Those wacky Atlantans

By way of explanation, my job at Metro Traffic involves maintaining the databases of roadways and cross-streets that we use in our traffic reporting. For the past couple of weeks I have been working on the Atlanta database.

Here are my top 5 pet peeves with the Atlanta street system:

5. The streets run in anything but a straight line, and absolutely not anywhere near the four cardinal compass directions.

4. Weird street names: I suppose "Best Friend Road" is a Baptist version of Lovers' Lane, and "Super Deluxe Road"... well, I believe it was recently paved.

3. The longest intersection name I have ever come across: Andrew Young International Boulevard Northwest at Centennial Olympic Park Drive Northwest.

2. "Boulevard". That's the entire name of the street. You'd think they could come up with a name to put in front of "Boulevard". Say, how about...

1. "Peachtree". Every other street in Atlanta is named with some variant of Peachtree. Peachtree Street, West Peachtree Street (these are two different streets, and yes, they intersect each other -- twice), Peachtree Battle Avenue, Peachtree CIrcle, Peachtree Corners Circle, Peachtree Drive, Peachtree Dunwoody Road, Peachtree Industrial Boulevard (no relation to "Boulevard" above), Peachtree Memorial Drive (for when you can't remember which Peachtree you're on), Peachtree Road, North Peachtree Road (again, two separate streets), Peachtree Valley Road, Peachtree Walk. I don't even like peaches!

Don't get me wrong, I like Atlanta. Met a very nice waitress at the Chevy's (now gone) on New Northside Drive. The King Center was very informative. Just don't ask me to move there. I'm still getting used to Houston, and it's on a grid system (at least it is here in west Houston).

So I'm watching 24 and during the scenes with the Vice President, I kept thinking of the Doom Song. "I'm going to sing the Doom Song now! Doom doom doom! Doomy doomy doom! The end!"