Tuesday, June 08, 2010

HA where?

My stalker and I (will explain later) have a shared fascination with obscure street names in Manhattan. I mean, everyone knows Broadway and Delancey and Houston and the Bowery, but Cherry Street? Attorney Street? Corner of Jefferson and Henry, anyone? Beach Street at St John's Lane? We can play this game because we like to walk around WDT (that's waydowntown, yes we invented that and yes you can use it). I mean, you sort of at least have to play this game below Houston, where the grid ends and the streets get name-names and not numbers. The best neighbourhood for it is perhaps Two Bridges (my favourite neighbourhood - so obscure, so...off the radar), on the far east side of the island between the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges. We have a running joke about hopping in a cab and casually telling the driver "Um yeah, going to X Street and Y Way thx."

Well I have found the ultimate, my friends. The intersection of Wui plaza and Teddy Gleason Street. I defy you to find it on a map. It even mystifies Google. Bahahaha.

UPDATE: Teddy Gleason is gone!

Backing up: This strangest intersection in New York was discovered on Tuesday night, around midnight. We happened to walk past that same spot the very next night, and found that the sign for Teddy Gleason Street had disappeared! Just then, a mysterious man emerged from a parked car under the street lamp to which the street signs are attached.

“You two! I remember yous from last night.”

“What the hell happened to Teddy Gleason?” we ask.

“The sign – they knocked if off,” he says, gesturing at a pair of ATCO trailers parked on WUI Plaza, evincing some kind of construction taking place during the day. He said it like he’d been waiting to tell us all day. “It’s layin’ on the ground around here somewhere.” And he proceeded to look for it, like he was going to…give it to us?

“We found out who he was,” we say. “He was the president of the Longshoreman’s Union.”

And then, simultaneously, the mysterious man said “President of the Longshoreman’s Union and all he got was this little street?” and my stalker said “They named a street after him just cuz he was president of the Longshoreman’s Union?

3 comments:

Christian said...

I believe I have nailed it.

It's down at the end of this street.

The sign for which is at the base of this building.

Anonymous said...

And how much work didn't get done in your department today?
Your mother

M said...

Well done, Christian.