Go CoCo!

When Kiki Vandeweghe played for the Trail Blazers in the 1980s he was my neighbor for a time on Hoyt Street in Northwest Portland.

Kiki, like Bill Walton before him, was one of a handful of Blazers who opted for urban living accommodations during their Portland careers, calling the old neighborhood home before the mobile nature of the business sent them on to their next addresses.

This was well before the old neighborhood gentrified and turned into the boring, sterile shopping mall it is today.  In the 70s and 80s the neighborhood was rough and diverse.  Now it's overrun, like America in general, with money and idiocy.

Kiki, like Walton, went to school at UCLA.  Maybe they learned something there?

Most pro ballers in Portland back in the day headed for the suburbs and their mansion/cribs in gated terrain, just as they do now.

Kiki's niece, CoCo Vandeweghe, is making a run at the U.S. Open tennis championship.

Go CoCo go!


TS