keep new york new york
A quick ad-copy collocation, noticed via this Freakonomics post: the tagline for an NYC campaign for “congestion pricing” (the imposition of peak-hour traffic fees) is this wonderful little five-worder:
“Keep New York New York“.
Considered as a bare string, it doesn’t even look like a sentence to me, and yet its perfectly comprehensible (and, in context, not even ambiguous: I doubt anyone will see the sign and think, “yes, yes, congestion pricing, but what does that have to do with Broadway showtunes and who is trying to get rid of them anyway?”).
In Portland (where there’s been, in fact, talk of congestion pricing for some bridges serving the downtown area), there’s a related phrase that’s been around for I don’t know how long: Keep Portland Weird. As far as that goes, I suppose “Keep Portland Portland” would work too, but there’s something a bit more daring (and divisive, I guess, for folks in the anti-weird camp) about a specific named quality.


