which nearly caused me to choke… You see I live in the deep suburbia section of Ft. Worth known as Wedgewood. Long long
ago when the city planners created the area they figured since the section name starts with a ‘W’ well then there should be
a couple of streets that start with ‘W’ also.
Well what happened next lies in the mysts of tyme (no rosemary was available), but local legend says that these august,
dignified, and most assuredly crack-smoking men had a contest between themselves to see who could come up with the
most street names that start with ‘W’. Legend also says that this contest got out of hand. This is why to this day,
I live on Whitman street, surrounded by Wedgemont, Welch, Walla, Wessex, Wonder… I could go on, but suffice it to say
of the hundreds of streets in my neighborhood, 98% of them start with a ‘W’. This confuses residents enough, but it gives
visitors no end of headaches.
I was curious - anyone else here live in an area with such a stupid line of street names? (For the record, anyone who
points out with mock incredulity that they live on “Elm” and the next street down is named “Oak” will be executed on the
spot. Nothing personal, just something I am required to do.)
I live in a town that really likes the name “Pratt.” I think the original Pratt was a developer way back when, but I’m not even sure of that.
There’s a plethora of Pratts around the area. Two of the main drags in town are called Pratt Blvd and Pratt Parkway. Yes, the connect. Yes, it comes up a lot when giving people directions to my house. “Well, you go east on Pratt until you come to, um, Pratt.” Or “Keep going North until you get to the corner of Pratt and Pratt. Take Pratt until you get to the highway.”
Downtown in the little city I used to work in, there were Glenwood, Elmwood then South Glenwood.
Actually, South Glenwood and Elmwood were all one word, but Glen Wood was spaced so it looked like that - the name of a legendary NASCAR driver active in the '50s and '60s and founder of one of the most formidable teams in NASCAR history.
Whoever named the streets in the little subdivision my Mom’s house is in should be shot. Tanglewood Drive, Swing-a-Long Lane, Pixie Place, and Hill-n-Dale Way. Bizarrely, the street sign for Hill-n-Dale has it spelled “Hillandale” on one side.
Of course, this does not compare to the subdivision up the road from ours, which boasts Vroom Road. No kidding.
In parts of Calgary, all the streets have the same name. For example, Crowfoot Street runs into Crowfoot Crescent, which intersects Crowfoot Drive, which connects to Crowfoot Close. It’s insane. I’ve never seen anything quite that irritating.
The funny thing is, the locals think it’s quite normal to have all the streets in one neighbourhood named the same.
We have Peachtree,Peachtree Industrial, Peachtree Center (Parkway, I think) Peachtree-Dunwoody, Asford-Dunwoody, Chamblee-Dunwoody…
I know there are many, many more Peachtrees. I just refuse to think of them right now.
At different times, four different systems have been used to romanize the Chinese street names for the benefit of foreigners. It’s even a political issue; new mayor, new romanization system.
Chongchen Lu
Zhongchen Lu
Chungchen Lu
Jongjen Lu
They’re all the same street. Repeat the same process for every street in the entire city, make sure to add lots of intersections with odd angles, add then just shoot yourself.
[sub](Of course, I suspect it’s all a devious attempt to force you to learn to read the characters … but God help the tourists.)
Baltimore, MD here.
There is a townhouse developement with all the street names ending in “Bridge”, as in London Bridge Way, Abbey Bridge Way, Westminster Bridge Way…and so on.
There is also the ever-popular Aero Acres, near Martin State Airport. They built cheap housing for employees during WW2, and named all the streets after airplane parts: Fuselage Road, Propeller Road, Left Wing Drive, Right Wing Drive, etc.
I was just at the teacher’s resource center today, and all the street leading to the school are “Oaks”, as in Black Oak Road, White Oak Road, Water Oak Road.
In Parkville, there are roads named Joppa, Old Joppa, Harford and Old Harford. Joppa intersects with Harford and Old Harford, but not Old Joppa. Harford intersects with Joppa and Old Joppa, but not Old Harford.
In Columbia, all the roads are “Garths” or “Paths” or “Ways.” A newspaper columnist once joked about the naming system there (can’t remember the while joke), since the streets all have these ethereal-sounding names: Lasting Light Way, Falling Water Garth, Piney Run Path.
Here in Charlotte, NC, they like to make things fun for newcomers. I’ll give just one example, cause I myself am still a relative newcomer here.
You’re driving down the perfectly lovely road we call Queens Road down near Queens College. You come to an intersection. Say you go straight. You are now on Providence Road. No biggie, things like that are all over the place. But say you turned left. You are now on Providence Road.
Turned right? Queens Road. That’s right. The road you turned off of.
At this particular intersection, two roads meet and both turn right. Having fun yet?
In one subdivision here we have Tinkerbell, Peter Pan, Miss Muffet, Goldilocks, Jack Horner, Bo Peep, Christopher Robin, Looking Glass, and so on.
Not far from fairy-tale lane, we have a bunch of car names: Falcon, Austin, Renault, Jaguar, Fiat, Tempest, Rover, etc.
