Obnoxiously saccharine or pretentious suburb street names

This isn't in a suburb, but there's a street in Vancouver known as [i][b]The[/b] Crescent[/i]. It's in quite a la-de-da neighbourhood so it's not too suprising, but the name sounds so pretentious. There are no other Crescents, but The Crescent!

[ 06 April 2005: Message edited by: Vansterdam Kid ]

There's a townhouse development in Richmond BC that has all jewel-named streets. I can't remember now whether my school friend lived on Turquoise or Azure?

[ 06 April 2005: Message edited by: Anchoress ]

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Originally posted by Scott Piatkowski:
[b]

You failed to note Windsorites' [i]interesting habit[/i] of bastardizing the pronunciations of said names )(e.g. Ouellette = OH-let).[/b]

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Well, I don't know if it's particular to Windsor. Here, after all, we've got Weber St, and it's the only place I've ever heard that name pronounced "Wee-bur" rather than "Webber" or the linguistically correct "Vey-bur".

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Originally posted by Vansterdam Kid:
[b]This isn't in a suburb, but there's a street in Vancouver known as [i][b]The[/b] Crescent[/i].[/b]

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Westmount also has [b]The Boulevard[/b].

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Originally posted by lagatta:
[b]Actually, Michelle, this thread should be in "out and about".[/b]

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I don't really get the 'anal-ness' of this board sometimes. I visit/post on many boards and have never come across it anywhere else. The content on babble is second to none but and I usually enter via the 'most active threads' door.

Closing threads at 100 post (I assume to be dialup friendly [img]rolleyes.gif" border="0[/img] ) and relocating entire threads is just....strange.

That is all [img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img]

PS Oh, and why isn't the ubb key for previewing post available also....nice feature for hunt and peck typists.

Loathesome: when I was a kid we lived in a subdivision called 'Christian Hills'-- oddly, there were no Jewish people about. The town was called 'Rochester' in those days; now it's hoighty enough to be 'Rochester HILLS.'

Pretentious: the Michigan towns of Grosse Pointe, Grosse Pointe Shores, and Beverly Hills.

Bastardized: on Chicago's near-north side is the three-block-long Goethe Street. The locals call it 'Gohwth.'

This might be common other places, but in the suburbs of Victoria there's a few subdivs where most street names end in the word "wood". Some of the streets also include the names of trees, some don't.

So, among other streets, there's Birchwood, Alderwood, Oakwood, Cedarwood, Applewood, Teakwood, Senwood, Hartwood, Sprucewood, Larchwood (all in one fairly small subdivision which appears to have been built on farmland), and in another larger subdivision there's Boulderwood, Deerwood, Amblewood, Westwood, Summitwood, Hillwood, Spiritwood, Lochwood, Kentwood, Quailwood, Trailwood, Gatewood, Coachwood, Copsewood, Pheasant Wood, Donwood, Rithetwood, Scottswood, Owlwood, Shadywood, Thistlewood, Parkwood, Gardenwood, Valewood, Totemwood, Summerwood, Maltwood, Crownwood, Stoneywood, Praisewood, Gracewood, Faithwood, Meadowwood, Autumnwood, Wagonwood, Carolwood, Edgewood, Gardenwood, Tanglewood, Pondwood, and possibly more, but my days are finite.

I seem to remember a subdivision in the Victoria area where, even worse, all the street names STARTED with the same word, but I can't find it on the map now. Imagine getting directions like "Turn onto Woodside Drive, turn left when you get to Woodburn Road, and keep an eye out for Woodwind Crescent -- it's the street right after Woodview Way and before Woodsworth Close." Perhaps you don't have to imagine.

Not so much annoying as strange is Fifth Street, in Victoria proper. It may be a vestige from before a large-scale renaming of city streets. You see, Fifth Street is (I believe) the only numbered street in Victoria.

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Originally posted by obscurantist:
[b]This might be common other places, but in the suburbs of Victoria there's a few subdivs where most street names end in the word "wood". [/b]

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Thanks to Viagra, now most seniors events in Victoria do too.

what about all the suburbs called "..... woods" when the first thing the developer does is take off all the trees.

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Saskatchewan towns are full of nonsense names such as "Biarwood"

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i'm a planner. the newer the subdivision the more the name is related to what a devloper thinks is marketable and suburbs or suburban subdivisions, even to this day i guess, are trying to sell "its in the country, not in the city".
so we have old inner city neighbourhoods like pleasant hill, caswell hill and riversdale which respectively are built on hills and are by the river and new areas like briarwood, willowgrove and stonebridge. if a neighbourhood in saskatoon was built after 1950 you can bet it has wood, grove, heights or park as part of its name.

There is an incredibly pretentious and banal subdivision of Edmonton titled 'The Hamptons'. Gag.

As for the appalling cultural appropriation file, all the streets in my neighbourhood were named after First Nations - though they were somewhat unselective, and clearly whoever named the streets read them off a list somewhere. So we had Apache, Nootka, Haida and Mohawk all adjoining each other in a bland prairie suburban town. Strangely, we also had Corinthia and Camelot going right through the middle of all of them. Amazingly, they managed to completely miss the Cree, probably the only culture who actually lived there (given that we were 15 minutes from a large Cree community).

