11 October 2009

[address_nerd] Zero Hundreds Go Viral A Little Bit

2229.Long-time blog readers (I think I might have a few of you) may recall that I expounded at-length about the curiosity of addresses in Portland with leading zeroes in the house number – what I called the zero-hundreds, in that area of Southwest that's not east of the river (so it can't be Southeast) but it's east of the zero baseline (so you've got to be able to tell that somehow).

The abstract: as you clear the Naito Parkway line going east but approach the river, the addresses increase block-by-block, but have a zero prepended to the house number; where an address three blocks west of Naito on, for instance, SW Porter Street might read 200 SW Porter Street the same street three blocks east of Naito would read 0200 SW Porter Street.

The entire system is described in this entry I made on 20 July 2005: http://zehnkatzen.blogspot.com/2005/07/geography-address-nerd-on-zero-hundred.html. Go there for a more complete description. Break out any map of Portland for a good look at the layout of the area (you can use Google Maps, but they leave off the leading zero (just remember it's there, okay?).

I figured out eariler today that, via my SiteMeter report (I'm poor, so I just look back at the last hundred) the posessor of the LiveJournal here (at least, this is the earliest one I can find within that hundred-post limit) posted a very succinct yet very cool link to that original Address Nerdery.

One thing I love about blogging is that, in my obsessions I sometimes answer a question for myself that becomes an answer for a question someone will have sometime down the road, at any time that may or may not happen. I love the ordering of a well-formed address grid, but without randomness, order is meaningless, so viva la Chaos!

And you know what else? It's spread out just a little bit on other LJs and on this LJ-esque service called Dreamwidth, which is an artistic sort of LJ, which is even more thrilling.

It makes me feel all unicorny and antic inside. And I'm flattered, too.

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2 comments:

Isaac Laquedem said...

Cool then, and cool now. Congratulations!

Isaac

Samuel John Klein said...

That's high praise coming from you, Isaac! Thanks to you too!