Living in a town without ever knowing the street names (apartment complex, house)

[Nivalis]

This is hilarious. I recently found out that there are people in my town of 15K who don't know the names of non-main streets (there are only 4 main streets in town). My sister was telling me about something that happened on the other side of town when I asked her where exactly it occurred. She gave me some landmark descriptions, but didn't tell me the street name. When I asked for the street name, she said that she didn't know!

It was at that point that I realized I could never give out directions to my house using street names because I always got "I don't know where that street is" as a response. I always had to use terms like "after reaching the stop sign" and "when you see a pink house with a large yard." Fairly often I received a "where in town is that" response when I gave my address, even though I live on a well-traveled street.

Is it really this common? Or is there just something strange in the local water supply?

[Rachael84]

For a town that small, that's really strange. Just goes to show people there probably don't get around too much there or bother to learn about the town. I live in a massive, crowded suburb, and most people know quite a few of the residential streets here.

[Nivalis]

Yeah, when I lived in Detroit, I knew most of the street names on the northeast and northwest sides of the city. Detroit is basically a huge grid, though, so it is pretty easy to remember the names.

[Bydand]

Wow, must be in the water. Never lived someplace where nobody knew the names of the roads in town. I have lived where directions never consisted of the names of the roads though and just landmarks, but if you asked what roads they were referring to they always knew (Northern Maine, where the directions very well could include "where the old mill used to be", even though there isn't a soul alive who actually saw the old mill because it has been gone for 100+ years.)

[DubbleT]

I'm bad about street names.
"Yeah, you take that little road off Graham, you know the one right beside St. Mary's school, yeah, that road."
Of course it doesn't help when it seems like all the roads have at least three different names, depending on what part of town you're in. Or when the city has changed the name of the road, but the locals still use the old name when giving directions.

[skinem]

Yeah, I've run across that a few times east, west, north and south. I think in most cases it's one of a couple of things...people who have lived someplace their whole lives and just always knew where places were or how to get to them and therefore never really paid attention, or were people who weren't from there and hadn't been there long, therefore not knowing the names of "non-main" streets.

Personally, I always thought it was odd.

I can identify with what DubbleT said about the same road having three different names, depending upon where in town the road is. The other example that I've had problems with is in Atlanta...EVERYTHING is named "Peachtree"...blvd., road, street, lane, parkway, avenue, etc. , so when someone says "Yeah, it's on Peachtree" that doesn't tell me a thing!

[LauraC]

Originally Posted by Not Made for the South

This is hilarious. I recently found out that there are people in my town of 15K who don't know the names of non-main streets (there are only 4 main streets in town). My sister was telling me about something that happened on the other side of town when I asked her where exactly it occurred. She gave me some landmark descriptions, but didn't tell me the street name. When I asked for the street name, she said that she didn't know!

It was at that point that I realized I could never give out directions to my house using street names because I always got "I don't know where that street is" as a response. I always had to use terms like "after reaching the stop sign" and "when you see a pink house with a large yard." Fairly often I received a "where in town is that" response when I gave my address, even though I live on a well-traveled street.

Is it really this common? Or is there just something strange in the local water supply?

I don't know a lot of street names in my TN town (pop 26,700). It covers 85.5 square miles of land. I can get you to my place from the main roads with street names and that's about it. I've lived here 2 years, 5 months.

My former MD town (pop 21,000) sits on only 5 square miles of land and I didn't know side street names there, either. I lived there 12 years. Didn't do much in the town off of the main roads. I didn't even know the names of the roads inside my apartment complex.

Didn't know the names of side streets in my Long Island town, either.

If I need to know side street names for directions, and I do need to know them for that, I look them up on Mapquest but then I forget about them.

As a receiver of directions, however, I want to know street names not landmarks and don't tell me turn north onto XYZ street. I need to know right or left.

[missymomof3]

There are streets in my neighborhood I don't know the names of, there are streets all over I don't know. Why? Because I use landmarks as directions instead of streets unless they are main. I just don't pay enough attanetion to them to know them all.

[scarletneon]

I know most major street names and can also take it one step further by
a. giving you directions with grid numbers and
b. telling you exactly how far you have to go.

I LOVE the Chicago grid.

[Infamous92]

I only know a few street names in my neighborhood of 36k, its most of the #streets I can't remember, I remember most of the named streets fine.