The Parade, in Adelaide, South Australia. Took me a while to realize that was the full name of the street.

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Originally posted by arborman:
[b]There is an incredibly pretentious and banal subdivision of Edmonton titled 'The Hamptons'. Gag.[/b]

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Where are 'The Hamptons'? I've lived here my entire life, and I've never heard of em.

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what about all the suburbs called "..... woods" when the first thing the developer does is take off all the trees.

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I grew up in Mill Woods. It was made up of 9 smaller subdivisions, each of which either began with Mill, or ended in Woods.

You've got nothing. Oshawa has a Camelot subdivision of semi-homes. Galahad drive, Belami st, Gaylord rd. Oh, the many laughs of boyhood growing up by Gaylord Road.

It's because [url=http://abc.go.com/primetime/thehamptons/]The Hamptons[/url] is one of the famous playgrounds where rich New Yorkers and other elite go to meet, greet and be discreet.

Edited to add: Remember the Simpsons episode where Bart defended Rainier Wolfcastle's daughter from old money bullies at her private school ('Look at her cry. NEW money always cries.')? When Bart drives them off, the bullies call, 'Retreat!' 'To The Hamptons!'

[ 26 April 2005: Message edited by: Anchoress ]

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Originally posted by obscurantist:
[b]Not so much annoying as strange is Fifth Street, in Victoria proper. It may be a vestige from before a large-scale renaming of city streets. You see, Fifth Street is (I believe) the only numbered street in Victoria.[/b]

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This street, along with Battery St in James Bay, is named after 5th (BC) Field Regiment, the local Reserve Artillery Regiment at Bay St Armoury. The Regt was raised in 1861. They built and manned Ft Rodd Hill, Work Point, etc: all the coastal defence batteries from Gonzales Observatory out to Jordan River. Part of our city's history that is often overlooked!

Old thread revisited eh?!

In Nanaimo, my 2 favorites street names are: Dingle Bingle Hill, and Bergan Op Zoom. With a honourable mention of Jingle Pot Rd.

Not bad name choices, eh, for a town in a province where everything is named after former Freemasons, and other "developers"?!

We have the coolest name for a street up here.

Ragged Ass Road

Well if you come visit me we can:

- you can take Lakeshore Blvd straight to the 401 and from there, Prairie Road

- take on the 40 hills road - hills are just vertical curves you know,

- visit Whiskey Harbour, look out at Bears Rump Island

- don't forget Crooked Toe Road

- if you're feeling particularly in the mood, the Slough of Despond will do the trick

[ 20 February 2008: Message edited by: rural - Francesca ]

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Originally posted by Michelle:
[b]It's funny, I've always thought of it as "Bridal" because ever since I heard that street name in Kingston as a teenager, I always thought it was meant to evoke images of a newly-married couple's first new house in the suburbs.[/b]

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I have no saccharine names to add, but I have a similar teenage story. Port Hope has a westend main street running out to the township named after George Ridout, a Toronto hardware wholesaler and moderate conservative who did well enough to invest in a Port Hope subdivision in the 1850s and have its main street named for him -- which a friend of mine in her youth always assumed was named Rid(e)out because it was the street she rode out of town on her bike on.

[ 21 March 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

Nanaimo has a Tiggly Wiggly Rd.  When househunting, we were shown a house there.  I couldn't deal with the thought of having such an address.  Not quite "Hitler St."  (see above), but pretty off-putting...

When I first visited Toronto I was struck by the redundancy of "Avenue Road."  Why not Street Drive?  On the pretentious side, there were all those apartment towers in arbour-free North York with addresses such as Forest Greenway when nothing green or forest-y could be found for miles around but the street names all had a pastoral connotation.

On the humorous side, just south of the 401 on Highway 6 S. in Morriston, ON you can take a right onto Calf Ass Road. Well OK,  it's written Calfass Rd. Now does a name like that increase or decrease the property value? 

If you go by the old road between Woodstock and London, you follow the Thames through some of the most heartbreakingly beautiful pastoral scenery in SW Ontario. I'd always taken the old Highway 2, rather than the 401, but when I first tried the valley route I was struck by the uncanny similarity of the landscape to Dorset in England, where many of the earlier settlers came from --you half expect to see Egdon Heath lowering off in the distance. Anyway, somewhere between Putnam and Dorchester the road becomes even twistier than usual and at one intersection you can turn aside into Cow Path to the north or Lower Cow Path to the south. Pull over, crack open the thermos of tea, and enjoy the joyous singing of finches and katydids. I've never followed either of the Cow Paths. The crossroads is a little slice of perfection and I think my imagination conjures more delights down these roads than either one could offer in reality.

Back in the 70's a mischief-making councillor at a sleepy subcommittee meeting in Brantford managed by procedural sleight of hand to have a road in a new industrial park named the Ho Chi Minh Trail. You can imagine the furore that erupted when the local worthies realized what had happened. The road was given some anodyne name, but the councillor drew enough attention that he subsequently became an MPP.

I didn't realize this until I looked at google maps, but near the Regency Manor Retirement Home in Port Hope, they actually have a Princess Street and a King Street.