Incredible LA Street Names website
The aptly-named website LA Street Names is just a giant database of short explanations for the names of Los Angeles streets.
Over 2100 streets.
This is fucking heroic. I've never seen this site before, which is a shock, because it seems to have been going for a while, and its coverage is absolutely insane. I immediately was able to look up the history for dozens of streets I regularly bike on - like, the "bike shortcut" streets, my beloveds - which was incredible. This site covers every imaginable neighborhood and some of the even mid-sized neighborhoods have DOZENS of covered streets.
The history blurbs are all totally digestible - like, one long paragraph each - and they interlink to one another in super interesting ways. These street names expose the history of late 19th and early 20th century Los Angeles in ways I'd never really explored before. It's wild stuff.
Here are some interesting ones I saw, mostly west side streets that I've biked on:
- Ince Boulevard
- Elenda Street
- Almansor Street
- Lindaraxa Park
- Stocker Street
- Zanja Street
- 1st Helena Drive
- Ramona Boulevard (and others)
- Bimini Place
- Admiral Avenue
This is so cool. Huge props to Mark Tapio Kines, who runs the site and researches everything. Crazy shit. This is what the internet's all about, baybeeee!!!