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San Francisco streets with confusingly similar names

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Re: San Francisco streets with confusingly similar names

#41

Post by rsynnott »

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…

Dublin has a very large urban park, called Phoenix Park, with a commuter train line running to the north of it. There's a station close to the park, within 10 minutes walking distance. About 20 years ago, Irish Rail opened a new station, 20 minutes from the nearest edge of the park. Obviously, they called _this_ station 'Phoenix Park'. And then had to put up posters in other stations warning people that if they wanted to go to Phoenix Park, they shouldn't go to the station called Phoenix Park, they should go to Ashtown. Obviously.

(It eventually got renamed; it's now called "Navan Road Parkway", the 'parkway' referring to a park and ride facility, not to the park. This may seem like a reasonable rename, but it's actually a masterstroke in forward planning for confusing names, because the line is being extended to Navan.)

Re: San Francisco streets with confusingly similar names

#42

Post by birdman3131 »

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.

Re: San Francisco streets with confusingly similar names

#44

Post by Leonard_of_Q »

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.

Re: San Francisco streets with confusingly similar names

#45

Post by esho »

lxgr wrote: post #39
r0m4n0 wrote: post #5

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.

I’ve always wondered if some of the downtown Manhattan/downtown Brooklyn streets were continued continuations of one and the same street, maybe connected by ferries in earlier days, or just references to the same namesake (or possibly each other). And speaking of Brooklyn, I really wonder what city planners were thinking with that thing in Williamsburg where numbered streets exist twice, once as “ North th Street” an…

Brooklyn and City of New York (Manhattan/Bronx) were separate cities until 1898. Prior to that, Brooklyn was on an expansion spree annexing cities and towns to the north (Williamsburg, Bushwick) to the east (New Lots) and south (New Utrecht, Flatbush) to make the size of the current borough hence the confusing street names. Queens has a solution to that.

Re: San Francisco streets with confusingly similar names

#46

Post by lxgr »

esho wrote: post #45
lxgr wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve always wondered if some of the downtown Manhattan/downtown Brooklyn streets were continued continuations of one and the same street, maybe connected by ferries in earlier days, or just references to the same namesake (or possibly each other). And speaking of Brooklyn, I really wonder what city planners were thinking with that thing in Williamsburg where numbered streets exist twice, once as “ North th Street” an…

Brooklyn and City of New York (Manhattan/Bronx) were separate cities until 1898. Prior to that, Brooklyn was on an expansion spree annexing cities and towns to the north (Williamsburg, Bushwick) to the east (New Lots) and south (New Utrecht, Flatbush) to make the size of the current borough hence the confusing street names. Queens has a solution to that.

Ah, I didn't consider that even Brooklyn itself wasn't always a single city. That makes sense, thank you!

Re: San Francisco streets with confusingly similar names

#47

Post by SllX »

birdman3131 wrote: post #42

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.

Is the ferry at least, free?

Re: San Francisco streets with confusingly similar names

#48

Post by pseudohadamard »

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…

Or Mannheim, where the streets in the central Quadratestadt area have no names. Or Japanese addresses which don't have streets. Or Queen Street in Australia/NZ, places largely settled during the reign of Queen Victoria so absolutely everywhere has a Queen Street. Or any city over a certain size where, through simple statistics, you're going to end up with streets with similar-sounding names.
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