Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

San Francisco streets with confusingly similar names

j-nelson.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 48 posts

Re: San Francisco streets with confusingly similar names

#21

Post by dn3500 »

scrame wrote: post #13

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 figu…

Seattle is crazy. I used to live on 1st Ave N, which is the same physical street as 1st Ave and 1st Ave S, but don't confuse them because they all have their own numbers and some of them overlap. It is however completely different from 1st Ave NE, which is way on the other side of town. And this isn't an aberration, most of the streets work the same way.

Re: San Francisco streets with confusingly similar names

#24

Post by stevekemp »

seanhunter wrote: post #19

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…

Edinburgh has some confusion of its own too, where streets will have two names. Usually because several smaller streets eventually got joined up and became one.

So walk in a straight line and you pass along Nicolson Street -> St.Patrick Street -> Clerk Street -> Newigton Road.

Sometimes you see these signposted in a fun way too with signs for both the individual components and the "main" street:

https://thescottishpearl.uk/2022/06/28/streets-with-two-name...

Re: San Francisco streets with confusingly similar names

#25

Post by saagarjha »

> 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"

Re: San Francisco streets with confusingly similar names

#27

Post by queenkjuul »

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.

Re: San Francisco streets with confusingly similar names

#28

Post by queenkjuul »

notorandit wrote: post #23

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?

Pretty common here in Chicago, the unrelenting grid makes it pretty easy to just tell someone what major cross streets to target, or directions from an L stop.

Re: San Francisco streets with confusingly similar names

#29

Post by queenkjuul »

Benjammer wrote: post #3

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.

Funny enough Omaha, Nebraska does this more or less citywide. Aves are always West of their corresponding Street, East of the next highest Street, and some of the subdivisions out west get real whacky with things like 178th ave/ct/place/lane/drive/road/trail/plaza/terrace/...
Post reply on HN