I got a pedicure the other day and was attracted to a dark purplish-black color that looked very much like Vamp, a hue much-loved by Goths that Chanel put out in the 1990s. It wasn’t Vamp at all but a new polish by Opi named “Lincoln Park at Midnight.”

Opi puts out new polish lines once or twice a year, and the stress of coming up with evocative names for colors must be getting to their marketing department, because “Lincoln Park at Midnight” is not their strongest effort. Lincoln Park is a neighborhood in Chicago. Husband and I lived there right after we got married–when Vamp was still popular, in fact. It’s a nice enough place, but it doesn’t really have the elegant cachet of the Gold Coast (”Ooh! I just saw Oprah at the Whiskey Bar!”), the hipness of Bucktown (”Ooh! I just saw Wilco at the Blue Note!”), or even the raw appeal of Boys Town (”Eww! I just saw a drag queen taking a leak in the alley!”). For me, the phrase “Lincoln Park at Midnight” conjures up a bunch of DePaul students emerging from a late show at the Biograph saying, “Dude, let’s get some smoothies at the Bourgeois Pig.” Not so very Goth.

On the other hand, Dillinger was shot in front of the Biograph, so maybe that’s the dangerous edge that Opi was going for.

Or perhaps they were thinking of Linkin Park.