by seanhunter
4 subcomments
- For goodness sake no-one tell the author about London.
In almost every area of London there is a street called “high street”, and most of them have a “church street” also. Locals (and many maps) helpfully prepend the area name onto the street eg “Chiswick High Street”, “Kensington High Street”[1], “Stoke Newington Church Street” etc, but the actual address is “High street” or whatever meaning just several completely different streets. Not to mention many many other streets that are straight up duplicated (eg there are at least 10 “Bath Road”s) or confusingly similar.
There are also streets that have one name but are not contiguous for historical reasons. Eg my street crosses another road but the two halves are not directly opposite each other. Several times I have been on the phone with a confused delivery driver who is on the wrong side of this and is trying to convince me that my house doesn’t exist because the numbers only go up to 50 or so. Our street is also confusing because for some of the way the numbers are conventional (ie even on one side, odd on the other) but for some of it there are no houses on the other side, so adjacent houses have sequential numbers.
[1] Also the tube names this “High Street Kensington”, not “Kensington High street”. Tube names are also confusing. I live near “Turnham Green” tube which is thus named because it was the site of the battle of Turnham Green in the English civil war. This tube opens out onto a green which is not called “Turnham Green” it’s called Acton Green Common, and it is in Chiswick, not Acton. The green in Acton is called Acton Park. The actual Turnham Green is closer to another tube called “Chiswick Park”, which also opens up on a park that also isn’t called “Chiswick Park”, it’s called “Chiswick Green”. This park is incorrectly named on most online maps because at some point they probably just gave up at the insanity of it all and the boundary isn’t obvious.
by Leonard_of_Q
0 subcomment
- Just here around our farm in Sweden there is a village called 'Nygård' (translates to 'New farm'), an area called 'Hede' and one called 'Heden'. Saying you live in 'Nygård' won't help much since there's at least 450 of those. Heden? About 550. Hede is a little more descriptive since there's only about 60 of those. To really give a full description of where the specific 'Nygård' or 'Heden' is you need to add the parish name ('socken' in Swedish, a remnant of the time when the Church was responsible for keeping the population registers, this task is now performed by the tax authorities), the municipality/county ('kommun') and the province ('län'). Local place names, whether those are areas or streets or villages are anything but unique.
- I lived off Divisadero briefly, sometimes referring to the general area as "diviz". I looked up Division St and realized I've probably driven on it many times but don't have any particular recollection of it or any confusion around it.
- Not too far south of SF in Mountain View, "Mountain View Ave" runs adjacent to "Miramonte Ave" - and "Miramonte" can reasonably be translated from Spanish as "Mountain View".
- This is nothing compared to the peachtreestreets in Atlanta.
- Used to drive me insane living in NYC. Funny that Google Maps even highlights both Gold street in Brooklyn and the Gold street in the financial district if you do a search and zoom out. I wonder if that’s intentional or not.
by zimpenfish
0 subcomment
- My London example - Vanbrugh Hill leading into Vanbrugh Fields which leads into Vanbrugh Park (from which branches Vanbrugh Park Road and Vanbrugh Park Road West) which turns into Beaconsfield Park except Vanbrugh Park has jumped across an open area to become a road (terminating at Blackheath Royal Standard) and going the opposite direction leading into Vanbrugh Terrace before terminating at Shooters Hill Road.
All of that is related to Vanbrugh Castle which is, of course, at the junction of Maze Hill and Westcombe Park Road.
- > Geary St. / Geary Blvd.: These are actually a single stretch of road. The eastern portion of Geary St. extends from Market St. to Van Ness Ave., where it transforms into Geary Blvd. From there, Geary Blvd. runs to its terminus at 48th Ave. (near Lands End). Even people who live or work on Geary get this confused, and will refer to the eastern end as “Geary Boulevard” and vice-versa.
Yeah that's why everyone just calls it "Geary"
- 'Park Presidio Blvd. / Presidio St. / Presidio Blvd' is the only one thats legit. do able to understand but 2 are parallel and like half a mile apart
- Most of these aren’t confusing in the least.
