name your own streets!

this is the guy who approves the street names in the first place. We can contact him ... or we can try.

Yes, I know I'm obsessed, but can't you see I'm on a roll? The LA Times had an article last week about this dude and his increasingly difficult job finding appropriate odonyms for the Inland Empire (700 new streets last year in LA and Orange counties.)

Each week Trichak receives up to 50 maps of new housing tracts. Using a red pen, he eliminates street names he can't pronounce or spell easily, and ones that are too common or too long. Two weeks ago, for example, he rejected Bird of Paradise Street for a property in Wildomar because of its length — the letters would be too squished on a street sign.

His task is further complicated by the fact that the supply of standard street names has been outstripped by the growth of housing in the Inland Empire. ... Trichak says his job is to give developers room for creativity while ensuring that street names won't confuse police, firefighters or postal carriers.

Riverside County is starred here because it "ranks No. 1 in the nation as the county with the highest average annual net population gain over the last four years."

The developers are complaining:

"It's so hard to come up with something new and original," said Smith, who decided to give tribute to the Utah ski resorts near which he grew up.

Okay, first of all: boo-fuckin-hoo. Secondly, Utah ski resorts?

Here's where we come in, people (and, by the way, this is exactly why we shouldn't leave the name game to developers. If you had imagination enough to properly name LA and Orange County streets, you wouldn't work as a developer.) Let's come up with lists of street names (use the comments section, of course) and when I have a critical mass, I'll contact the LA Times and ask for this guy's email. Then I'll email him the lists to forward to name-stuck developers. Sound good?

You can do themed lists or not. I don't care. Just try to make them viable, i.e.:

1. not obviously profane or offensive
2. not too long or too many words
3. not puns or anything that will come out confusing
4. and ferchrissake, not boring or mundane

Of course, feel free to break any of these rules.

Here's a start:

• comfort foods theme

Cake St.
Cookies St.
Ice Cream Row
Toast Ln.
Grilled Cheese Ave.
Ramen Rd.
Chicken Soup St.
Crackers St.
Chips St.

• obscure sexual references theme

Tightlace St.
Prince Albert St.
Yoghurt St.
Retif Court
Yiff St.
Santorum Blvd.
Peg St.
Train St.
Vanilla Ct.
(disclaimer: I looked these up on the internet and you can too.)

• a new development where Asian Americans are likely to dominate

Karaoke St.
Spam St.
Bruce Lee St.
Doctor Ct.
Anna May St.
Bubble Tea Ln.
Noguchi St.
Takei St.

• completely made up words that could mean something in another language

Tubesh
Rorsken St.
Malalach Ln.
Esem St.
Quar Ct.
Fushiby St.
Mil Ave.
Blasse Blvd.
Sclabot St.

• rejected bandnames theme

Warbishop Way
Goodwater Ln.
Treatstar St.
Blue Sound Blvd.
Turgid Box St.
Treefear St.
Feisty Temple St.
Money Moon St.

Comments

[Meghan]

My dad worked for a builder for awhile, so there's streets named after me and my siblings in various developments around suburban philly -- Alexander Court, Meredith Circle, Meghan Circle -- actually there's two Meghan Circles, one with the old spelling of my name (Megan), and one w/ the new (my parents legally changed it when I went to kindergarten, weird I know). There's also Claudia Way, named after my mom, but since my parents split up mention of that street makes my mom really bitter. I think there's also a street named after my dad's second wife (Kira), but I don't think there's one for his third...

[dkp]

tightlace, seelight? the others were all in the urban dictionary (save, technically, for retif, which was represented by retifism), but i found nothing for tightlace or tight lace.

are there extraordinary connotations to this word/phrase that escape me? or is it just another way of saying "uptight" or "vanilla?"

[claire]

meghan: that is way too cool! you are excused from making up street names since you already are one! two, actually.

dennis: i shortened some of the words. tightlace is for "tightlacing", another term for corset fetish. retif is the name of the guy retifism was named after.

plus, where are YOUR street name suggestions?

[dkp]

aha . . . now i see what i've been missing in my time away from sf . . . but as for my street names, well, in a way i've always preferred numbers to names. but i'd prefer them not sequential.

in other words, the development that i'm envisioning features the following street names, for north-south streets (listed from east to west): 1st st., 98th st., 17th ave., 38th place, 38th place, 1st st., 7th ave., 2d ave., 96th st. and then 17th st. east-west streets should use the same numbers as the north south streets.

downside? it's hella-difficult to find your way from place to place in my development. upside? no-one can find where you live in my development!

[C.C. Miller]

I won't submit any until I know Mr. Tichak is capable of pronouncing simple Spanish-language place names. I'd hate to see him choose "Mulberry" for the 800,540th time just because he can't pronounce something a little more flavorful like 'paleta' or 'escondido'.

[claire]

that would be a reasonable caveat in any other part of the country, but this is LA, where they cheerfully, authoritatively, mangle spanish names in sang froid. plus, i think there are already more than one escondido somethings in the area.

so fire away!

[C.C. Miller]

Okay. Here are some I know I like to say (I can hardly speak Spanish, but I like to pretend):

corrido
conjunto
bajo sexto
norteño
Flaco
DeAnda
El Vez
Montoya
flamenco
castañuelas
milonga
cante jondo

calle jondo
calle bajo
calle derecho
calle orto
calle del norte
calle del oeste
combadura
serpiente
culebra

paleta
horchata
torta
escamocha
palapa
carne asada
aguas frescas
aguacate
chicharrones
chilaquiles

ejido
iturbide
moctezuma
salamanca
vicente
zaragoza
matamoros
zacatecas
zacate
zapata

[David]

Might I humbly suggest naming a few streets after contemporary philosophers? Also you shouldn't overlook the English practice of finding more esoteric words than "street" - Deleuze Gardens, Foucault Boulevard, Derrida Villas...

There's a Grace Jones Close just round the corner from me in London, which I still can't quite believe is named after the 80s pop star.

Anyway I just wanted to leave you a reference: From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow : How Maps Name, Claim, and Inflame by Mark Monmonier - haven't read it but I saw a review and it looks right up your street, er, so to speak.

[claire]

david, i'm reading it right now and have more than one post about it coming up. thanks for the streets!

[David Cochran]

We are looking for lists of pastoral and gentle animal( such as deer) names for roads on the internet. Can someone help us?

Thank you.