Another practice here is to reverse a name if there are too many of it already: Water --> Retaw, Carder --> Redrac (there’s others but I can’t recall them). And since we have a huge area here, there are still a lot of repeats.
We have a lot of subdivisions, and streets, with “oak” or “woods” or something … the comment is that after the developers clear cut the land, the silvan names remind us what used to be there.
There are 2 state highways that go through Minneapolis named 35E and 35W. They both go north-south, but the E is to the right of the W. Easy once you get used to it, but a serious pain when trying to figure it out the first time (what, were 34 and 36 taken?).
There’s a subdivision near me with Arthurian names. Sir Galahad Drive, for one. I’ve never been back there to see what the rest are, but I’m sure it’s painful.
My favorite local street name, which I just found, is McAnally Road. I’m not joking. Didn’t they THINK…?
Interstate 35 is the main north-south highway that runs from Duluth, Minnesota to Laredo, Texas. It splits somewhere south of the Twin Cities to form 35W and 35E. 35W is the branch that runs through Minneapolis. It’s called W because it’s the western branch. 35E runs through St. Paul and is called E because it’s the eastern branch. They come together again north of the Cities and I-35 continues to Duluth.
It works the same way in Dallas and Ft. Worth. 35W runs through Ft. Worth, which is the western city, and 35E runs through Dallas, which is the eastern city.
The streets in my subdivision are all named after writers - Shakespeare, Conan Doyle, Keats, etc. Mine is Falkner, and I was so pissed because I thought they misspelled “Faulkner”, but then I found out the author changed his name and the street-namers chose the version with which I was more unfamiliar.
I used to live in a subdivision in Indiana where all the streets were named after Indiana counties - Elkhart, Ripley, Hamilton, Benton, etc.
In the Buffalo area, especially in the southern suburbs, the lack of a uniform street naming or addressing system results in situations where the street names change at town lines, bends in the road, major cross streets or other seemingly random elements in the built environment.
Las Cruces, New Mexico hsa more than its fair share of strange street names. No Name Road, Fat Katy Lane, Bar-B-Que Street, a subdivison where the streets are all nbamed after vegetables (Corn Drive, etc.), and, of course, the Spanish appelations – Calle de [Something] or Avenida de [Whatever]. Developers would occasionally try to get away with names like “Calle de Los Pendejos” or “Avenida de Chingato,” but they were usually nabbed at final subdivison.
In Fort Collins, I reviewed a planned subdivison where a group of streets were named after a few South Park characters – Marsh Drive, Cartman Drive and Garrison Drive. I don’t know if the subdivision ever got built or not.
Note: I wrote this earlier, but got called away and never got back to it. Lsura and others have treated some of this, but I’m too lazy to go back and rewrite.
I live in Atlanta. If outsiders know one thing about Atlanta’s streets and roads, it’s that “they’re all named ‘Peachtree’”. This is almost true – Peachtree Street, West Peachtree Street, Peachtree Road, New Peachtree Road, South New Peachtree Road, Peachtree Industrial Boulevard, Peachtree Parkway, Peachtree Battle Road, Peachtree Hills Road, Peachtree Place, Peachtree Corners Circle (how exactly can something have corners and be a circle?) etc. all come readily to mind, and there’s close to two dozen more. What’s not as widely known is that:
[ul]
[li]Atlanta streets, whether named Peachtree or not, are liable to arbitrarily change names with no warning, and are also liable to change back to the original name equally arbitrarily (example: Lenox Road starts at Highland Ave and later merges into Cheshire Bridge Road which changes back into Lenox Road just north of I-85);[/li][li]some streets change names suddenly, but not arbitrarily. There are a number of north-south streets that change names when they cross Ponce de Leon. This was because the white people living north of Ponce didn’t want addresses with the same street names as the black people living south of Ponce.[/li][li]Boulevard Drive is really the name of a street (until you cross Ponce going north, when it becomes Monroe Drive)[/li][li]Briarcliff Road and LaVista Road intersect twice, miles apart;[/li][li]other than Ponce de Leon, and possibly Memorial Drive and Lindbergh/LaVista, there are almost no substantial east-west thoroughfares in the city – you pretty much have to go north-south to a cross-street and then east-west.[/li][/ul]
Add to this that there are lots of streets here that start out going one direction, and imperceptibly curve until they’re going in a completely different direction, and you have a place that can utterly confound anyone, including those of us with an outstanding innate sense of direction. I can honestly say that I’d never really been lost in my life until a few months after moving here.
The street naming system here in Salt Lake (and in nearly every other Utah town, coincidentally) is confusing when you first arrive here, then after a while it makes perfect sense. Streets were laid out in a rectilinear pattern with names like 100 South, 200 South, 100 West, 200 West, etc., radiating out from some arbitrary corner (generally in the middle of downtown.) As these streets could go one of two ways from the dividing street, you’d end with East 100 South and West 100 South, and so on.
Once you figure the system out, it’s relatively easy to find your way around (and know how many blocks away you are from someplace.)
