mcgrew's Journal: -- The dangerous streets of Springfield

If Springfield doesn't have a traffic engineer, they need to hire one. If they do, they need to fire him. I suspect that Homer Simpson quit working for Mister Burns (pictured) at CWLP and got hired on as traffic engineer. Because the streets here are clearly designed by a cartoon, or a mentally retarded person with severe mental illnesses on top of his educational handicaps.

If you're going to downtown Springfield from St Louis, you take interstate 55 and get off at the 6th street exit. Once you pass Stanford Avenue, sixth street is straight as an arrow -- but the lanes aren't. They look like they were painted by a drunk, weaving this way and that with varying lane widths. Check out this Google Streetview, which actually minimizes the retardedness of it -- you can't see how the right lane widens and the next lane narrows. Look at the line where the joins in the pavement are -- the photo looks like the joins are crooked, but they're not. It's the lane markings that are as crooked as an Illinois politician.

While on sixth street, beware the intersection at Princeton right before the railroad viaduct by JW's. Again, the photo doesn't do justice to the extreme danger of this intersection. People exiting Princeton on to 6th street can not tell if traffic is coming up sixth, and if you're coming up sixth you can't see if someone is coming out of Princeton. Stay out of the right lane here! Unfortunately, that my not help you, since if brains were dynamite most people here wouldn't have enough to blow their noses, and sometimes pull out of Princeton across three lanes rather than minimizing their already deadly danger by turning into the right lane.

Also, JW's is right past the viaduct on the right, and people get drunk there.

Stay out of the left lane as well, because people turning on to sixth street from Broad Place can't see if traffic is coming, either.

Beware of Ash and Laurel streets, becaue they illogically and irrationally change from two lanes to four lanes to two lanes to four lanes, without the roadway width changing a centimeter. If you're coming from Southeast High School, it changes from two lanes to four after the railroad crossing at Wirt where Ash intersects with 19th street -- and then back to two lanes a couple hundred feet after Martin Luther King. Then it's four lanes a couple blocks down at 15th, then back to two lanes a block later. When you cross 11th it's four lanes for one block, the two lanes to the railroad track, then four lanes again.

Laurel, one block north, is similarly insane. The great danger here is everyone treats it as if it's four lanes all the way down, and are likely to pass you on the right. The cops don't write tickets for this, and in fact do it themselves. Locals know this, but if you're a tourist you might sideswipe someone passing on your right.

The intersection at MacAurther and Lawrence is incredibly dangerous. The problem is, there is no left turn arrow if you're going south, and you can't see past north bound traffic waiting to turn left there. All you can do is cross your fingers and floor it and hope nobody's coming. Rather than putting in a left turn arrow, they spent a similar amount of money putting up a solar powered flashing light and sign that says " Warning -- Dangerous Intersection".

That's what you get for visiting a cartoon city.

Back to the east side of town -- you're better off staying away from anywhere between 6th street and Dirkson Parkway, unless you're insane like me.

Saturday afternoon I drove up to Felber's to have a few beers while surfing the net; where else but a cartoon town would you have a redneck bar in the ghetto with wifi? They don't eat horse shoes there (where but in a cartoon would anybody eat a horse shoe?), but instead throw them. The local bars compete against each other in horse shoe tournaments, and Mike has built a very nice beer garden/dual lane horseshoe pit, with backboards, clay where the stakes are driven, cement runners, the works. Very professional.

In the ghetto.

I park, go inside, turn on the computer and drink a beer or two, and a friend calls wanting a ride. I was happy to oblige, since I needed the gas. I needed it worse than I thought, because when I tried to leave to give him the ride the car wouldn't start.

Damn! I really didn't want to walk through the ghetto carrying my netbook. I called Jay back and told him "sorry, I'm out of gas. I'll call you when I get it started." Bill and Barb showed up, and I talked with them for a while until they were ready to leave, and they gave me a ride home.

