Wed Aug 10 02:26:04 the eagle has landed: Well, here we are in beautiful Los Angeles. Well, Pacific Palisades, really. We're living, yes, on Sunset Boulevard, which to non LA people sounds really funny and ridiculous (or maybe cool), but to LA people it just sounds normal. Saying that you live on Sunset in LA is like someone in Chicago saying that you live on Western Avenue. In Northern California (which split from Southern California after Emporer Norton I's death) saying that you live on Sunset Boulevard is slang for saying that you have infectious boils.
Incidentally, there is some argument as to what is actually the longest street in the world. Canada claims Yonge Street in Toronto to be the longest (at 1900km) and Guinness agrees, however this depends if you consider Yonge Street to be synonymous with Canada's Highway 11. If Settlers of Catan has taught me anything, it's that The Longest Road is an important asset. I have to believe that there's somewhere in America where I-80, or I-90, or US Hwy 2 is named "Bob Johnson Way" or something like that and so we can steal that crown jewel from Canada's, um... crown... jewels. But that said, Russia probably has Tchaikovsky Way from Moscow to the Bering Strait. which would beat us, so let's just let Canada have it.
Anyway, I digress. Yonge Street may be the longest consistently named roadway in the world (about 99km in Ontario before Highway 11 starts), but Western Avenue in Chicago is a continuous, arrow straight city street that stretches 23.5 miles (37.8 kilometers) within one city's limits. Canadians can't even hope to have that kind of city planning technology.
