Buffalo’s got a ton of Polish street names that are impossible to pronounce by mortal men, like Sienkiewicz Place. Lots of very Catholic names, too, like Rosary Drive, St. Jude Drive, and the like. My favorites, though, are these streets in Lackawanna:
Gravel Place
Sand Street
Clay Street
Muck Street
The neighborhood where I grew up had a cluster of street names that are commonly called the Old Ladies:
Alice Avenue
Edith Street
Kay Street
Phyllis Avenue
Millicent Avenue
Martha Avenue
Gail Avenue
Janet Street
Las Cruces, New Mexico has more than its fair share of wacky street names. Most are located north of town, where mom-and-pop developers subdivided 10 or 20 acre parcels, and usually giving the roads running through them either redneck-ish (A&G Court, JJ Lane, B and J’s Lane, developer’s daughter kountry kitsch-style names, etc) or silly (Cherry Cider Lane, Strange Road, No Name Court, etc) names. Checking out Google Maps, it looks like they renamed Bar B-Q Lane and Fat Katy Lane to something else since I lived there. You don’t expect such odd names out of larger developers, but occasionally …
I wonder if there were any offensive street names that were renamed in the late 1960s, when the USGS did their mass renaming of racist place names. You know … “Dead [N-word] Road”, “Chinktown Road” and so on.
I pretty much never got tired of driving on Pohick Rd, in suburbs of DC. (ain’t noone live there but a buncha po’ hicks)
Same for the Powhite (Poe-White) Parkway in Richmond VA, although the name apparently refers to the Powatan Indians, not trailer park residents of the po’ white variety.
In downtown LA we have the following street:
Gen Thaddeus Kosciuszko Way.
Rumor is that not long after the street was re-named, a injured person was found there, and the police hauled them over to Olive before they radioed for an ambulance.
Grand and Olive run parallel to each other, a block apart. One moonless night the power went out. Popeye was feeling his way along Olive and thought it was Grand.
Somewhere in Maryland, on Route 301 down near the Potomac River, there’s a Pomonkey Rd. So there’s po Hicks, po Whites, and po Monkeys. What do suppose a RICH monkey looks like?
At my work we have a plastic film wrap of the brand: “Monster Meat Wrap”. :eek:
As for places I’ve seen, the closest one to interesting was Via Papel (Paper Street in English). I even made soap once while I lived there, though not at home.
There are a number of successive streets in the Point Loma/Loma Portal area of San Diego named after famous American authors, though the only one I can think of off the top of my head is Hurston St.
I would think there’d be a number of roads like this around–Discovery Way (with the Bio lab, I think) and nearby Expedition Way at UCSD come to mind.
I’ve never heard of it anywhere else, but local suburb La Mesa has a street called Boulevard. I can’t find it on Google Maps and La Mesa doesn’t show the “suffix” (Ave, St, Rd etc.) on its street signs so I can’t tell you if it’s Boulevard Lane, Boulevard Road, or just Boulevard, but there you go.
I’ve mentioned this before… There are dozens of short streets in the nothern parts of Toronto, usually private roads within developments, that have curious artificial names: San Romanoway, Morning Gloryway and English Ivyway, and Woody Vineway and Tree Sparroway. I conclude that one particular developer back in the late sixties or early seventies was using recreational drugs.
But for sheer ickiness, Old Cummer Avenue has them all beat. So to speak. (See previous link).
My fave is in North Georgia: Knucklesville Road. I’ve driven down it, just for kicks. Lots of trailers tucked away in the backroads. Looks like a place you could wind up eating a knuckle sammich, alrighty.
Also in surburban Atlanta we have ‘Beaver Ruin Road.’ Sad there’s not a Lover’s Lane that intersect with it.
And I’m not sure where its from, but there’s also “Five Forks Trickum Road.”
Outside of Winter Haven, Florida is a little road called Funnyting. I cannot remember if there is a space between Funny and Ting or not, but when I was young, my friends and I always though it was hysterical.
Some time ago Mitsubishi Motors sponsored a poll on wacky street names.
Psycho Path voted wackiest street name LOS ANGELES (AP) — Farfrompoopen Road, the only road to Constipation Ridge, lost to Divorce Court and Psycho Path, which placed No. 1 in an online poll of the nation’s wildest, weirdest and wackiest street names.
My home town has Daniel’s Hole Road, which some civic-minded people wanted to change the name of several years ago, but they were denied (thank God!).
The next township over has Blank Lane. I heard that it was during a time of re-mapping the town, and the original name of the lane was never “formally” known. A cartographer asked “What shall I name it?” and was told “Make it blank.” He did, and it is, still. The real name has long been forgotten. I was told later that this story is hogwash, but I hope it isn’t.
With my current job, I called a customer who lived on Bug Shop Road. I had to ask. Seems there was a garage at the top of the road that specialized in servicing Volkswagens. The shop burned down, but the locals’ name for the road stuck, and was entered into the records.
I used to go by “Drury Lane” in Wakefield on my way to work every morning. I think they heard the Nursery rhyme too many times. On the same route, I passed “Pleasure Island Road”. No boys turning in donkeys, alas – it’s named after a long-defunct amusement park.
Down in New Jersey there’s a “Squankum Yellow Brook Road”, which always sounds like “Yellow Brick Road” when people talk about it.
