Isn’t the Oriole’s ballpark right near Baltimore’s Inner Harbor area?
Like I say, it’s got potential. You’d be hard put to say the scene around Jacobs Field comes close to the 81-days-a-year Mardi Gras around Wrigley, but you never know. Maybe someday.
It’s pretty close. I haven’t been to Baltimore since the mid-1990s - I think Camden Yards had just been finished then. My host drove me around the park but we didn’t see a game there. The stadium has been widely praised. Baltimore was struggling at the time; don’t know what things are like now. Another town with promise, although DC tends to suck up all the oxygen.
It is maybe 1/2 mile straight shot down to the water. One time I was there for travel, and they put me up in a hotel room right across and overlooking the park - Before the trip I hadn’t realized it was opening day.
Sure. But if you know Sheffield is 1000 West (and plenty of Chicagoans do), it should be pretty easy to quickly figure out what 1060 West Addison is. I don’t know whether I’d be able to tell you exactly that it was 1060 W. Addison without the movie to drill that in me, but I would know it’s some even number between 1000 and 1100 West Addison.
The Diamondbacks’ Chase Field is about as close to downtown as you can get without knocking some tall buildings down that were there first.
IME, the streets most Chicagoans know by number are the 400/800s. And tho Sheffield bounds the park, I’m not sure that I have ever heard of the park identified as being at Sheffield and Addison.
I’m by no means the most familiar with Chicago, and I certainly could have told you where Sheffield is, but I would not have quickly been able to pull up the number 1000.
Sure, it’s Clark and Addison, but I’d think most Cubs fans will be able to tell you that Waveland and Sheffield are the two streets where out-of-park homers land.
OK, even if you don’t know it’s 1000 West, you know the address is pretty much dead center between Racine (1200W) and Halsted (800W). If you follow the map in your head, you should be able to reasonably guess that 1060 W. Addison refers to Wrigley Field.
What I’m saying is that assuming it wasn’t common knowledge that 1060 W. Addison refered to Wrigley Field before the game, somebody with a very good familiarity with the city (such as the cops in the movie and Jake Elwood) should be easily able to deduce what is at that location. No, not everyone would get it right away (and most people in the movie don’t.)
So my answer to: “So…back in, say, 1979, would someone have been able to at least use process of elimination to identify 1060 West Addison as Wrigley Field???”
is clearly yes. A majority of people? No. Anyone who knows the city reasonably-to-very well? Yes, by process of elimination they should be able to guess 1060 W. Addison is Wrigley.
Well, even using all the logic in this thread, if someone did not know a priori the address of Wrigley, they might have heard “1060 West Addison” and reasonably thought, “hey, he must live right near Wrigley Field.”
See, there’s an example of one I don’t know by address. I know Comiskey Park, cough I mean, the Cell, as 35th and Shields. I don’t know Shields’ number on the grid, but I do know that Wentworth is 200W (from going to Chinatown regularly) for most of its run. I know Wentworth straddles the Dan Ryan, and both pass right by White Sox Park. What else can be on 35th Street, a black and a half west of the highway, on the south side of the street, other than where the Sox play ball?
It’d be easier to approach it from 400W, which should be an easy half-mile marker to remember, but 400W is a weird one on the grid. It doesn’t really exist as a main road in that part of town because of all the railway (although I think of Canal as 400-ishW for navigation purposes). It’s Sedgwick on the North Side (and then Lakeview and then Sheridan for a bit, before it just becomes the Lake), and it’s Stewart on the South Side, once you get past Garfield. 400W is a pain in the ass to remember.
One more thing I just remembered: the Addison El stop tells you 3600N, 940W as you get off. Now, whether this coordinate were displayed in 1979 or not, and whether people pay attention to it, it’s one more point to consider how someone may deduce what lies at 1060 W. Addison.
And off the top of your head, Waveland is what hundred? IME, Sheffield is clearly a “secondary” street, of greatest significance to people on the N side, and/or associated with DePaul or a few other attractions on that street. It doesn’t even begin until North, and doesn’t even continue beyond Devon. It certainly would not mean much to a Sox fan from the S or W side.
