It’s a grid, baby
Yesterday I was asked for directions by several folks as I was out for a lunch walk on 29th Street. “Which way is U Street?” a lady asked. A man checked with me, “Is this P Street?” Of course, being a friendly person, I always give directions–even if I don’t know where I am…HAH caught you there, didn’t I?
Actually, downtown Sacramento is perhaps one of the easiest cities to navigate on foot. The entire downtown/midtown is on a grid. There’s no A or B, but we start with C Street and move alphabetically to W Street. (M Street is Capitol Mall as you approach the Capitol Building, and is Capitol Avenue on the other side of it.) We start at the Sacramento River with “Front Street” but after that is 2nd Street and onward to 29th. C through W Streets are positioned roughly East-West and 2nd through 29th Streets run roughly North-South. If you need to find a business that sits at, say 1100 O Street, you’d go to the intersection of 11th and O Streets. If you were on W Street, you’d walk north to O Street…
Now granted, if you were DRIVING…that’s a different story, because several streets are One Way. And even I can confess to turning the wrong way down P Street many years ago after having lived in another city for a few years. Driving is a little more complex, but the same grid applies. If you get close enough to your destination, you could always park and walk the rest of the way.
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Actually, there are both A and B streets. A street is a very small portion of street on the other side of the railroad tracks from the rest of the grid. B street picks up in a couple places on the higher end of the number streets. This is where the B Street Theater is.
The lettered streets that run through most of the grid are actually C through X.
Also interesting to note, beyond 1100 O Street being on the corner of 11th and O, 300 10th Street is on the corner of C and 10th, as C is the 3rd letter of the alphabet. I used to live at 2117 22nd Street, on 22nd street between U (21st letter) and V (22nd letter).