San Francisco streets with confusingly similar names | Hacker News Reader

San Francisco streets with confusingly similar names

j-nelson.net

29 pointsSeenNotHeard47 comments

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.

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...

Reminds me of this bit in Joseph Conrad’s “The Secret Agent” about London’s topographical mysteries:

”With a turn to the left Mr Verloc pursued his way along a narrow street by the side of a yellow wall which, for some inscrutable reason, had No. I Chesham Square written on it in black letters. Chesham Square was at least sixty yards away, and Mr Verloc, cosmopolitan enough not to be deceived by London’s topographical mysteries, held on steadily, without a sign of surprise or indignation. At last, with business-like persistency, he reached the Square, and made diagonally for the number 10. This belonged to an imposing carriage gate in a high, clean wall between two houses, of which one rationally enough bore the number 9 and the other was numbered 37; but the fact that this last belonged to Porthill Street, a street well known in the neighbourhood, was proclaimed by an inscription placed above the ground-floor windows by whatever highly efficient authority is charged with the duty of keeping track of London’s strayed houses. Why powers are not asked of Parliament (a short Act would do) for compelling those edifices to return where they belong is one of the mysteries of municipal administration. Mr Verloc did not trouble his head about it, his mission in life being the protection of the social mechanism, not its perfectionment or even its criticism.”

Berlin has the same issue.

I believe it’s pretty common for cities that used to be several independent municipalities that were merged relatively recently, or at least where street names were already too established to make renaming for uniqueness feasible at that point.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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 “<j> North <i>th Street” and once as “South <i>th Street”, which completely clashes with Manhattan naming the Eastern/Western part of the same street (“<j> <E/W> <i>Th Street”). Not to mention the completely separate set of numbered streets (“<j> <i>th Street”, without cardinal direction indicators) in the south or Brooklyn…

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!

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.

'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

> 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"

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.

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.

I lived on Dana St in Oakland at the Berkeley border, we continually found lost and confused people - the street continued down our block and stopped, reappeared after a jog a half block away, numbers got smaller as it went south, over the border numbers got smaller as the went north and the street disappears for 3 blocks as it crosses Telegraph Ave (literally where the telegraph was installed in a straight line) diagonally - 4-5 pieces with numbers going in opposite directions.

Even wore our portion was originally in Berkeley, the border was moved 100 years or so ago so that someone could open the closest bar to the campus when Berkeley had more stringent liquor licensing

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 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.

The intersection of Bellevue Place, Bellevue Court, and Bellevue Ave in Seattle:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/4RyEKj3ArdhoJYp69

I joke with my wife that this is the nexus of the universe.

Kramer, stay alive! No matter what occurs, I will find you!!!

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.

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?

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.

That’s nothing compared to the drive from Mongolia to Inner Mongolia.

Wait until you hear about outer space and inner space.

North pole to south pole. Pole is a big place!

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.

Not to be confused with Vancouver Island, British Columbia (which does not contain Vancouver, British Columbia).

A lesser known one (which makes it all the more confusing) is Cleary, right off similarly sounding Geary.

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.

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.

60th is worse: https://bsky.app/profile/gregorybrothers.bsky.social/post/3m...

Also in Brighton Beach there's 1st street, place, path, lane, terrace, walk, and court.

I mean the opposite of that is like the one time where I was meeting a friend at something like 7th avenue (or some # I don't remember), and accidentally went to 7th street... on the other side of the city. You don't forget to pay close attention after that xD.

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/...

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.

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.

Sylvan Dr and Forest View Dr are two blocks from each other.

there's a Harvard Ave and a Harvard st and then there's a second Harvaed ave in Boston's neighborhoods. (Allston & Brighton.)

This is normal for anywhere.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com