It may be reasonable to assume that most people have at least a passing familiarity with Abbott and Costello’s signature Who’s-on-First comedy routine, developed in the late 1930’s. I referenced a possible Who’s-on-First scenario recently in No Way! Way! thinking that most readers would understand the reference. It came from an era long before I was born — hey, I’m not that old! Nonetheless, it’s a timeless classic whether one has never heard of it before or is listening to it all again for the hundredth time.
Abbott and Costello
So that made me wonder, made me hope anyway, could there possibly be an intersection of Abbott and Costello streets? Someone would be able to say, “I live at the corner of Abbott and Costello,” and of course everyone would get a little chuckle out of it. Sure enough, I found an occurrence in Washington Radley, Kansas.
What about other comedy duos from the classic age of Hollywood when color films were still a novelty, when married couples couldn’t be shown in the same bed and nobody ever dreamed of dropping the F-Bomb in a movie?
There were plenty of successful duos or “double acts” that followed the familiar straight-man / funny-man precept. One person took a somewhat normal persona and the other acted like a fool. The straight-man served as a foil to the funny-man’s antics which heighten comedic tension and made it even funnier. It’s a somewhat faded formula although elements of it still exist (e.g., Chumlee as funny-man to Rick and other cast members as straight-men on Pawn Stars).
I knew my search for street intersections would be daunting. The odds of matching comedy duos randomly had to be low even considering the endless number of streets available. Sure, I’d find an odd housing development with a Hollywood theme with forced associations here-and-there, so I considered they would not count as much as places where matches happened naturally.
Laurel and Hardy
Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy might have been the most memorable of all the double acts, and one of the few teams to transition easily from silent movies to the talkies. Their successful pairing lasted for more than a hundred films and their short movie “The Music Box” won an Academy Award in 1932. That’s the film where they spent the entire time pushing a piano up a flight of long stairs.
So there had to be a Laurel and a Hardy street intersecting somewhere. Both sounded like feasible street names individually and I hoped for a coincidental paring. Then I finally located Laurel St. & Hardy St. in Macomb, Michigan (Street View)
Hope and Crosby
Bob Hope and Bing Crosby paired-up repeatedly for the “Road to…” series, beginning with Road to Singapore in 1940 and lasting through Road to Hong Kong in 1962.
Fortunately I found great success with the intersection of Hope and Crosby. Hope seemed to be an extremely common street name. So that greatly increasing the odds of a random Crosby crossing. For instance:
- Altamont, Oregon (map)
- Garden Grove, California (map)
- Redding, California (map)
- Fort Washington, Pennsylvania (map)
- Knoxville, Tennessee (map)
The instance from Knoxville came from one of those Hollywood-themed subdivisions I mentioned. I granted it partial credit anyway because Lamour Street ran parallel to Crosby Drive and intersected with Hope Way, reuniting Dorothy Lamour’s supporting role to Hope and Crosby for a final road trip. It seemed fitting that the trio from the Road pictures would be intertwined by roads, even if created artificially.
Burns and Allen
George Burns and his wife Gracie Allen intersected in New Bedford, Massachusetts. They also served as namesakes for a major intersection on the campus of the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. In the latter case, their names were applied to streets explicitly. The intersection’s full name was “N George Burns Road and Gracie Allen Drive”. Burns and Allen were major benefactors of the hospital according to The Hollywood Reporter. Cedars-Sinai additionally includes a Burns and Allen Research Institute.
And the Rest
I tried to find other classic comedy duos without much luck. That’s fine. I got the big names. My only true disappointment was failing to discover an intersection for Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. The best I could do was Marty Ln and S Lewis St, in Garden Grove, California (map).
I broadened the scope to include more recent decades. There wasn’t a Cheech and Chong, and in fact, not even a single Cheech. We might also have to wait another generation or two for a Harold and Kumar too.
Completely Unrelated
“Ross” sent me an email about the “Saatse Boot” (map), a place where travelers can legally enter Russia from the Schengen Area without a passport check and without going through any border controls at all. Estonian Route 178 includes a brief segment that clips Russian territory between two Estonian villages, Lutepää and Sesniki, providing direct access between them. But there’s a catch: one can travel through the boot in a motorized vehicle only — no pedestrians — and drivers cannot stop. Still, this might be an easy way to “visit” Russia without any paperwork.
Ross mentioned that the source topic came up in Reddit’s MapPorn subreddit and he forwarded a link. I’m not going to post it because I’m still angry with MapPorn for stealing peoples’ work (although let me emphasize – I have no issue with Reddit in general, just its MapPorn subreddit). I’ll leave it at that. All credit to Ross and none to MapPorn.
Thanks Ross! I love little geo-oddities like that.
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