Atlanta, GA street name generator

[cos]

Pick one word from each column
(optional)		(optional)		(optional)
New Old North South East West	Peachtree	Industrial Battle Ridge Hills Corners Dunwoody	Road Parkway Boulevard Avenue Street Place Way Lane Walk Drive Circle	NE NW SE SW

It's okay to include from both the first column and fifth column in the same name - names like "West Peachtree Street NW" do in fact exist. I'm not sure I got everything for the middle column, so if you see something I've missed, let me know.

Note: "Peachtree Industrial" cannot technically be generated from this chart, but appears to be a real name for a small road near (but not the same as) Peachtree Industrial Boulevard, according to Google Maps.

Comments

(o:

[cthulhia]

win.

[warlord-mit.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that sounds about right from my visits.

[charolastra00.livejournal.com]

So true. I went to high school on one of these streets and to get there had to go via another Peachtree variation. I'm fairly sure my boyfriend lives on a completely different Peachtree downtown and has to navigate Peachtree Industrial to get there from my house.

[kaasirpent]

LOL! I live in Atlanta, and that is spot on. Well done, sir. :)

[geek-72.livejournal.com]

I'm still surprised the GPS's actually work to a degree in Atlanta and don't have you driving in circles all day.

[cos]

Whereas here in Boston, which has a completely different style of street name confusion, I've seen GPSes and Google Maps confused or totally misdirected many times.

[geek-72.livejournal.com]

if you follow a GPS's directions or Google maps to my house you go through 4 trees and the final destination is a pond

[mackelzinzie.livejournal.com]

that is amazing! Where do you live?

[(Anonymous)]

I know I'm many months late to comment, but I used to live in an apartment block directly above the Blackwall Tunnel in London. (Aside: it was a fab place) However, it was new, and many GPS couldn't find it by address. Of those that could, sometimes they couldn't tell the difference between my above-ground apartment, and the below the surface of the river, and much more major road, tunnel.

And sadly, if you were taken to the point in the first third of the tunnel, and heard the sad, incorrect, message: "You have arrived at your destination" you were instead condemned to continuing through the tunnel, finding a turn-around point some 1/2 mile or more past the exit, and then queueing up to drive back through the tunnel to get to my dinner party.

Dinner would be stone-cold before you got there!

[kaasirpent]

I was in Boston and the surrounding satellite-cities quite a few times in the 90s for business. I seem to recall more than once getting directions to turn onto a street which, when we got there, was either one way in the wrong direction or had been completely blocked off and closed.

I guess every city has its own navigation hazards.

Be thankful you don't live in the south. We tend to give directions based on things that aren't there anymore. "Go down to where the Sears used to be and take a left at where the Burger King burned down, then take a right where Mack's Bait Shop used to be...." (REAL directions in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, by the way.)

[cos]

Directions based on where things used to be happens a lot here, and I bet anywhere where there are populations that have stayed put for a long time. However, none of us have anything on Managua!

A friend of mine lived in Managua for about a year. Her address was:
"four doors down from the corner if you're headed toward the lake, on the same side as the church"

[mackelzinzie.livejournal.com]

did you put that on letters, or did she have to pick up letters at the post office?

[cos]

Yes, that's what you'd write on a letter.

[circuit-four.livejournal.com]

*lives on the Cambridge-Somerville border, and sobs for hours because you're RIGHT* ;__;

And of course, there's that lovely five-and-a-half-way non-Euclidean intersection in Davis Square, which I'm pretty sure was implemented as a population control device. And the fact you can go into town and stand on the freakin' corner of Tremont and itself. *sigh*

[circuit-four.livejournal.com]

Oh, and since you express curiosity about other folks wandering in at random: Digg article about Atlanta street names. Or maybe it was Reddit, can't tell 'em apart anymore. :D

[cos]

I find Davis Square o be not that bad compared to the general area. Especially since Somerville puts up those big blue signs telling you what all the streets coming up are. Although that tactic is not enough to save Union Square, which is a real space warp and Somerville's main contribution to the confusion of driving in Boston. It took me years to get the hang of Union Square.

For scary driving experiences, Kenmore Square in Boston and Kelly Square in Worcester beat anything Somerville can offer.

[mackelzinzie.livejournal.com]

I wonder that myself.

