I've since come full circle and have embraced it again. In 2006 I wrote a blog post very similar to Logan's column asking if the word Funky was serving us well. Keep Leucadia Eclectic sounds too yuppie and Keep Leucadia Unique sounds wimpy so the KLF will continue. Yes, funky rhymes with junky which is a shame and some people associate the word funky with smell but in the context of Leucadia, funky means eclectic and groovy and offbeat and cool and non-corporate.
Most cities would kill for such marketing. To slow traffic, it might look to Bird Rock's roundabouts for inspiration.īLOG REBUTTAL: In my opinion Keep Leucadia Funky is a great town slogan. It needs new trees to replace its signature eucalyptus on Highway 101. More than more funk, Leucadia needs its house pride stoked. While funky is often used in a positive sense – as in casual, free, easy – I'd suggest that Leucadia shouldn't aspire to be funky (i.e., down to smelly earth) so much as authentic.Ī clean '55 Chevy, for example, is hardly funky. In the '50s, that earthy definition morphed into a style of blues music with a fashionable sexy swing. I'm advocating a moratorium on a word that means, in its first definition, moldy or smelly. Look, I'm also guilty of using the slang term as a label for dilapidated grandeur, the sort of hippie unpretension Californians love to Haight, so to speak.Ī quick database search shows I've used the word, especially to express affection for little Ponto, the tiny coastal hamlet north of Leucadia that's slated for the wrecking ball.ĭuring a Wednesday meeting to plan a new and improved “streetscape” for Leucadia, a consultant from Solana Beach and an Encinitas councilwoman both employed funky to evoke Leucadia's artistic soul. Union Tribune columnist Logan Jenkins has given our town motto, Keep Leucadia Funky a "brick" award and says we should ditch the word because in his mind "funky" equates something damp and smelly.Ī brick – the Junk the Funk award – to the aesthetic champions of Leucadia who can't seem to resist the adjective funky to define the Encinitas community's character.