Wait, Where Do I Live?

So a great Village anomaly has come to my attention. While dealing with the Great Gas Nastiness earlier this week, there was much discussion of Bleecker Street, which is about 30 feet from my front door. Observe, this was taken from our fire escape:

It has always been my opinion that the C in the word Bleecker is completely extraneous, perhaps a remnant of our Dutch past that could be gotten rid of, unlike the extra A that used to be present in Haarlem and I feel really adds a little oomph. Anyway, people's discussions of the gas leak on Bleecker made me realize that I am in no way alone. In many places, the C was nowhere to be seen. To the extent that I actually began to question whether the C was there all and I had imagined its presence on my corner. So, here's what I did. I googled the words "Bleeker Street." Google did not give me one of those Did you mean Bleecker Street? lines at the top of my results. Instead, it would seem that the results are split exactly 50/50 on whether or not the C exists.

GoNYC? It's got the C if you want to take a gourmet walking tour of this fine street (GO TO MURRAY'S!). None other than Simon and Garfunkel seem to have left the C out of hte title of their song "Bleeker Street." Now, I trust these guys, for christ's sake, my parents almost named me Cecelia, I have to give these boys some respect, they actually make a putrid name sound desirable. That's no mean feat. I'd like to see someone pull that off with Agnes or Minerva or Gladys.

Google's map has the C, but the various establishments listed along the side seem to be out on whether or not it should be there. Bleeker Street Pizza? It's got it. Bleeker Street locksmith? Lacking.

However, the best example of the mysterious C in my opinion goes to the famous (and in my opinion overrated) John's Pizza? It's perhaps the most confused of all-it's got no C on the sign in front or on the web page, but you better believe the URL is www.johnsofbleeckerstreet.com . So what the fuck is that about? John's is considered a Village institution, and I guess if they are straddling the fence on this one, we're all supposed to go along. But I will not stand by this! John's, your pizza is mediocre and so is your stance-I don't care what you think-you look like a fool in your own home, and it's your own damned fault! And in solidarity with Harlem's lost A, I am standing by the C, as annoying as it can be sometimes to remember to put it in there.

I feel better now that that's off my chest.

Oh god, already a post-script and I haven't even hit publish yet! I just spell-checked this beast and EVERY instance of the words Bleeker AND Bleecker was flagged as being wrong. Blogger adds another vote to the undecided column!

The gas smell reverbs.

I mean, really. I understand that the mysterious gas leak's only known origin was right here on Bleecker Street, but really, jackhammering at 8am? It doesn't smell like gas any more, and there were all sorts of new holes in my street when I got home yesterday. Those weren't enough? You had to start again? I'm not really sure what you think you're going to find. And if you hit a gas main and either a) blow up or b) make me lose gas I am going to have to come out there and kill you myself (if you're not dead already, of course). And honestly, I will admit that yesterday's nastiness woke me up out of a very lovely sleep (as opposed to this morning's which involved various random NRHS faces-I think I need to get off all those social networking sites) and I would like for that to never happen again, so I encourage you to fix it, but if you could do it at a normal hour, that would be superb.