Every now and then I pick up “Homes & Land magazine, which lists properties for sale in the area. In addition to some terrifying and/or laughable portraits of real estate agents “one guy included a photo of himself doing a split on railroad tracks, because as we all know thigh strength directly correlates to house hunting acumen”, I often find my teeth set on edge by the street names chosen by developers. I saw a listing for a condo in Durham on Candytuff Lane. I don’t care if it’s 3000 square feet with solid gold toilets and a restaurant kitchen and costs $25,000, I could not tell people I lived on Candytuff Lane. There’s also a Buggaboo Trail out in Orange County somewhere, and a street in Chapel Hill called Tinkerbell. Nope, sorry. Can’t do it. And we have a new apartment complex in the area called The Verge. The verge of what? Insanity? As far as I can tell, the only thing it’s on the verge of is a high-traffic road.
Raleigh has its fair share as well, including an apartment complex called The Landings at Mallard Pond. Every time I pass it I think, “No landings, no mallards, no pond” Not far away is a street called Havershire, which amuses me to no end, since “haver is Scottish dialect for “talk total nonsense” Britain is lousy with shires. Why make one up?
My parents live a few miles from Mine Shaft Road, which isn’t too bad, but sounds like it should be the title of Hitler’s unexpurgated biography. “Give it a minute.”
Continue a few miles from Mine Shaft and you will come to a development called Maisons en Mer. I drove by there last week with Joe, whose French is much better than mine. He confirmed that rather than the obviously intended translation “houses by the sea “which is stupid enough because they’re in North Raleigh”, it’s more like “houses in the sea” We also determined that ten seconds with a can of spray paint could easily change it to mean either “houses in hell or “houses in shit” Check the police blotter for reports of my vandalism arrest.
Of course, most developments are named for whatever was destroyed to put them there. After clear cutting several acres of pines in Raleigh, the developer put up a sign reading, “Coming soon: Bent Tree Plaza” Someone quickly changed it to “Dead Tree Plaza” The Independent once ran a three-column housing development name generator which allowed you to pick from the standard offerings and create your own combination. My favorite was Deer Run Down.
One of my fondest fantasies is to become an upscale property developer and build a neighborhood of attractively-priced McMansions for the nouveau riche, and give the streets names like Slug Trail, Phlegm Road, Poop Chute, Two Guys Named Ted Avenue and Marx-Lenin-Engels Boulevard.