The City Council of Los Angeles voted Tuesday to rename Rodeo Road — not to be confused with the more famous and posh Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills — after former President Barack Obama.
The new “Obama Boulevard” is a street about four miles long in west Los Angeles that begins in Baldwin Hills and winds east through Crenshaw before merging with Exposition Boulevard just short of the Expo/Western station on the L.A. Metro Expo line.
Ironically, perhaps, given Obama’s antipathy to fossil fuels, the street runs just north of the Inglewood Oil Field, where dozens of pumpjacks bob up and down as they extract oil from beneath the city.
Mayor Eric Garcetti, who is openly considering a presidential run in 2020, proudly announced on Twitter that “Angelenos and visitors will forever be reminded of the legacy” of President Obama when driving along the road — where traffic can be heavy.
L.A. City Council president Herb Wesson noted that “Obama held a campaign rally at Rancho Cienega Park on Rodeo Road when running for president and that the area already has streets named after presidents, such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson,” according to the Los Angeles Times. The vote was held on the ten-year anniversary of the date in 2008 when Obama became the first African-American nominee for president from either major party.
It is not the first time a Los Angeles thoroughfare has been named after Obama. Last year, the California State Legislature voted to rename 134 Freeway in Los Angeles County as the President Barack H. Obama Highway. It runs near the Ronald Reagan Freeway.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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