Drive Me Crazy

Previous 12MC articles delved into creative and sometimes bizarre pairings of street names with suffixes. Those were explored in posts such as Order in the Court, He Went Thata Way and No Way! Way!. Enough with the Courts and Ways (curds and whey?). It’s time to drive.


Line Drive

The Northeast Delta Dental Stadium. Photo by Manchester City Library; (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Northeast Delta Dental Stadium

Readers from international areas devoid of baseball might wonder why Line Drive would be an odd street name choice. It’s an intuitive term to those of us who grew up with the sport, and similarly difficult to translate to outsiders. No doubt, someone trying to describe a Cricket term to me would have the same problem in reverse.

Instead I’ll steal the dictionary definition: “a ball that is hit by the batter and goes in a nearly straight line not far above the ground.” It can be dangerous to players on the field at the receiving end of a line drive and can also lead to spectacular plays when handled properly.

Consequently I found several Line Drives at municipal ball parks and baseball diamonds including two at professional minor league stadiums.

  • The New Hampshire Fisher Cats, a Double-A affiliate of the Toronto Blue Jays plays at Northeast Delta Dental Stadium (formerly Fisher Cats Ballpark) at 1 Line Drive in Manchester, New Hampshire (map). What is a fisher cat? It’s a type of weasel.
  • The Iowa Cubs, a Triple-A farm team of the Chicago Cubs, plays at Principal Park, at 1 Line Drive in Des Moines, Iowa (map).

Disk Drive

I suppose at one time maybe 15 years ago Disk Drive would have sounded like a clever street name for an industrial park hoping to attract information technology companies. At least the occurrence in Madison, Alabama had an honest-to-goodness linkage to the IT industry. Hexagon, a software development and services company, maintains an office there albeit with a street address other than Disk Drive.


Honorable Mentions

There were often several examples of each name. I tried to select ones that were the most representative.

  • Scenic Drive, Hamilton, ON, Canada (map)
  • Cattle Drive, Austin, TX (map)
  • Over Dive, Vermillion, SD (map)
  • The Drive Drive, Benoni, Gauteng, South Africa (map). This was an amusing Google Maps error. Other online maps labeled it The Drive with no suffix attached so apparently the true name was more than Google could handle
  • Sunday Drive, Hanover, PA (map). That was as close as I could get to Sunday Driver.
  • Just Drive, Fort Worth, TX (map). It was located in a trailer park. Of course it was. I’m still looking for the more crude variant Shutupan Drive, which I think would make a fine name for a street. I found a coffee shop in Incheon, South Korea called Shutupandtakecoffee which made me recall the Soup Nazi episode of Seinfeld. Shut up and take coffee! No coffee for you!
  • Could there really be no Pile Drive?

The Best (or Worst)

I held a special fondness for Doctor Drive, located in a number of places nationwide. The answer might not appear all that obvious until converted to its logical abbreviations. Doctor Drive shortened to Dr. Dr.

The example I highlighted from Virginia Beach would be noteworthy from a couple of perspectives. First, it intersected with Hospital Drive so that implied maybe at one time it could have been appropriately named for its circumstances. Second it offered additional opportunities for abbreviated mischief. Thus, a legitimate address here might be: “213 Dr. Dr., VA Beach, VA”!


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12 responses to “Drive Me Crazy”

  1. Bryan Armstrong Avatar
    Bryan Armstrong

    Doctor Drive reminded me… is there a Saint Street?

    I found many, including one running a couple blocks in Houston. I didn’t even notice it at the time, but I’ve passed by the intersection of St. St. at Westheimer Road, on my way from the Galleria to downtown when I was in Houston earlier this year.

    1. David Avatar
      David

      I once had a GPS device (in the pre-smartphone days) tell me to turn right on “Street Francis Street”. Apparently it didn’t consider context when pronouncing the abbreviation “St.”

  2. Mark Avatar
    Mark

    Interestingly, among the prominent early citizens of Vermillion, South Dakota was a gentleman named William H. Over … likely the namesake of that city’s Over Drive. So the local citizenry might be lacking in the juvenile sense of humor we’d like to give them credit for. (Either that, or someone has a nice appreciation for double entendre!)

  3. Mr Burns Avatar
    Mr Burns

    Years ago several car dealerships in Lawrence, Kansas were grouped together in one area. The street that ran among them was named Four Wheel Drive. I just looked on the map and see that the car dealerships have moved on, but the street name remains.

    Here’s the link from them:
    https://maps.google.com/?ll=38.923326,-95.263487&spn=0.003781,0.004823&t=m&z=18

  4. Ken Saldi Avatar
    Ken Saldi

    My dad used to work for a company called Storage Technology in Louisville, CO. They specialized in making mass storage devices on large Tapes and discs. They have been subsequently bought out by both Sun and Oracle, and there campus was razed to make room for a Conono Phillips training facility that has yet come to pass. However, part of their legacy lives on.

    The main street into a what is now more a less just a turn around is Tape Drive. You can see on googlemaps the old roads of Disc Drive and Quality 1st Ave. Ahhh, memories of my childhood.

    https://maps.google.com/maps?q=tape+drive+louisville+co&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=0x876b8ca34a0d48bd:0xcef3b2b3106ec447,Tape+Dr,+Louisville,+CO+80027&gl=us&ei=l6acUo-2C4ny2QXj5ICAAQ&ved=0CE0Q8gEwAA

  5. Michael Hollinger Avatar

    Not too far from you (in Sterling, off of 28), Orbital Sciences Corporation (they launch satellites) was able to name their road “Warp Drive”

    https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Warp+Drive,+Sterling,+VA&hl=en&sll=38.003386,-79.420925&sspn=5.478602,10.195313&oq=warp&t=h&hnear=Warp+Dr,+Sterling,+Loudoun,+Virginia+20166&z=16

    Even better – because access is from 28, there is a big old sign on 28 to that effect – although I don’t think it appears on Street View 🙁 Still, it makes this Terekkies heart beat proud…

  6. Thias Avatar
    Thias

    I once rented a car in the USA, and my relatives there gave me a GPS because the were afraid I would get lost. I installed the device, set it to French… and it was actually French-Canadian. And for some reason, it read all the “Drive” streets as “Docteur” (quite obviously “Doctor” in French), because of the common abbreviation, Dr.

  7. Curtis Galloway Avatar
    Curtis Galloway

    Seagate’s headquarters used to be in Scotts Valley, CA, on Disc Drive:

    http://www.openstreetmap.org/?way=43869755#map=17/37.04759/-122.01700

    1. Rob Avatar
      Rob

      And I just noticed we’re on “drive” this time, way for me to stay on topic!

  8. TB Avatar

    Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is deserving of any street named after him due to his historical status, but the typesetter in me hates these signs for his namesake roadway. The way the text jumps up and down on different levels, goes back and forth between sizes and relevant to this conversation, makes me think “Drive, Martin Luther King Jr., Drive!” every time I see it.

    http://goo.gl/maps/LJmym

  9. Thias Avatar
    Thias

    I could have sworn you had already made a similar article, but with lanes instead of drives. Anyway, I couldn’t find it, so I’ll give you my findings here:

    I saw this picture on Tumblr (http://ourvaluedcustomers.tumblr.com/post/51496571380/this-is-a-real-street-we-just-found-in-lexington) and thought: “Wow! Awesome! And very original too.” It actually seems that Lois Lanes are very, very popular all around the USA. The Lexington one isn’t even the only one in Massachusetts! I’ll let you explore them, if you find the time.
    There is, of course, a Lois Ln in Metropolis, IL.

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