A Journal of My Mid-Life Crisis

7 March 1999 - On the Proper Naming of Streets

Before I get to this week's rant, I'll quickly followup on a few things from past weeks. I've been continuing both fundraising and training walks for the breast cancer walk. I suppose things are going well but I am never content with my progress. I was a bit sore after the 10 kilometer (6.2 mile) volksmarch walk I had done last week, for example. And then I looked at the training schedule chart in the walker handbook and it's another 2 months before the 6-8 mile level (and another month before the 5-6 mile level) on the chart, so I'm actually doing fine. And I did another 10K volksmarch on Saturday and was fine to do a 5.4 mile walk on Sunday. Of that, 3.4 miles were an official training walk; the other 2 were my walking to and from the starting point because I thought it was silly to drive when the Westside Pavilion is just a mile away. And none of the other three women who were at the training walk had started their fundraising. So I am probably agonizing for naught.

Another quick followup item has to do with work. I've probably mentioned more than once all the effort that we've been putting in on getting agreement on the wording of one phrase in a requirement. Thursday we had a telecon where we got rid of the last remaining objections. I came back upstairs and told Milo that "we've finally nailed the stake into the heart of the vampire." It was actually a pretty good analogy; that issue had been draining the energy of several people for months. Just call me Miriam the Requirements Slayer!

My final followup involves the Mauritius film from Seven Habits class. It seems there wasn't quite so much racial harmony there as the film suggested. Most news reports didn't bother to mention it, but a recent incident involving the death of a reggae singer whilst in police custody touched off three days of rioting. And the story I heard (on NPR, of course) more than suggested that there was a definite history of discrimination against the Afro-Creole population who make up some 25-30% of Mauritians.

Anyway, the volksmarch this week was in Rancho Santa Margarita and I noticed something very interesting there. Rancho Santa Margarita is a planned community and their planning included provision for worship. So there is one street which has several churches in a row - Lutheran, Episcopalian, Christian Science, Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons - all of them in remarkably similar architectural style of pinkish adobe with red Spanish tile roof. (In fact, this is the only Mormon church I can recall seeing that isn't painted white.) The interesting part is that the name of this street is Via con Dios. It's obviously contrived. The punnishness must be intended because Via del Dios would be more logical (at least, I think it would. I admit that my Spanish is extremely minimal and entirely ungrammatical.)

Anyway, this got me thinking about street names. I sometimes contemplate buying a house and I could not bring myself to commit to buying a house if I didn't like the name of the street it was on. The ultimate in cool is to live on a street named after you, of course. This is not as impossible as it sounds. There are several smaller streets in my home town that were named after the people living in the corner houses and a considerable amount of my 9 year old quota of jealousy was directed at Janet Petit, who lived at 1 Petit Place. (By the way, they don't rename streets when people move. One needs to purchase on an entirely new street to get the privilege.)

I'm not sure about the idea of a street with your first name. I don't think I've ever seen a Miriam Street, anyway, and I think it would fail on the grounds that I spend enough time spelling my name on the phone and having it come out mangled anyway that I don't need that hassle with my address as well. A lot of other names fail on the grounds of being too much of a pain to spell over the phone.

Another area I have mixed feelings about is streets versus avenues versus drives, lanes, circles, courts, etc.. I've lived mostly on avenues, actually, with a few drives mixed in. I think Lanes and Courts are best, as they suggest intimacy. The real troublesome streets are the ones with foreign terms. My brother lives in the "French quarter" of San Jose and spends an inordinate amount of time having to educate rubes who ask "is that Rue Calais Avenue or Rue Calais Street?" On the other hand, there's a certain snobbish appeal there.

There are acceptable but boring names for streets. State names are fine. Tree names are fine, but should be accompanied by plantings of the tree being named, in which case most streets in Los Angeles would be named either Palm Way or Jacaranda Court. (Actually, I would love to live on Jacaranda Court if there is one - pretty name, pretty trees.) Presidents are fine, though I doubt anyone will be eager to create a Clinton Street in a presidential neighborhood soon. There are certain presidents who are safer for street names than others and it isn't as obvious as it might be. Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln are clear favorites, Monroe and Madison are fine fillers, but why are there more Harrison Streets than Adams Streets when there were two of each? Assassination may lift McKinley (and Kennedy) above the masses when it comes to street naming, but didn't seem to help Garfield much. And why are so few streets named after my favorite president? We need more Wilson Streets!

And, then, there are just names. I have friends who live on Skyfarm Drive, which sounds like an appealing place to raise, say, venus flytraps. I used to live a block from Bienvenue Avenue, which clearly had nice vistas, but may fail the spelling test. My personal favorite is a street I drive past every now and then. While Culver City is probably not many people's idea of paradise (not that it's a bad place, pe se, just not an idyllic one), how could one dare to find life unpleasant on Utopia Street?