It’s an understandable question, asked not only by Lents residents. Having relocated to Lents Town Center, why are we still called The Belmont Goats?
Usually this question clearly is motivated by a natural curiosity. On occasion it carries a note of hostility, as if somehow we’re deliberately disrespecting our current hosts.
In truth, it’s mostly a matter of logistics, with a little bit of brand awareness thrown in.
Prior to moving to Lents, the closest the herd had to an official name was “Creative Woodworking NW Urban Goats”, used on the signs posted by the herd’s original owner around its original home in the Buckman neighborhood. There was some early usage of “Goatlandia” but eventually it became known mostly, and simply, as Urban Goats PDX. When the herd’s current ownership took over—before the herd had a new home, in Lents or otherwise—it left the Urban Goats PDX name with the original owner. At the time, there was a possibility that he would be return to hosting an urban herd of his own and we felt that for the sake of continuity and consistency he should be able to hold onto that name.
Since the mostly commonly used referent for these specific goats was SE Belmont Street (“oh, those goats on Belmont” or, indeed, “oh, the Belmont Goats”) it seemed simplest to derive their new name from that colloquial use. It also seemed to us that out of a similar concern for continuity and consistency, making the history of the herd into its brand would ensure that no matter where we ended up next, people would know who we were.
“Oh, these are those goats!”
Our move to Lents—indeed, to wherever we would have ended up after Buckman—never was conceived as a necessarily permanent move. We continue to debate the question of whether it would better serve the “goats in the neighborhood” mission to have a single permanent home or a series of semi-permanent homes every two to three years, affording different parts of Portland the opportunity to play host to what we’d come to refer to as the city’s “resident urban herd”. This debate likely will continue all the way up to whenever the time comes to make way for the development of our current Lents Town Center location, which has never been ours except under the terms of a temporary use permit which requires annual renewal.
What matters is that in the context of potentially moving every few years, the logistics of renaming the herd become ridiculous.
We’ve sometimes taken some grief for discussing this question in terms of “branding”, but it’s a legitimate concern. It’s also not without precedent. Hawthorne Chiropractic moved to Division but kept its name. Seven Corners Cycles left that intersection but kept theirs. “History” as “brand” is a thing people do.
We do try as much as possible to reference Lents when discussing the herd. Our own material—our website, our social media profiles—typically refers to “The Belmont Goats, now at Lents Town Center”. We participate in neighborhood events. We promote neighborhood activities through our social media channels. Whether or not local media covering the herd plays along with that isn’t something over which we have much control, but we will try more strongly to urge them to mention where the herd lives.
Our move to Lents hasn’t been anything other than successful. It was the first neighborhood to make a concerted effort to woo the herd to its area, and residents have only been welcoming and helpful since the day we began construction. Nothing we do is motivated by disrespect for the neighborhood, or ignorance of what it’s done for us.
The simple reality is that no one knows for how long Lents will be the herd’s home. Should the next move, whenever in the future that happens, be to another neighborhood in another part of Portland, no one knows for how long that will be its home, either. That potentially transient aspect of the herd’s “goats in the neighborhood” mission makes it vitally important that the herd be able to maintain its identity over time, and across the city.
It isn’t about disrespecting Buckman, Lents, or any neighborhood to host us in the future. It’s about celebrating the herd’s origins and history no matter where it lives while, as best we can, doing right by our host neighborhood—whoever that might be—for as long as we’re there.
The Belmont Goats 