Travelin’ Meme
- At January 08, 2005
- By Bob Howe
- In Blog Posts
10
1. Go To Mapquest.com
2. Click on Directions
3. Enter your Current Address and the Address of your Childhood Home (or at least the town if you don’t remember the exact address)
4. Put the time and distance in a post like this.
5. Don’t forget to repost these directions. (Not the door to door ones!)
In my case:
156 Skillman Street, Brooklyn, New York, 11205
<Street Address Redacted> Brooklyn, New York, 11234
Total Est. Time: 18 minutes
Total Est. Distance: 6.42 miles
Thanks to
holyoutlaw
From my childhood home (on W. Washington Blvd. in Chicago) to my sister’s home (on S. Oak Park Ave., in Oak Park) it’s:
Total Est. Time: 6 minutes
Total Est. Distance: 2.29 miles.
But if I still lived in Chicago I’d live in Rogers Park or somewhere on the North Side.
admin
I’ve been to Chicago once, and I can’t even its general outlines on a map—except that there’s a lake and an airport on its East side. Oak Park is an evocative 19th Century name though.
By the way, that 18-minute transit time above? It’s a lie. My current home is at the south end of Brooklyn (and not to be confused with South Brooklyn, which is actually in North Brooklyn); my childhood home (which no longer exists) was a few blocks from Pratt Institute, where I worked for several years. I made the drive from here to there often, and it never took less than 25 minutes, even in the middle of the night—30 to 45 minutes was much more likely, and by mass transit (and walking) it was never less than 75 minutes, usually closer to 90.
I mention all this because it never ceases to amaze me how travel times for given distances in New York City are wildly different than they would be elsewhere. If I drove for 30 Minutes from Eugene, Oregon, I could be in the Cascade Mountains.
rosiebird
Total Est. Time: 44 minutes
Total Est. Distance: 28.53 miles
couscous1021
I hear you on wonky New York travel times, Bob. I live in Maspeth, which is next to LIC and literally 15 minutes from the midtown tunnel.
Yet, It takes me an hour and 20 to get home ( if I can’t bum a ride or make the express triboro bus), because the nearest bus-accessible train stop is over by the Queens Center mall, and I take a local bus back in the opposite direction to get home. Infuriating.
Why was it 60 or 75 minutes for you as a kid? Two-fare zone, or end-to-end train route?
steelbrassnwood
15 miles from near Prospect Park in Brooklyn to the North Shore of Staten Island where I grew up, and a complete fantasy travel time of 26 minutes. That’s impossible even without any traffic, and the last time there wasn’t a traffic jam on the Staten Island Expressway was when they were building it.
admin
The 60- to 75-minute figure is for the same reason it takes you infuriatingly long to get home from work: there is no direct mass transit route from my house to Pratt (by the way, that’s not as a kid: for most of the time I worked at Pratt I took mass transit). See the photomap below.
admin
…a complete fantasy travel time of 26 minutes.
That made me laugh out loud. I think I’ve gone from the Military Ocean Terminal in Bayonne to my house in Bensonhurst (on Bay 47th Street) by motorcycle in under 30 minutes. Of course when I arrived home I immediately dismounted and threw up.
admin
Yeah, that’s another fantasy time, I think.
steelbrassnwood
Yeah, you might be able to make it to my parents’ in 26 minutes on a motorcycle if you were willing to white-line it on the expressway. But more likely you’d end up as a smear on the fender of some pissed-off thug’s SUV.
steelbrassnwood
That’s some map. What’s striking is that it would be just as fast for me to simply walk from my place to Pratt than to take the subway.