Le Mishmash

Had enough bad real-estate news lately, or can you take some more? My brother Michael forwarded a link to this post on Curbed LA, a real-estate blog, that features a new condominium development near the corner of Fairfax and Wilshire. (It's an intersection he and I happen to know well, and whose better days—when the midmarket May Company department store occupied one corner—are so far in the Wayback as to be almost mythical.) The building's name suggests the developers have either (a) a puckish sense of humor or (b) no clue. It's Le Melange.

Below the post, commenter #11 asks, "What does le melange mean anyway and what does it have to do with LA or fairfax?" Not a minute later, at #13, comes the answer:

melange
n 1: a motley assortment of things [syn: odds and ends,
oddments, melange, farrago, ragbag, mishmash,
mingle-mangle, hodgepodge, hotchpotch, gallimaufry,
omnium-gatherum]

LOL. I think they should re-name it. I vote for "Le Hodgepodge"

Given the character of the intersection, the woeful state of the housing market, and the subprime look of the interiors, the prices of the units--$730,000 to $960,000--seem out of touch, to put it mildly. Maybe Le Chutzpah would be more appropriate. With a tagline suggested by commenter #31:  "Charm-free units at sky-high prices!"

It helps to know that Fairfax is a mostly Jewish neighborhood (and to have mastered a little Yiddish) to appreciate comment #34: "Ladies and gentlemen, L.A.'s first schande-miniums!"¹ Ba-da-bing.

Read other posts about real-estate naming here, here, and here.

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¹ Schande: Yiddish for "shame."

Comments

[Orange]

I would absolutely buy into a place called Le Mingle-Mangle.