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merlyn (47)

merlyn
  merlyn@stonehenge.com
http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/
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PAUSE-ID: MERLYN [cpan.org].
See my home page [stonehenge.com].

Journal of merlyn (47)

Friday January 16, 2004
01:29 AM

geography quiz

[ #16850 ]
What two and only two places in the US can you find a sequence of roughly adjacent streets named:
  • Arlington
  • Berkeley
  • Clarendon
  • Dartmouth
  • Exeter
  • Fairfield
  • Gloucester
  • Hereford
  • Ipswich
  • Jersey
  • Kenmore

Bonus question: why do I know this list from memory?


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  • Because you live in one of these places ?

    Also, all the names start with the running sequence A,B,C...K , which makes it easier to remember.

  • Well, at least one is Portland, I suppose? I seem to remember something cute like that going on with street names.

    Also, while walking around OSCON, someone laughed at my pronunciation of some important street name which, apparently, everyone who isn't from Portland mispronounced. What is it? (I really don't remember.)

    I was also mocked for mentioning the WILL-a-met river.
    --
    rjbs
    • No, the Alphabetical sequence in Portland begins with Burnside (Couch, Davis, Everett, Flanders [doh!], Glisan, Hoyt, Irving, Johnson, Kearney, Lovejoy, Marshall, Northrup, Overton, Pettygrove, Quimby, Raleigh, Savier, Thurman, Upshur, Vaughn, Wilson). Good guess though.

      As for funny pronounciations, perhaps it was "couch", which is pronounced "Cooooch", apparently to honor the person it was named after. Apparently, these names come from local historical figures.

      --
      • Randal L. Schwartz
      • Stonehenge
    • When I was living in Durango, Colorado, I lived on Florida Road, which is prounounced "Fluh-REED-uh".

      Here in Chicago, there's also a Goethe street, pronounced "GO-thee" (soft th, not hard).

      --

      --
      xoa

      • The difference, being, of course, that "Flor-EE-da" is how the name "ought" to be pronounced, whereas "GO-thee" is Just Totally Wrong. But sometimes I think maybe it's better to be entirely wrong than just a little wrong. Hearing it pronounced "Gerta" really rubs me the wrong way.
  • Boston.

    As to why you remember them I have no idea. A friend of mine was an au-pair there years ago, and she found it amusing that a many of the streets were named after British towns and cities :)

    • Yes, Back Bay in Boston is one of them. But where's the other one?
      --
      • Randal L. Schwartz
      • Stonehenge
      • Looks like it's Gladstone, Oregon, but I cheated and used Google. Living in Boston, they're committed to my memory because that makes it easier to stumble home drunk.

        • Re:It's... (Score:3, Insightful)

          by merlyn (47)
          Yes! It's Gladstone! I grew up there for the first 13 years of my life.

          The first time I set foot in Boston's back bay (for a web conference back in 98, I think it was), I was at a hotel on Dartmouth street, and when I started exploring, my jaw dropped.

          "I know these street names!"

          So I set up this quiz to record this unusual fact.

          Thanks for cheating. {grin} But I doubt it would have come out any other way.

          --
          • Randal L. Schwartz
          • Stonehenge
          • And there I was thinking it was Birmingham, Alabama - close [multimap.com], but I didn't check close enough, my only excuse can be that its almost time to hit the pub.
    • Could it be that travelling down it you pass these roads in alphabetical order?

      from multimap [multimap.com]
    • Barbie, does that smiley imply that you know what I've just found out?
    • Well, that's an au pair for ya. Anybody with half a brain wouldn't find it amusing. Hell, Boston itself was named after a British town. It is "New England", after all. Every geographic feature there is named after a place in England, or else it has an Indian name. (To overgeneralize a little...)

      O.k., just for fun, here are the names of the 50 states, categorized by the origin of the name.

      Indian names (mostly names of tribes in the area):
      Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois,
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