By Wrongway Sam
Monterey is a poster child for cities with confusing street systems. Meanwhile, the other Peninsula cities help to add to the confusion.
Santa Maria of 30 years ago before new development threw a monkey wrench into the works had the closest thing to a perfect grid street system. The city was bisected north and south and east and west by two major streets that met in the center of town. Moving out from the center, there was a significant street every quarter mile out to the outskirts of the city. It was breeze to drive around Santa Maria.
The bad news is why you would want to drive around Santa Maria, which is located in Santa Barbara County, is only known by a few people on the planet, and is among the most boring places in the Universe, ranking right up there with Timbuktu, Fresno, and Cleveland.
Now, Monterey and its environs are where you want to be, but alas the street system is a challenge for visitors and even residents until they have lived here awhile.
North and south and east and west are problematical. The Highway Department got it right. The freeway is the closest thing we have to north and south. Highway 1 North really is north and Highway 1 South is actually south. And Pine Avenue in Pacific Grove is exactly east and west. After that north-south and east-west get a little thin.
North Fremont in Monterey is more North-East Fremont than North Fremont.
Then there are the streets that suddenly change names on you when you are trying to find the right address. You start out on Washington Street and a few blocks later it becomes Abrego Street, and just when you get used to Abrego, the darn thing changes to Munras Avenue.
Munras is a piece of work all by itself. The street doglegs like one of those golf fairways at Pebble Beach. The City Fathers will tell you they did that so the landmark Casa Munras Garden Hotel would actually front on Munras Avenue and not some street named Hollywood Boulevard, Market Street, or some other name.
Meanwhile, back at Washington Street, which is two-way except for one lousy block between Franklin Street and Del Monte Avenue. That one-block, one-way is enough to mess you up if you want to make a logical left or right turn from Del Monte onto Washington en route to someplace important, like the Del Monte Center.
The Del Monte Center, of course, is not on Del Monte. That would make it too easy to find. No challenge there. If you are on Del Monte, it’s some trick to find Munras so you can actually get to the Del Monte Center.
If you are driving from Seaside on Del Monte Avenue and you get to the tunnel, you probably think the tunnel is Del Monte Avenue. That would make sense. No, Del Monte goes straight ahead into the downtown, and the tunnel is officially a no-name street. It’s just Custom House Tunnel.
If you look around for the Custom House as you drive though the tunnel, you won’t see it. That’s because it’s over by Fisherman’s Wharf, which goes by enough names to confuse you if you are trying to drive there: Fisherman’s Wharf, Old Fisherman’s Wharf, Fisherman’s Wharf No. 1, and Municipal Wharf No. 1. Not to be confused with Fisherman’s Wharf No. 2, Municipal Wharf No. 2, Commercial Wharf, or the Brooklyn Bridge.
Imagine the poor sap driving up to the wrong wharf and wanderingly aimlessly trying in vain to find something that’s on the other wharf.
In a burst of provincialism way back when, City Fathers in Monterey and Pacific Grove in their infinite wisdom decided not to line up the two Lighthouse Avenues. The two major thoroughfares change names when they cross city limits. Monterey’s Lighthouse becomes Central Avenue in Pacific Grove and Pacific Grove’s Lighthouse turns into Hawthorne Street in Monterey. Try explaining that to some visitor from Fresno.
To pour salt into the wound, Monterey’s Pine Street and Pacific Grove’s Pine Avenue don’t line up either. They are one street off. At least they don’t change names. Must have been a slip-up. They probably fired the guys who failed to follow the Lighthouse/Washington-Abrego-Munras Model for Confusing Drivers.
I wonder which came first: the famed 17 Mile Drive in the Del Monte Forest or the street named 17 Mile Drive in Pacific Grove. At least they line up. But it’s confusing for the uninitiated who find themselves on the 17 Mile Drive in Pacific Grove and wonder where all the mansions are and how come nobody is collecting a toll.
Memo to the Pacific Grove City Council: Put up false mansion fronts along your 17 Mile Drive and start collecting $10 a car to help balance the city budget. The visitors will never figure out they have been fleeced, and the local folks will laugh their heads off.
Cannery Row, meanwhile, is both a street name and a state of mind. The Sardine Factory and Whaling Station, Cannery Row’s landmark restaurants, are both located on Wave Street. Actually Cannery Row is not the street’s original name, which was Ocean View, and was linked up, but not lined up, with Pacific Grove’s Ocean View Boulevard. Ocean View actually is lined up with Wave. Why are you surprised?
The Cannery Row name, of course, is a rip-off from John Steinbeck’s books and amounts to crass commercialism. So tricky-tacking touristy. But it’s Hall of Fame Tricky-Tacking Touristy.
One way to help the movement of traffic in Monterey would be to punch Fremont Street through to Pacific Street. That makes sense from a traffic-engineering standpoint, but forget it. If you did that, you would have to bulldoze the aforementioned landmark Casa Munras Garden Hotel and the former Monterey Hospital that is now the Hartnell Professional Building across from the Monterey Post Office.
That brings us to the Post Office, which is tucked away on Hartnell Street, guarded by narrow streets in a pattern that is a challenge to figure out for the visitor and newly arrived resident.
Even Lewis and Clark would have a hard time finding it. Just try giving somebody directions to the Post Office. If you do make it to the Post Office, you face an even bigger challenge: where to park!
The historic San Carlos Cathedral is on Church Street, which makes sense, except you have to find Church Street, a street so short that it barely covers the cathedral and its environs. If you find it before time for the sermon, you are in line for sainthood.
The City Fathers in Seaside like to super-size Monterey streets when they enter the Seaside City Limits. Del Monte Avenue becomes Del Monte Boulevard and North Fremont Street changes to Fremont Avenue. Monterey put the North in front of Fremont because business owners were afraid that their customers might think, heaven forbid, that they were in Seaside. That in and of itself is prima fascia evidence that the street system causes confusion.
Pacific Grove has a Del Monte Boulevard, which is a two-lane street in a residential area that doesn’t line up with any of the Del Monte Avenues/Boulevards and is more than three miles away from the nearest other Del Monte. That’s all right. You don’t have to drive very long on it before it crosses Lighthouse Avenue and changes name to Alder Street.
In Seaside, the official name for one of the city’s broadest streets is Broadway Avenue, which is like saying Street Street. Broadway is a way and can’t also be an avenue. Look it up in your Funk & Wagnals. New York City got it right. They call it simply Broadway, the Great White Way.
The good news is that Carmel’s streets are relatively well laid out compared to its neighbors. The bad news is once you get to where you going in Carmel, you can’t find a place to park, so you might as well just drive back to Monterey and get lost.
Del Rey Oaks has a novel way to avoid confusion. They just block off the streets so that they go nowhere. You are trapped in Del Rey Oaks. Call the Coast Guard.
The last straw in causing confusion is the frequent absence of large signs to mark the street ahead on major thoroughfares. It’s done right in some places but not in others. They mark a lot of streets you don’t care about but skip some of the most important ones. There is a big overhead sign for English Avenue but not for streets that actually matter.
In a weak moment, somebody actually put up a big sign on Lighthouse Avenue to mark David Avenue. They probably fired him. Along with the guy who put up the big monument sign to mark the entrance to Old Fisherman’s Wharf and Monterey Harbor.
As a final thought, Western Avenue in Los Angeles is said to be the longest, straightest street in the world, 30 miles long, from the hills to the sea. You can’t get lost on Western Avenue. But on second thought, I would rather get lost in Monterey than found in Los Angeles.
