Renaming ISIS condos a wise move

By Frank Cerabino

Monday, Sept. 1, 2014 | 2:03 a.m.

In the early 1980s, Larry King used to pitch an appetite-suppressant candy on his nationally syndicated radio talk show.

The popular product, which came in chocolate mint, butterscotch and caramel flavors, was called Ayds.

“Why take diet pills when you can enjoy Ayds?” the product advertisement said. “Ayds helps you lose weight safely and effectively.”

About a year later, the sexually transmitted disease known as AIDS became common knowledge.

And as you might imagine, it didn’t help sales of the appetite-suppressant candy with the name that was pronounced identically to the disease.

Ayds changed its name to Diet Ayds and then disappeared from the market.

I was thinking about listening to those Ayds radio commercials when I read the story by the Palm Beach Post’s Alexandra Clough on the renaming of a new high-rise condominium project in downtown West Palm Beach, Fla.

The ISIS Downtown condominium is getting a new name.

Definitely a wise move.

When the developers came up with the name ISIS and presented it in all capital letters, they had no idea it would be appropriated by a barbaric terrorist group in the Middle East that calls itself the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS for short.

The Florida real estate market is cutthroat enough without being associated with a group that literally cuts throats.

And there were other unfortunate friction points.

The ISIS Downtown project, a luxury condominium with prices starting in the $300,000s, had been touting its “progressive modern design.”

The ISIS that is rampaging across Syria and Iraq is a regressive outfit killing people over a seventh-century religious rift. Nothing remotely progressive there.

And it’s best not to even invite comparisons between the rigors of condo law with Sharia law.

Also, the developer of the ISIS condo unfortunately used the verb “captivate” to describe the project, which is not a good word to use when your development shares its name with a group that likes to take hostages.

Captivating. Captive taking. Not going to work.

The ISIS Downtown condo is “designed to captivate the growing demand from home buyers seeking a dynamic urban retreat,” according to the sales pitch posted on Facebook.

Which raises another issue. ISIS is more associated with a desert advance, not an urban retreat. And even the word “demand” seems loaded with unhelpful menace here.

So, it’s little wonder that the West Palm Beach condo project is getting a new name.

The ISIS Downtown Facebook page redirects traffic to “3 Thirty Three Downtown,” which is a name that reflects the project’s address at 333 Fern St.

It was smart to go for a new name that had to do with the number, 333, instead of the street name.

There’s little chance that “3 Thirty Three” is going to be somehow be overshadowed by terrorism like, say, “9/11” has been. That’s because there’s no more than 31 days in a month, so 33 is a safe number.

As for Fern, well, after the ISIS name problem, it’s best not to tempt fate a second time.

If ISIS Downtown got renamed Fern Downtown, you’d still have to worry about some future Islamic terrorist group calling itself Fallujah’s Explosive Revolutionary Network (FERN), which wouldn’t help drive the resurgence of demand for captivating, modern, dynamic urban retreats in West Palm Beach.

Frank Cerabino writes for the Palm Beach Post.