What's that Road Called?

I, as usual, have a gripe.

In Miami and the Tri-County area (or quad-county area), I'm used to each road having at least three names. There's the Name Name, like Red Road, there's the Number Name like 57th Avenue, and then there's the State Road Name, like how Douglas Road (37th Avenue) is State Road 9 or 41 or something.

Okay, whatever. Only in Broward do people ever refer to State Road and even there, I feel like the only road anyone ever calls that, is State Road 7. And in Miami, eventually you learn the name and the number. Douglas, Le Jeune, Pioneer, Flagler Street, Coral Way, Kendall Drive, Unity Boulevard, Milam Dairy, Miller, Ingraham/Main/Whatever...

And you learn that the designation N.E., N.W., S.E., (there are very few S.E. streets, because of the geography of Dade County near the Flagler-South Miami Ave intersection that serves as the middle of the grid) and S.W. each have VERY important connotations.

Oh, sure, there are places like Hialeah, where suddenly you're on West 4th Avenue, and it's like God picked up the North-South, East-West grid and turned it 38 degrees, causing you complete confusion, but who cares about Hialeah anyway? And if you get lost in the Gables, with our Streets all named after villages in Spain, well, you didn't belong here anyway. Go back to Kendall.

And then there's Route 1.

Route 1 is the same Route 1 that winds from Maine to Key West. Where I'm from, it's called Route 1, or Maryland 301. Nothing else. It's Route 1. In Florida, that goddamn street has so. many. fucking. names, ALL IN FOUR COUNTIES, it's sort of ridiculous.

Where I am, it's South Dixie Highway, and a little farther south, it is now, apparently named the Palmetto Parkway (Gay.) I'm sure it changes names again further South towards Homestead, and then I think it becomes "Route 1" again after Florida City, before becoming "Overseas Highway." From South Dixie Highway North, (probably starting just after Vizcaya, and north onto Brickell) it's Biscayne Boulevard, cutting its spliced and perpendicularly-angled route through downtown Miami, and then North, where it remains Biscayne. Then, somewhere around North Miami, or Ft. Lauderdale, something terrible happens.

There are all these... incarnations of the Name. I truly have no idea what the following roads are: A1A, Federal Highway, Dixie Highway, South Dixie Highway, Route 1... I think they're all the same, but I'm never sure. And Sheridan street confuses me, because then it seems like they're NOT all the same road. And Mapquest, which gives you like fifty a/k/a names for ANY other road besides Route One, will say, "Turn onto State Road 1, Federal Highway."

Oh, sure, that'd be alllll well and good if the Streets were Marked that! But sometimes it'll say Dixie Highway, when Mapquest tells you Federal. And sometimes it tells you that you're on A1A and you don't know whether that's Rt. 1 or not. And sometimes, when you're north of Broward Boulevard, and between Oakland Park and Broward, it's some fresh hell of a windy freakshow that briefly winds onto like Griffin Road.

In Richmond, it's the Jefferson Davis Highway.

And even up in Boston, where the family lives off this Goddamn road, as it cuts through Wrentham, Foxboro, Walpole, Sharon and Norwood, it's called the "Norwood Automile."

So, I say unto ye, Mighty Route 1, figure your shit out. You don't have to be Boston Post Road, or the Overseas Highway... what's so wrong about just being "Route 1?" Hmm? What's so hard in that? I daresay it'd make the whole eighteen day trip up you, from Key West to Madawaska, Maine a bit more pleasant...

AND I WOULDN'T ALWAYS BE FUCKING LOST IN BROWARD COUNTY.

The end.