Getting around, part one

Getting around Denver should be easy, as the whole metro area is on a grid. In theory, it ought to be easy to figure out which side of town you’re on at all times. So why is it so maddening?
The first thing that’s frustrating to newcomers is Denver Directions. Newbies to North Carolina are amused by country directions – “Turn left at the old tree stump in front of the Hicks house, and when you get down a ways, turn down by the light pole that’s over by the pond at the church cemetery. You can’t miss it.” And, of course, you always do.
I never thought much about peculiarities in regional directions until I got here and registered my daughters for school.
“As far as where to park, you can go to the west side of the school. Or, you can turn south and go down a block,” she said.
West? South? I had arrived in town the afternoon before and was still in the trail-of-bread-crumbs phase.
“That’s a right turn,” she said with a small smile.
“Thank you.”
Everyone here, almost without fail, gives, well, directional directions; and, for some reason, I can’t master it, even after almost eighteen months. A couple of days ago, someone asked me, “Oh, are you east of I-25?”
I looked at my friend John. “Help,” I whispered.
“Yes, you are.”
“Thank you.”
I say “thank you” a lot.
Here’s a hint, if you’re traveling to Denver: If you’re in the city and looking at the mountains, you’re headed west. (If you’re south of the city, all bets are off, as the mountains wrap.) So, after eighteen months, all I can tell you is: If I’m not looking at the mountains, I’m headed either north, south, or east. And I am a person who prides herself on having a good sense of direction.
It helps, with the grid system, to know whether the road you’re on is a northie-southie or an eastie-westie (that’s Robin lingo, not Denver lingo). Once you’re east of Colorado Boulevard (one of the main northie-southies), the north-south cross streets follow a pattern – flora-named streets with two As, two Bs, and so on until you cross the Zs and end up in Aurora. And once you’re west of Santa Fe Boulevard, the north-south cross streets go A-Z, then A-Z again until you hit Sheridan, and then one of several western suburbs. (Another Denver peculiarity: The main north-south streets on the west side of town are known, at least in our house, as the “Victorian poets” – Lowell, Tennyson and Wadsworth.) Aurora and the suburbs have their own grid; that’s another story.
The numbered streets run east-west and number well into the hundreds. I’m sure there’s a designated, nice, round numbered-street where Denver ends and the northern suburbs begin. What it is, I don’t know. I have discovered through trial and error (but mostly trial) that if you’re in the hundreds, you’re Somewhere Else.
There are loads of small clusters of streets that you’ll see over and over, all of which have names here at the house. There are the Civil War roads (Lincoln, Grant, Sherman), the Southern States (Kentucky, Tennessee, Florida, Virginia, Arkansas, Louisiana – no North Carolina, but there is a Raleigh on the west side of the grid), the Presidents (Madison, Adams, Monroe), and the Ivy League (Yale, Harvard, Vassar). This helps me because I can combine Colorado Directions and Country Directions – our favorite Indian restaurant is in the Ivy League area of Downing, over by the hospital; Target is at one of the Southern States and Colorado, behind Shotgun Willie’s, the strip club with a sense of humor (they advertised green bean casserole wrestling at Thanksgiving!).
There is one more peculiarity about directions in Denver: If you’re sending something to an address south of 1st Street, you must write “South” before the street name, or it will never get there. And there is absolutely no correlation between a street and its southern counterpart. In fact, there’s little correlation between one block of a street and another.
Example: I can tell you that I live on South Forest Street and you will know that a) I live south of 1st Street and that b) it’s east of Colorado Boulevard (because it’s a flora-named street, remember?). Now you can find my house, right? Wrong. Because, as with every non-major road in Denver, Forest (and S. Forest) ends every three or four blocks for a park, or a school, or a highway, or a shopping center or some such. If you’re lucky, your road will pick back up a block or so down and roughly in the same place. If you’re not (which is more likely), you will wander around and around wondering where on earth your road begins again. Eventually you will find it, a mile or so away, and you will wonder why in the hell you didn’t just ask for directions rather than thinking, “Oh, South Forest, I know where that is.”
All it means is, you’re not a native. Only natives think it’s easy getting around this place.