Sunday, September 17, 2006

Roadside Trivia

Story: A fellow moved to South Florida from St. Louis to work at my old company, and after about a month here he came up to me and asked "How do you know where you're going in this town?"

I asked him what he meant and he said "Every road down here changes its name after a few blocks."

And you know, when you're living with it your whole life you don't recognize it, but he made me realize it's true.

A large quanity of roads in South Florida change their names, or even numbers, after a length of time driving on them.

For example: one road here is either 167th Street, 163rd Street, Interama Blvd. or Sunny Isles Blvd., depending on where you are on it - and it's also S.R. 826 the whole way, though few locals refer to it as such.

The road that crosses in front of the stadium is called Honey Hill Rd, Dan Marino Blvd, 199th Street and farther down, (EDIT) Ives Dairy Rd.

This is not even counting the different street numbering systems that make driving between counties, and even between Miami and Hialeah, such a refreshing experience.

And it's also not counting all the 'honorary' names politicians give to roads for some reason or another - names that are signified by a brown sign at the beginning of the roadway, or a segment of it, and that nobody uses as a real name for the road. Florida's Turnpike has been given the honorary name 'Ronald Reagan Turnpike' though I know of no one who calls it that in normal usage.

What am I getting at? Just something that I finally somehow stumbled onto in my travels. Two of the major highways in South Florida are commonly referred to as the Dolphin Expressway and the Don Shula Expressway. You may ask, Why isn't there an expressway in South Florida recognizing the most successful franchise of the past decade, namely the fabulous Fish? Well, what I just recently stumbled onto is that there IS a Marlins Expressway. Only it's one of those honorary titles with the brown signs, given in 1998 to a road that is universally known to South Floridians by some other name.

If you don't know already, try and guess which road it is. The answer can be found in this link.

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