Gloaming Crackle

So, the solution to my little riddle, for all of you dear readers clearly burning for resolution. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go back and read. A few people (well, several people) have asked if the question required specific knowledge of Bay Area geography. No, no; that’s not how a riddle works. Everything you need, besides a little lateral thinking, is contained in that original post.

Up to date? Then here we go.

I don’t know how quickly and easily you remember names and numbers and labels, but for me it just doesn’t happen without a lot of context and repetition. Anyway, if you know one place name, it serves to reason it would be the one most familiar and useful to you — i.e., the place where you live. So I live on Madison. Therefore Madison is the one street in Oakland I am most certain to know. It’s my point of reference for everything else.

Now. With Kaufman on the horizon, I assume most people reading this are familiar with synecdoche. It’s a kind of abstraction where you use a part of something to represent the whole, or the whole of something to refer to a part. Sailors become “hands”. A car becomes “wheels”. “Capcom” refers to Inafune. And so on.

So if my point of reference for streets in Oakland is the street that I live on, I will tend to, on some not entirely conscious level, associate my street with all streets in Oakland. You know how it works. I figure distances and other street positions by association to home base. I will read in patterns, to help me remember where things are, all centered on the one most important point. All pretty simple, right?

As I said, I live on Madison. In my follow-up hint, I mentioned that other streets closely parallel to Madison include Jackson, Harrison, Jefferson, Washington, and Franklin. That’s not unique information, or anything you’d be expected to know; all it really does is point a finger on the significance of my street name.

I live on a president street. I’m surrounded by president streets. This is, on some level, my concept of the area. So naturally enough, I tend to mistake Grand Ave for Grant.

So there’s the long division. Now all that’s left is addition. So why do I keep mixing up “Grant” and Union? Well! What’s the association there?

Yes, exactly.

This is pretty typical, really. I just found this particular example easier to explain — and therefore funnier — than most.

Is it any wonder I was so horrible in school?

So to update on this post:

Other nearby parallel streets to mine (as you can see) include Jackson, Harrison, Jefferson, Washington, and Franklin.

(Two people more or less got this, privately, and a third has come close.)

I just figured out why I keep confusing Grand Ave in Oakland with Union St, in SF. It’s because I live on Madison.

Explain.

(If no one gets this by Monday, I’ll post another hint.)

Monday update: Hint here.