Once upon a time, someone in Atlanta decided to attempt a numbered street grid. Using Peachtree, which is slightly straighter than a circle, as a spine, they added streets sequentially northward from North Avenue. While they can be commended for sticking to their guns, just before giving up at 28th Street, they somehow managed to forget that 27 exists.

Not wanting to be left out of the action, the small town of Avondale Estates seemingly had a very nice numbered street grid. But at some point it seems Edward Scissorhands was elected mayor and all but chopped the grid to pieces. While parts of seven avenues remain in tattered remnants, perplexingly they decided to retain only three names: 1st, 3rd and 7th avenues. Because that makes sense.

Firstly, Decatur should be commended for having five, successfully sequentially numbered streets which actually run parallel to each other... for a little bit. However, true to Atlanta form, instead of being able to simply drive from one end of 1st Avenue to the other (a measly five blocks), one must make a right turn onto Oakview Road and then a left a few hundred feet later back onto 1st, a journey which takes you from heading due east to due south.

East Point learned to count 1 to 7 without skipping a single number, but seems to have missed the day in kindergarten about drawing straight lines. For some reason 1st street stretches almost two blocks, while 2nd, sitting to the west, makes it only one before running into 3rd, which is stacked on top of the next four streets, all crammed into just more than one normal sized block.

Almost two miles from the hodge-podge of 1st-7th streets, 8th Street has seemingly struck out on its own. Randomly situated between Pearl Street and Kimmeridge Drive, the street is only two blocks long and seemingly hopelessly out of place.

Along a four mile stretch of Atlantic Avenue, encircling three sides of Dobbins Air Reserve Base, all but 2nd Street shows up between 1st and 7th. Arranged as haphazardly as a plate of spilt spaghetti, the roads mostly end in dead-ends due to such obstacles as lakes and fences.

In Stone Mountain, lacking a 1st Street can be forgiven with the presence of Main in its place. With 2nd, 3rd and 4th running almost parallel for more than six blocks, and even a tiny piece of a 5th Street, overall things are pretty good. Though sadly somewhere along the way 2nd got sliced in half.

Did Tucker miss the memo? "(Re: The Point of Numbered Streets.)" While having a grid far better than most metro areas, and even applying "street" to north-south thoroughfares and "avenue" to east-west, they seem to have willy-nilly applied numbers without regard for direction or order. 1st Avenue runs through the heart of the downtown area, connecting along its way 2nd, Main and 4th streets.