2oceans Vibe

People get pretty mixed up with Woodstock – with Victoria Road and Sir Lowry Road and all the rest. There’s the bit where the Biscuit Mill is and then there’s another bit where The Armoury is and Ogilvy and La Bottega bar. The suburb will always remain Woodstock but it is clear it needs to be chopped up into neighbourhoods – like any clever first-world city has done, to accommodate the little pockets and nodes of creativity and varying community vibes.

And so, after a successful 5,000 vote naming process for the bottom portion of Kloof Street (www.unionkloof.co.za) and the 6 before it (see names and their new websites popping up at www.nameyourhood.co.za) the time has come to name this part of Woodstock. The key to a good neighbourhood name is to understand the unique history of that area. That is, after-all, what has made it what it is today!

Check it out:

The area immediately to the east of the iconic Nelson Mandela Boulevard is one of Cape Town’s oldest neighbourhoods. The city’s oldest residents might even remember it as farmland.

Well, it needs you to come up with a name for it!

Its origins stretch back to the middle of the eighteenth century, when it was a small hamlet on Cape Town’s seafront known as Papendorp. Hood 7 has always had an authentic and vibrant energy, which can be partly attributed to the fact that it escaped the trauma of apartheid’s Group Areas Act and was always a racially mixed area.

These days it is a melting pot of trade and culture, with ramshackle residential and retail properties juxtaposed with slick n apartments and office blocks.

Pretty rad stuff right there! And while this area will always be a part of Woodstock, surely it needs it’s own special identity? Speak to the locals in that part of Woodstock and they agree – they were all there, at the launch party. Loving it!

That is where neighbourhoods come into action – something that we haven’t had time to name – although we’ve had the time for them to develop a unique identity.

Come on gang – do your thing for Cape Town!

Put forward a name for the area, with motivation, or support someone else’s at www.nameyourhood.co.za. You can also find out how everything works and also some examples of how famous world neighbourhoods (like TriBeCa in New York) got their names. It’s basically an incredibly awesome vibe!

www.nameyourhood.co.za