Why in the hell do apartment designers put the building number up so fucking high on the wall that you can’t see it? And hide it with a carport roof so you still can’t see it. I’m driving a CAR, not a helicopter, so put the number where it can be easily seen by those of us at ground level. In multiple places, please, so I can see it from the front, the back or either end, as I am wandering around the labyrinth you also deviously designed.
And indicate which apartments are in each breezeway. Apartments 11-18 are usually on the ground floor. Which breezeway is #16 in? Right, or left? Or worse, apartment #1222 is NOT in building #12 on the second floor but in building #23 because the apartment numbers are consecutive, and then you are still looking up to the second floor for the apartment #22 and you discover that the fucking apartment that sounds like it is on the second floor is actually on the second floor but you get there via a fucking staircase inside door #22 on the first floor!
I’m carrying a 23 pound suitcase, and my purse, and another small bag. I can’t roll the bag on it’s wheels or bump it up the steps because it messes up the calibration on one of the machines in the bag. So I would really appreciate not having to wander around on foot trying to figure out your system of numbering. My heart sinks when I realize the apartment is up the stairs on the third floor. ( I just paid $330 to get the damn machine re-calibrated. It only cost $80.00 to calibrate, but I had to pay $110 to insure and ship my $1200 machine to the company, and then pay $140 to insure and ship the $1500 loaner back-a relatively “mini-rant” provided at no extra charge to Dopers).
A message to “Lincoln Plaza” and all of you other “named” buildings: I know you are SO proud of the name of your building, but my case worksheet doesn’t say “Lincoln Plaza”, it says 500 N. Akard St. Can I find the number as I’m driving by: NOOOOO! Would it diminish the esthetics of your Lincoln Plaza monument sign to put 500 on it in a size big enough to easily read? I had to drive around the block 2 times to figure out if it was the correct building and then to figure out where to park. To you and everyone else: put your address number in big enough numbers where it can be seen.
And homeowners: you need to pay attention too! Trim the bushes/hedges so I (not to mention the police/fire dept./ambulance) can see the house number. Put your house number on both sides of your mailbox, not in those 2 inch numbers on the front. I went to a house that had the house number in 8 inch tall wooden numbers –Great idea!- that were painted THE SAME FUCKING COLOR as the wall they were on. Gahh! , you drive me crazy!
I don’t really have an opinion on this rant other than that I fully support any sort of movement towards putting house numbers in easily viewed areas like the mailbox when it’s on the curb. Numbers just by the front door are not good for those of us who are embarrassingly nearsighted.
I’d just be happy if all the streets had signs identifying them by name like they’re supposed to. Too often the street name signs are AWOL, making it way harder to find a place than need be.
Or too small to read until you’re next to them, or placed so that you can’t see them until AFTER you’ve missed the turn, or obscured by trees. Can you tell I’ve been driving in New York and New Jersey lately?
When I lived in the midwest I was grateful for street signs that hung overhead in the middle of the intersection. That should be a standard where possible.
It seems like, for emergency service purposes at least, having clearly visible numbers should be mandatory. In particular, businesses seem to be amiss in this.
suburban homes are a piece of cake once you get at least one number. the rest are usually sequential by the neighborhood standard. every subsequent house will have a number (odd or even depending on the side of the road) which increases in number by a set amount. usually 2 or 4. thanks to this little bit of planning i could care less what joe schmoe homeowner used to identify his home. even the 2 inch tall numbers on the BACKSIDE of the mailbox…it didn’t matter because if any of his neighbors used normal numbers I could identify his house number easily.
now cities and or towns…screw them all. they’re heartless bastards. they use damnable random numbers chosen from some fucking magician’s hat. they use the shittiest double sided tape or maybe it’s just boogers to stick them to whatever part of the wall is hardest to see. and then…then!!! on top of all that there’s never anywhere to slow down enough in the street to try to find the number so you have to do it at mach one or else get run over by some impatient dickwad behind you.
yeah OP, i’m with you. they should all be beaten with a wet noodle then forced to hire a third party company at an exorbitant rate to number their buildings for them.