IME, the majority of people are not clear on the conventions regarding which side of the street odds and evens are. So yeah, if you asked me what is the most famous building/place between Western and the lake, I’d likely have no difficulty coming up with Wrigley. But despite having been born and raised in the city, when I first saw the movie I was surprised at the address, and even more surprised afterwards when folk acted as tho it ought to have been commonly understood.
If I told someone I’d meet them in front of 1060 Addison, I wouldn’t expect them to say, “That’s Wrigley” so much as I’d expect them to figure “Okay, I’ll take Halsted to Addison and head west. Okay, looks like the even numbers are on the north. Okay, 800, 900, 10… what they heck, that address must be Wrigley!” Heck, I dunno if the park has an obvious address posted, so they might need to drive past and see that they are into the 1100s before really realizing Wrigley’s address.
OT - I can recall being a VERY young boy, riding in the back seat of the family car past Wrigley as something happened and hearing the sound of the crowd cheering. It astounded me that that was something you would hear in real life, as opposed to just on the radio. Funny how something like that can stick with you.
I would guess 3700.
The question is not would everyone be able to deduce what’s at that address. The question is would someone be able to deduce by process of elimination.
I’m a life-long South Sider but, you know, we do have to venture to the North Side occasionally. And this is where the grid is particularly important for us, since we’re used to numbered East-West streets. When I venture to the North Side to an unfamiliar address, I ask “where is it on the grid?” And there’s plenty of stuff on Sheffield to go to that eventually it sticks that 1000W is Sheffield.
I guess I focused on the initial question(s) phrased:
Even as rephrased:
I’d have to say my deduction would depend largely on the context. If someone gave it as their home address, my response would have been like Tim’s “hey, he must live right near Wrigley Field” as I don’t generally expect people to live in ballparks. If someone told me they had tickets for an event at 1060 Addison, I’d probably assume it was either a ballgame or a show at the Cubby Bear.
So our experiences, opinions, and responses differ. That’s cool.
The way I remember: Indiana is odd. It’s easy enough to remember one of the directions (I mean, if you know your address you should at least know at least one pair of odd-even sides.) So I always knew east and west sides of the street, but north-south would always take several moments to remember. Eventually, I just combined my feelings about Indiana–that it’s an odd state that happens to be southeast of Chicago–with the fact that Chicago odd-numbered streets are on the south or east sides of the street. Problem solved.
A good observation applicable to more than street addresses. BTW, you do know why it is so windy in Illinois, don’t you? Because Iowa blows and Indiana sucks!
My personal reminder is that my childhood home (3116) was on the W side of my street, and I lived on the NW side. But I’ve spoken with people who appeared oblivious to there being any rule, and others who insisted that the N side was the mirror image of the S, and E mirrored W. So N of Madison evens were on the N side, but S of Madison evens were on the S…
A few points, some of which were made earlier:
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The people who made Blues Brothers knew Chicago fairly well.
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The assumption in the script, rightly or wrongly, is that if you said you lived at 1060 W. Addison, the immediate response from a Chicagoan would NOT have been: no you don’t, that’s Wrigley Field. If everybody knew the address, the joke evaporates. The point is to make you slap your head after the fact and say, duh, that’s Wrigley Field, I should have known.
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FWIW, as a lifelong Chicagoan, that was my reaction when I saw the movie. Maybe I should have figured it out but I didn’t. I bet I had a lot of company.
That sounds like a fair summary to me.
While we’re on the subject of the Chicago address system, another one people forget is that the 800-addresses-to-a-mile (or eight-blocks-to-a-mile) rule breaks down from Madison to 31st. It’s one mile from Madison (0N/S) to Roosevelt (1200S), then another mile from Roosevelt to Cermak (2200S.), then another mile from Cermak to 31st. So it’s 12 blocks, 10 blocks, 9 blocks, before resuming the normal 8 block grid.