If you want confusing look for an address on El Camino in South Bay. When you cross over to another city, they remember the addresses on El Camino so it’s easy to get lost and not know where a particular address is unless you correlate to a city which pre-GPS was tough.
- There are so many duplicate streets in the Bay Area.
The other day I entered my friend's address on Portola Ave in the Tesla, engaged FSD, and it took us to the address in South SF (a township just south of SF, hence "South SF"). We just let it drive, assuming it was somehow lost, but then as we neared the destination, we realized what had happened.
by birdman3131
1 subcomments
- For my city it is Free Ferry for some reason.
Free Ferry Road
Free Ferry St N (Multiple not near each other)
Free Ferry Ln (Multiple sections as well.)
Free Ferry Cir
Free Ferry heights
Free Ferry Landing
I feel like I am missing a couple but google maps is being a pain right now.
- Not a single one of these really checks out as a point of legitimate confusion. If you’re coming at San Francisco with zero knowledge, are studying a map and somehow identify these somewhat similarly named roads, maybe you could get mixed up. A modicum of knowledge will tell you this: the Presidio and Treasure Island are basically their own worlds within the City. They are part of San Francisco, but for historical reasons, they’re built different and you’re so incredibly unlikely to end up at an address for either them trying to go to whatever the actual address of your destination is that these don’t even rank as moderately confusing.
- The intersection of Bellevue Place, Bellevue Court, and
Bellevue Ave in Seattle:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/4RyEKj3ArdhoJYp69
- There is a similar problem in Melbourne, where two suburbs close by will have streets with the same name. For instance Gipps St in East Melbourne is roughly a kilometre south of Gipps St in Collingwood, and they share street numbers.
by shalmanese
1 subcomments
- Not streets but an outsider to the Bay Area might be confused that a trip from Richmond to Inner Richmond is like an hour’s drive.
- Another confusing one - though at the city level - is Vancouver, Washington vs. Vancouver, British Columbia. It’s been a while since I’ve been in the Pacific Northwest, but I seem to recall I-5 signage giving those two options, one north and one south. I’ve always wondered how many drivers picked the wrong one at a glance and ended up at an international border.
Edit: Once I took a Lyft/Uber in midtown Sacramento. Midtown Sacramento is on a grid where north-south streets are numbered and east-west streets are lettered. The driver wasn’t familiar with the Latin alphabet. So what would seem like the simplest structure was, in that case, inscrutable.
by 2gremlin181
0 subcomment
- A lesser known one (which makes it all the more confusing) is Cleary, right off similarly sounding Geary.
by Benjammer
3 subcomments
- Now do Long Island City in Queens, where 44th Ave, 44th rd, and 44th st are all in a row of blocks parallel to each other.
- Naw, just actually live here for a couple years and you'll figure it out. If you're just a jerkass ubering everywhere then it prolly won't bother you anyway since you're just clicking links from texts.
I get it can be confusing, but its no more confusing than Manhattan or seattle, which has a terrible vortex of 45ths and many many 15ths.
Division and Divisidero are generally not anywhere near each other. You can figure that out quickly. Similar to streets and avenues.
Welcome to living in a city.
- Sylvan Dr and Forest View Dr are two blocks from each other.
by dnnddidiej
0 subcomment
- This is normal for anywhere.
by queenkjuul
0 subcomment
- Chicago does pretty good in general, the intersection of North Western Ave and West North Ave is always the most obvious, it's easy to get Central Ave and Central Park Ave mixed up too, they run parallel to each other and they're both pretty far west. There's also Lawrence and St. Lawrence, but they're like 25 miles apart so nobody really gets them mixed up.
by notorandit
1 subcomments
- Are you kidding? If you confound
> Mason St. and Masonic Ave., or Divisadero St. and Division St.
then you must be either very distracted or dyslexic.
What was the last time you gave or got an address by word of mouth?
- there's a Harvard Ave and a Harvard st and then there's a second Harvaed ave in Boston's neighborhoods. (Allston & Brighton.)
- Come on down to Atlanta and take the Peachtree industrial blvd to Peachtree Corners rd, or take a left on old Peachtree rd down to Peachtree ave and get back on Peachtree rd to the Peachtree connector over by Peachtree circle.
Hacker News