I live in an apartment complex that is in between two streets that are dead ends, where the parking lot actually acts as a cut-through between both streets. (To try to describe it, the whole set-up makes a “U” shape, with the apartment at the base of the “U”.) The (tiny) number to the apartment building? Is not on either side of the building, where it could be seen from either street. No, it’s in front of the building, where only people driving through the parking lot can see it. Rarely is there a time I order delivery where I don’t have to stand on the short steps outside the building and literally wave down the vehicle.
I used to drive for a same-day courier service and the ways of hiding numbers are myriad.
Best one. Up in one of the hill communities of the SF Bay Area(Woodside, Los Altos Hills, etc) A house with the address of 123 Nowhere Dr. has the driveway located a quarter mile up BetchaCantFindIt Rd.
Or a cul de sac with no house numbers at all and a communal mailbox.
The town of Carmel, Ca has no numbers on any building.
St. Joseph, MO - the older part of town (where the school I was trying to find to go to a basketball game was located) has street markers - +/- three feet tall stone markers with the street name chiseled on them, presumably around the time Jesse James was getting shot there.
Even once I figured out that they were the street signs, they were hard to read (particularly since it was twilight).
See a sample - go to Google Maps, and pop into street view at 27th and Felix - look at the northwest corner by the fire hydrant. On preview - the link is the street view and you can see the sign post.
Texas too. signs at right angles to each other but on the same plane (as opposed to the better way of street names at right angles but stacked one on top of the other) drive me bonkers.
Road construction where there are NO road signs at all.
I have a halogen floodlight that plugs into the power outlet! (And I’m not afraid to use it!)
And a pox on the person that came up with the idea of raised bronze numbers on a bronze background. Hard enough to see in the daytime, impossible at night. (unlighted, of course)
I was delivering pizza in high school, which was, er, decades ago - did we even have halogen back then? I was driving a truck that belonged to the company, and it had a spot light, but it didn’t reach very far.
His address was a suite number and a street address, and I looked it up on the internet before I set out. However, that place has not one but three buildings in it, and there are NO address numbers on any of the buildings. Names, yes, but no numbers, and all I had was a number. So I had to park (at the wrong building, as it turned out), get out, and go inside to inquire as to the address.
I did leave a suggestion when I was done with my appointment.
In Spain, traditionally streetname signs are plaques bolted to the walls at each corner. If a building is on the corner of La Calle Street and Avenida Avenue, then its first side will have a sign bolted to it saying “La Calle Street” and the other one will have a different sign saying “Avenida Avenue”. Those signs will be parallel to the street they name, because so is the building’s side.
If I catch whomever thought it was a good idea to put signs up on poles when there’s perfectly fine walls available, and have the signs go perpendicular to the street they name, and often have them several yards from the corner, I… I won’t use the posts to simulate a proctologist’s exam, but only because it’s illegal, damnit :mad:
Bah, if you think that’s confusing, try some of our glorious old village signposting in England- on the street my parents live on, the first 15 houses have a name only, no numbers at all, then inexplicably the street changes name for the next 16 houses, so you get 1-16 but with a different name which isn’t listed on signs at either end, then it goes back to the original name and you finally get number 1, in the middle of the row of houses. It’s all in a straight line, there’s no odd shaping or strange layout to provide any explanation.
Used to get so sick of the daily post swap every time we got a new postie with the other no.2 on the street.
Street changes, definitely. The original road probably had a b it of a loop there, and when they re-did it, they changed the major street to travel down the crosscut somebody put in. And cities being what they were, they didn’t just bite the bullet and re-address things. :rolleyes:
Pchs, I lived for one school year on a university campus in Scotland, and the post, courier services etc. couldn’t find my building because they were used to having “1 postcode = 1 tenement/building”… the postcode there covered the whole campus, but they would try to deliver everything to one specific dorm.
The problem there wasn’t street signage, it was them being unable to understand that “Navasbuilding, Room 312, Hall D, University Where Nava Is, PostCode” was not the same as “Grey Building, there is no 3rd floor, there is no Hall D, University Where Nava Is, PostCode”. Reading the whole addy seemed to be beyond their ability. The buildings were clearly marked and there were maps everywhere.
The absolute worst are vanity addresses. Every Dipshit Corporation with ten employees working out of a former crack house wants its address to be One Dipshit Plaza. Yeah, that’s easy to find, and really helpful when you’re looking for 12350 Crackhouse Lane down the block.