Two more things

[dira]

One, a sheepish observation I meant to include yesterday: since writing a story in which Ray Person removes his gloves by biting the fingertips, I have become 100% more likely to remove my gloves by biting the fingertips. /o\


Two, a question for Californians: if a person did not happen to know the local name of the highway she was on, because of reasons, but did know that it was (California) State Road 3, what would she call it? Not the 3, presumably. California 3? State Road 3? 3? This situation would never arise because non-numerical names are printed on all the highway signs?

Comments

Re: More than you ever wanted to know about California highway nomenclature.

[parhelion]

I was a multi-generational Angelino, and you are absolutely right that it was never "on 1" down there but, rather, "on the 1". However, in our part of the state, we usually spoke of the 1 as "the PCH" for Pacific Coast Highway rather than "the 1" or "the Pacific Coast Highway." And my elderly mother confirmed this has been going on for many decades.

In fact, now that I'm thinking about it, we even used "the" with highway names rather than numbers: "the San Gabriel," "the Golden State," "the Rim of the World." Maybe it's because so many of our freeways initially shared names with very long and significant Southern California surface streets, resulting in "the Santa Monica" versus "Santa Monica Boulevard" or just "down on Santa Monica".