The expiscation of the appellation of bouillabaisse
Rooted out on August 9, 2026.
This week, I at last solved a mystery that has haunted me for decades: I expiscated the etymology of the name of the street I dwell upon.
Some thought Bouillabaisse Boulevard was named after the Great Sewer Backup of 1986. Others pointed to the Great Rotten Fishpile of 2022—but that was too recent. Yet others just blamed Mrs. Farnston’s cat bringing home dead fish for her to turn into fine French fish soup. (That cat could sure cook!) But the truth was, no one knew why the boulevard was named as it was. And even fewer knew how to pronounce it.
After much investigation, inquiry and enquiry, snooping and snopesing around, fact-checking and fact-inventing, truth was revealed: A single Usenet post in 1998 had so enthralled the city planners that they began naming everything after bouillabaisse—not unlike a clutch of modern-day Commoduses. Mayor Julian Rhoodie—never to be outdone by another’s lack of modesty or dearth of shame—put a stop to it by renaming everything after himself. Then, after a plethora of complaints, public hearings, protests, lawsuits, public stonings, public shootings, and a sizeable volume of dead fish flung through the mayor’s windows by way of a cannon purloined from the WWIII monument on Rhoodie Avenue, a compromise was reached: This street would remain fishily yclept, the road to the cockroach farm would remain Rhoodie Road, and local elementary school students would be tasked with renaming everything else in town.
The rest, as they say, is history.