from another place to the patio. When this restaurant switched ownership, I would still call the building by the other restaurant name. I had not yet adjusted to the new name and realized that I had called this restaurant by its old name and so I continued to do so for a while. Once I started working there, I did change and call it by the new name, Viva Barcelona.
Another example of a place nearby where I live was the Gund Arena. Since I have lived in Ohio, which has been quite some time, the Gund Arena was where concerts took place and was the building that was home to the Cleveland Cavaliers, the NBA basketball team. This name was currently switched over to the Quicken Loans Arena and this had a huge effect on me. I went almost every year, quite a few times too to the now Quicken Loans Arena, but before the name was switched I would still call it the Gund Arena. My family was the exact same way; because we were not aware right away of the switch and so when it occurred we called it the Gund Arena. Having lived in Cleveland a while longer now, I call it the “Q,” instead of using the Quicken Loans Arena. Things like this such as changing names of a common place where many people gather can have a huge effect on the city itself. The people were always used to calling it what it used to be and then once the name changed it was harder for people to adjust to the new name. Name changing can affect many people and this is normally how it is with anything that changes names, even people changing names.

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