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Las Vegas street name colloquialisms

September 7th, 2008 by Brandon

I realized today that we in Las Vegas have a few streets which are said a specific way, and while outsiders would understand us, they might not say the street names in the same way as a person who has lived here for a while.

Most, if not all, of the streets in this city have a suffix — Ave, St, Blvd, Way, etc. When giving directions or stating the location of a landmark, no one ever says “Oh, it’s located on Rainbow Boulevard” or “You’ll turn left down Tropicana Avenue”; these suffixes are dropped.

However, there are a few streets in the city for which one Must Always affix the suffix. The three that sprang to mind today were:

Maryland Parkway, Boulder Highway, and Las Vegas Boulevard. You’ll never hear a Las Vegas native say just “Maryland” or “Boulder” or “Las Vegas” — you just won’t.

We also refer to I-215 as “the two-fifteen”… but I’ve heard other cities do this with their freeways. Sometimes we call US-95 “the ninety-five” and I-15 “the fifteen,” but I don’t think I have ever heard “I-215″ in colloquial speech. It’s always just “the two-fifteen”

Anyway, I just thought it was interesting that we do that, and wondered why. Does anyone know? And are there any other streets around town with similar “rules”?

5 Responses

  1. Ashley

    I am not sure why we do that. Maybe because it would be confusing to say “make a left at boulder and then right on Las Vegas. It would kinda sound like you would turn at the boulder then head right on to Vegas. I dunno. I am tired and wanted to write something. Love you!

  2. Brandon

    I think your instructions would be even more confusing since Boulder Hwy and LV Blvd never intersect. You’d be driving forever and have no idea what was going on! ;)

  3. Ashley

    I hate you.

  4. Nur

    I used to live on this street called Sepulveda, which was said differently by like everyone I heard say it. It sounds like it should be one of those street prefixes. It’s an avenue though.

    I love that I live two streets down from Shamu. No suffix.

  5. Nur

    *Street suffix, not prefix.

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