What's in a name?

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

True, but I just didn't think "Martin Luther King Jr. Way Kids" had the same ring to it.

I am often asked by my customers "Why is it (the store) called GROVE STREET kids?" The short answer is that the street our store is on, now Martin Luther King Jr. Way, used to be named "Grove Street." Some history:

"Just before his assassination, King had proposed an economic bill of rights for the disadvantaged. Then, as now, the country was engaged in an expensive foreign war, spending money that King felt should be spent on social programs.

During the 1980s, activists and community leaders were concerned whether the civil rights gains achieved two decades earlier would last. Renaming streets after King helped to honor his legacy.

Berkeley changed Grove Street to King in 1984, and Oakland followed suit months later. The street starts at Oakland's windswept waterfront and ends in a few up-scale shops in residential North Berkeley."

For me, the naming of our store was a little more personal but, as to not bore you with all the anecdotes of my childhood, I will just briefly tell you that as a kid in Berkeley, I have fond memories of walking down Rose Street after school to the corner market aptly named "Rose and Grove Market." It's still there, by the way, across the street from the bustling FAT APPLE's Restaurant. Down the street is The Grove Antiques and several other "Grove" Businesses still remain on the 6 mile long boulevard. Even the construction site where the new Trader Joe's is being built at MLK and University has "The Old Grove" written on their signage.

Certainly I mean no disrespect to the great man who was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. But I am a nostalgic, romantic, sentimental sort of a girl, and it only seemed apropos to name the store after the street that I remembered from when I was a kid.