Frazz by Jef Mallett for November 15, 2012

And there was a wall at Wall Street.These days, most streets are named after the wife and kids of the contractor who built the houses that all look alike.

They built a shopping center in a town where I used to live and called it Pine Ridge. That region has no native pine trees. They didn’t even bother to name it for the trees they cut down.

There’s one near here called Hunters Point. Gee, I hope no hunters are pointing at ME!

The names are like epitaphs written on areas we have killed. Ultimately we’ll pay for the loss of sustainable resources…our bad.

Canal Street in New Orleans replaced a canal that was never built.

“The suburbs are where they cut down all the trees and then name streets after them!” – attributed to Alfred E. Neuman (fictional emblematic character of Mad Magazine)

That would be “Forestwood Lumber Arbor” actually.

I work in a Maryland suburb where the streets of the adjacent subdivision are named after elements of the dairy farm it replaced. Reserve Champion Drive, Grand Champion Drive, Barnside Place…

Condos, townhomes, and some actual houses. No bull(s), however.

I remember seeing a new subdivision in Colorado Springs named something like Pleasant Valley. I looked it up on a USGS survey map. It was originally called Rattlesnake Gulch.

I live on Cedar. The nearest cedar (Cedrus liban) is some 35 miles away straight line. There is a redcedar next door but they are really junipers. Cedars are not native to the western hemisphere.

True story: There is a street named “Emanon”. They ran out of names, and just admitted it. (Read it backwards.)

@Richard S. Russell To be fair, Lakepoint Commons is near a lake and near Frautschi point. There are more absurd names, alas!

@comicsssfan

Yes, I read that article, and it was very good! The gist of it was that the McMansions would be up for sale at prices so high that no one in the current economy would be able to buy them. As such, they would sit empty for years, attracting the grime and crime around them.

Contrary to the Atlantic’s prediction, however, what is happening is that the McMansions are being knocked down and replaced by cheaper, more affordable houses.

I live on Pecanwood, where nary a pecan tree is to be found.

Good thing the subdivision isn’t called Stinking Springs!

In the Chicago area, don’t trust any subdivision name that has any reference to water in it. There’s plenty of streams, ponds, small lakes, rivers, runnels, etc. to go around. So much water has been “diverted” that there are areas that flood every year, and a lot of people find out the hard way that they are in one of the areas that are not classified as a flood plain, but is a floodway or other term that does not have to be divulged when you buy a house.

And Times Square used to be full of X’s.

I grew up on Airfield Lane, and if you go back to maps from the 1930s, lo and behold, it indeed was an early airport.

Years ago, my Girl Scout troop was asked to help name streets in a desert second home community. We selected names of cacti. For the most part, the names used would not have been native to that particular desert.

there are some streets are even more incomprehensible. n west ave se?

plus, in japan…street names are somewhat non-existent. gps and asking the traffic cop where places are.

Shirl Summ: Lincoln’s favorite riddle: if you call a sheep’s tail a leg, how many legs does a sheep have? Four, calling a tail a leg does not make it one. Not only are the trees you (and far too many others) call a cedar, not a cedar, but a juniper (thus my use of redcedar as one word to distinguish), The cedar I mentioned is an import. It once looked just like the one on the Lebanese flag, but is now unfortunately dying.I remember, moving back from Canada, seeing four-foot shrubs between Albuquerque and Tucumcari and thinking “Where I came from [Vancouver] they are 100 feet tall, where I am going [Bonham], they are 35 feet tall, they are all redcedar and the only difference is water.”

There is a street in York, ME at the base of Mt A called “Pave Rd.” It is not paved.

My dad lived for many years in a subdivision in Las Vegas with streets all named for flowers or flowering plants; in a desert where the greenest thing for miles was sagebrush.