Please, PLEASE Stop Changing the Name of the Waterfront Pavilion Concert Venue

Beyond My Ken, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Last week, Vanyaland reported that the concert venue down on the waterfront—you know the one, it gets lovely breezes in the summer—had changed its name. It will now be known as the Leader Bank Pavilion. But perhaps the most jarring part of this news for me, personally, was to learn that it was not currently called the Blue Hills Bank Pavilion, as I had thought. Apparently, it has been the Rockland Trust Bank Pavilion since 2019. Before that, it was indeed the Blue Hills Bank Pavilion, but only from 2014 to 2019, at which point Blue Hills Bank was acquired by Rockland Trust Bank, thus necessitating another name change. Before that, it was the Bank of America Pavilion. That’s right: Leader Bank Pavilion is its fourth name in seven years.

Listen, I get that if anyone needs a little extra infusion of sponsorship cash right now, it is undoubtedly performing arts venues, which have been empty, lights off, for a year. HOWEVER. I cannot, for the life of me, remember what the name of this dang place is in any given year. I am pleading with you, waterfront pavilion concert venue: Please stop changing your name!

I’ll admit, I’m not a huge fan of naming rights for venues to begin with. I understand why it’s a nice arrangement for the venue—it gets some cash, and because the naming rights are basically a rental, the venue can sell the same concept to another brand every couple of years. More cash! More concerts for me! But I do not understand what the brand gets out of it. In all my years of attending shows at what I will continue to call the waterfront pavilion concert venue, I have never once changed banks as a result of going. The thought of making the effort to research the offerings at different banks, select a new one, and then transfer all of my money makes me want to stick my head in a toilet. No matter how many cool concerts I see at the waterfront pavilion concert venue, I will likely never move my dollars to whatever bank it is currently named after.

Look, I get that this is hardly a top priority for anyone right now. There are assuredly bigger issues facing Boston than my inability to remember bank names. But at some point, we’re going to need to go back to some degree of normalcy around here, and if griping about even the smallest hint of change in this city isn’t normal, I don’t know what is.

Now if we just called the thing the Harborlights Pavilion? That, I could remember.