Ever wonder why the road you live on may be called an avenue, a boulevard or a court instead of a plain old street? Was it the whim of your neighborhood’s developer or the town council? Actually, there are rules regarding road classifications. And while they’re not always followed, typically they are.
The basic premise behind road-naming conventions, which are fairly consistent around the world, is that the name bestowed upon a road depends upon its size and function. A road, for example, is a path that connects two points. Generally, roads head out of town or away from the heart of a city. A street, in contrast, is a public road with buildings on both sides. This means that a street is also a road, but a road isn’t necessarily a street.
Avenues generally run perpendicular to streets but also have trees and buildings on both sides. And each municipality decides in which direction to place its streets and avenues. In Manhattan, for example, avenues run north and south, while streets run east and west. In Denver, it’s the opposite.
Common road definitions:
Boulevard: A wide street with trees and other vegetation on one or both sides and, often, a median to divide traffic.
Court: A street ending in a loop or a circle, aka a cul-de-sac.
Crescent: A winding, curved road that typically attaches to another road at each end.
Drive: A long road that winds around a geographical feature such as a river or mountain.
Lane: A narrow road that typically leads to a residential zone. Lanes are often found in rural areas.
Place: A road or street with a dead end that’s not a loop or circle.
Terrace: A street following the upper portion of a slope.
Way: A small street branching off a road. These passages are usually short and often feature a dead end.
When it comes to giving streets their first names (e.g., Main, Washington, Blueberry), this is generally the province of subdivision developers, with the blessing of the municipality.
The two groups that have the most veto power over proposed names are the police and fire departments, who want unique monikers that can be easily distinguished in an emergency.
Entertainment and politics don’t mix
They didn’t start playing the national anthem at sporting events regularly until around 1941.
In 1916, President Wilson ordered that “The Star-Spangled Banner” be played at military and other appropriate occasions. There were never any Presidential orders to play it at sporting events. Football, as it appears, has nothing to do with our Military, or anything else to do with the defense of our country at all. This whole business of taking a knee at a football game is rather meaningless when you put our Anthem and our Flag into it’s proper perspective.
The NFL is absolutely “not” a government organization.
The NFL is a private, for profit entertainment venue similar to Seinfeld – How many times did they play the National Anthem before Will and Grace came on? How many times did they play the National Anthem before Gilligan’s Island came on?
See how that works? The NFL is a simple entertainment venue that’s not too unlike the shows mentioned above and has nothing to do with our government or it’s overall national security.
Kneeling before a football game to protest something is just like kneeling to protest something before The Simpsons come on. The eventual outcome of doing each would be the same. Save for the effects of attempted social engineering, it’s all pretty pointless and does absolutely nothing to further the cause of anyone.
Mixing politics with entertainment can only show just how far down the rabbit hole we’ve gone.
The NFL has done more to protest America in the past few years than it has ever done to try and eliminate the domestic violence committed by its own players. Players crying about being marginalized, while at the same time being allowed to marginalize someone else with impunity is somewhat of a stretch, don’t you think?
As far as the national anthem is concerned, why not just play it at only government related functions. Doing that might keep these so-called protests away from our entertainment industry, and put the racism argument directly into the middle of the government political arena where it belongs in the first place.