It's official: Rodeo is being renamed Obama.
OK, it's not the world famous Rodeo Drive of Beverly Hills, but Los Angeles has approved a move to rename Rodeo Road of the Baldwin Hills-Crenshaw area for former President Barack Obama, Mayor Eric Garcetti announced in a tweet Tuesday.
"We’re thrilled that Angelenos and visitors will forever be reminded of the legacy of President @BarackObama when traveling across L.A.," Garcetti tweeted, after the city council voted in favor of naming the road Obama Blvd.
The 3.5-mile road runs through a predominantly African-American residential area and past Rancho Cienga Park, where Obama held a campaign rally on Feb. 20, 2007, in his historic campaign to the White House.
L.A. City Councilman Herb Wesson, who proposed the name change in June 2017, noted that the proposal was approved on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech. Tuesday was also the anniversary of the day Obama became the first African-American presidential candidate for a major political party in 2008.
The Los Angeles Times noted that Rodeo Road was not the first stretch of L.A. asphalt to be named in honor of the 44th president. In 2017, the California legislature passed a resolution renaming a portion of the 134 Freeway after Obama.