[cos]

Thanks :) How'd you find my post?

[kaasirpent]

A friend of mine (ian_smith) saw a link to this on another site and sent it to me.

I tweeted a link to your post because a lot of my Twitter-friends are from Atlanta, as well, so a few more random people may also be by. But most of them are non-LJ. :)

[pseydtonne.livejournal.com]

Oh dude, yes! To be fair, we name a lot of streets the same things over and over here.

Example: Waltham Road in Lexington is the road to Waltham Center, and thus Lexington Street in Waltham is the main road to the Battle Green in Lexington. They're the same road in adjacent towns. When people commuted by horse and cart, this was an important detail. If you're new to Boston, these town borders are a blur.

I was juiced that you mentioned Dunwoody. My previous employer's headquarters is on Ashford Dunwoody Road in Atlanta. I wouldn't have thought about that had I not been filling out the tax forms this week. (Yeah, it's sad -- I did all the math in late January but I had to wait until my HC proof arrived last week.)

[cos]

(see my reply to hermitgeecko)

[hermitgeecko.livejournal.com]

::snickers::

North Carolina was very bad about this, too. A favorite spot was where Airport Drive crossed with Airport Boulevard in Chapel Hill.

Eventually, people noticed that this was confusing (particularly since the airport there is tiny and not used for, well, anything) and renamed it. It is now Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Not to be confused with the Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Raleigh.

At the time of the renaming, there was an editorial (I forget which paper ran it, but probably the Tarheel Gazette) about the great opportunity here to promote awareness of black culture and local history by naming the boulevard instead after one of any number of local black heroes rather than naming it after one of the two activists that everyone already knows about.

The general response of the local public (based on letters written to the editor) was that anyone who didn't want to name a road after Martin Luther King Jr. was racist scum.

This is the sort of thing that fascinates me... when it's far, far away and happening in someone else's city.

[cos]

Hah! That MLK story is funny.

Roads with similar names crossing each other happens all over the country (including here in Boston), although the sheer number of Peachtrees in Atlanta really got me the first time I was there. I suppose there are probably just as many Washington Streets and Beacon Streets around here, but since other parts of the country don't have that "re-use every street name in every town" thing we've got, they had to come up with a different name for each Peachtree. They can't all be "Peachtree Street".

[mackelzinzie.livejournal.com]

I mean, yes they can.... there are more streets that the permutations available with your chart, so obviously you've got to repeat "peachtree street" a few times.

but have you ever SEEN a peach tree? nope! not on those streets!

[bike4fish.livejournal.com]

In the northern suburbs of Detroit, there is South Boulevard East, South Boulevard West, East South Boulevard and West South Boulevard.

In Detroit itself, there is Outer Drive, which rings the old city boundaries. Lots of 90 degree turns, so if you aren't careful, you can find yourself blocks off Outer Drive before you know it.

There are also the Mile and Half-mile roads - some of the Mile roads are really X Mile (such as 8 Mile, Detroit's northern boudary). Others (and I think all the Half-miles) have regular street names, but everyone refers to them by the mile designation. Then there's Little Mack and Big Mack...

[cos]

In the northern suburbs of Detroit, there is South Boulevard East, South Boulevard West, East South Boulevard and West South Boulevard.

That reminds me of the east bank of the Hudson around Catskill, NY which features Route 32, Route 32A, Route 23, Route 23A, and Route 23B. Do not try to give a dyslexic person directions through that area! (Note: A couple of them are county routes, so aren't labelled as boldly on the Google Map, but the route labels on the road signs are just as big)

[annathyst]

Thankfully, 23B (or is it 23A? augh!) is actually Old Route 23 and eventually meets back up with it...somewhere. I used to go through Catskill on my way to and from college from my parents' and, yes, it's terribly confusing until you get used to it.

(You left out all the 9s! 9, 9A, 9G...)

[sauergeek.livejournal.com]

Only the east-west mile roads are named X Mile, starting from 7 Mile and going to at least 34 Mile. The north-south mile roads all have names.

Never mind Lois Lane, also in the same area, which tends to draw disbelief.

Very minor suggestions

[(Anonymous)]

Also needs, in various columns: Chapel, Ferry, Paces, Ponce de Leon, and Mill :)