"God damn it Steve", Tami said, "I told you you were almost out of gas." She called friends for a ride and left with them to put gas in the car (which she should have done when I let her use it the day before). I got bored and walked back up to Felber's. Two beers later the phone rang. "It's for you!" the bartender said to me.

It was Tami, and over the jukebox, loud drunks and Felber's distorted landline I could hardly understand what she was saying. I finally got that she was at Loveland and Pine (worse than the neighborhood Felber's is in) and she was out of gas in front of a fire hydrant and the cops were there and I needed to come. I finished my beer and started walking.

When I got there, there were three cop cars, a bunch of cops, and a whole lot of black people standing around, with two young black men sitting on the trunk of my car. "Hey!" I said, "you mind getting off my car??" One of them grudgingly got down and the other one ignored me. I walked up and said "PLEASE get off my car!" He got down, and a cop said "you shouldn't talk to them like that. This is a dangerous neighborhood!"

I stared in disbelief at the cowardly but sane armed man. "I said 'please'", I said.

"You ought to be more careful who you loan your car to," he replied.

Tami was talking to a female cop, who walked away. "What the hell's going on?" I asked Tami.

"Well," she said, "I borrowed two dollars from John and put it in the gas can, got the car from Felber's and headed to Jay's and ran out of gas here. So I walked to Jay's and got another two bucks and got more gas but it still wouldn't start, and two punks waked up, stuck their heads in the car and tried to sell me crack. I finally got it started."

"Yeah," I said, "they try to sell me that shit when I'm walking home from Felber's all the time."

"Anyway, the cops pulled up and they ran. The cops think I'm here trying to buy dope and they didn't believe me. One of the little bastards must have thrown the shit in the car, because the cops searched it and found a little rock, and I'm gonna go to jail. They're testing it now."

I sighed. "You got my phone?"

"Yeah, here" and handed it to me. I said "I'll wait to see what happens before I leave."

A few minutes later two cops walked up. "It tested positive for cocaine, ma'am. I'm afraid we're going to have to place you under arrest." The female cop got out her handcuffs. "You don't have to cuff her," the other cop said.

I got in my car and drove back to Felber's, thinking I wouldn't see Tami again until after the holidays when they'd let her out on her own recognisance.

An hour later my phone rang, with no number showing. I usually don't answer calls like that, but figured it was Tami calling from jail. "Come to your house and unlock the door!" she said.

I finished my beer and went home. She got in the car. "Take me to Felber's! I need a fucking DRINK!"

"How'd you get out?"

"I convinced them I wasn't there to buy dope and they gave me a ride here."

So the moral of the story is, in Springfield, stay out of the gehetto unless you're insane. You might get arrested because someone tries to sell crack to you.

After reading your journals

[dragonsomnolent]

I've come to the decision that if I'm gonna move that far east in this god forsaken state, I'm gonna keep going until I hit Champaign. Oh and no doubt about 6th (I had to take my son to a neurologist at the SIU clinic there somewhere), and really, who is in charge of the street layout up there? I've never been more confused by the layout of a town (and I've lived in South County in STL, and actually seen a street intersect itself, still not sure how they make that work).

Re:

[mcgrew]

Have a look at this one [google.com]; it was even worse before they closed the railroad crossing at highland (left side of the map). Highland became East Iles at the track, then at 6th it becomes E Oberlin. E Iles is only three blocks long, Oberlin only six blocks; it ends at 11th Street. Why they didn't just call the whole thing Highland is beyond me.

Re:

[dragonsomnolent]

I never thought I'd see something worse than the Corondolete/River Des Peres clusterfuck along the border between St. Louis City and St. Louis County, but that is just mesed up. Although this [google.com] really doesn't do it justice, because if I remember correctly, Corondolete jumps across that drainage ditch (under which an actual river flows) at some point and picks back up.

Re:

[mcgrew]

I'm familiar with it; I grew up in Cahokia, have a friend there and another in Columbia, and my mom and sister both live in Belleville.