This is not a post about traffic management. I don’t have crash statistics or advice on how to create a better bike/ped environment. This is about the three intersections in Our Fair City that have given me the most trouble. The most baffling, frustrating, horribly laid out intersections in all of Minneapolis. This, dear reader, is a post about how directionally incompetent I am. I hope you can relate to at least one of the following three clusterfucks:

#3: Ceder/Franklin/Minnehaha

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Look at this! It’s not even an intersection! It’s a triangle! Still, somehow, this “intersection” is a destination for me. There are all sorts of good bars in this area and I’m usually able to find pretty cheap or even free parking. But have you ever gotten out of your car and tried to find anything but the Taco Bell? It took me 45 minutes to find the Cabooze the first time I went to a show there. That time has diminished with each subsequent visit, but it’s not down to a straight line from my car to the bar. There are also just too many crisscrossing, arbitrarily turning streets in one place for my puny little mind. Once I figured this intersection out it wasn’t so bad, but I still hate having to deal with it.

#2: St. Anthony Main

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This is another destination area for me: Mac’s Industrial, The Otter, The Bulldog, Nye’s, Surdyk’s, friends’ apartments. Too many streets try to be in the same place at the same time: it’s like all the streets want to touch the White Castle or something. Is the destination on East Hennepin, Central, 1st Avenue, University, 4th Street? Forget it. These, plus all the overlapping ancillary side streets, have turned me around and made me (and many many of my friends) really unsure just exactly where something in this clusterfuck of an area is.

#1: Lake and Hiawatha

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When someone gives me directions to a place, and those directions involve going through or near the intersection of Lake and Hiawatha, I immediately ask them if there is a different way I can go. Don’t get me wrong: I can drive on Hiawatha without getting lost. I can drive on Lake without getting lost. I can even turn onto Lake from Hiawatha and vice-versa. But if the directions involve a turn otherwise, HELL NO. I am not lying when I say I have lost a full hour and a half to this intersection more than once. Minnehaha? Snelling? What the hell are these streets doing here, if not to confuse the hell out of me? Where the fuck is 28th? And, for that matter, which 28th am I looking for?

This is an anomaly I’ve only otherwise encountered downtown (which would probably eek in at number four on this list): the street and avenue are in the same number area. Between 26th and 32nd streets and avenues all intersect and seem to alternate street/ave/street/ave in the same parallel progression. And when you finally find the avenue you want going in the direction you want, the avenue your directions tell you to take all the way through this intersection, it’s no longer there! I’m looking at you, 28th Avenue.

Bah! This exercise has gotten my blood all worked up. These are intersections that I truly hate. And I’m not just throwing around “hate” like some third grader talking about school pudding. This is the meaning of hate your mom thinks of when she says, “We don’t say ‘hate,’ it’s such a strong word.”

So what about you? What intersections truly cause you to lose all control and just drive through yards because that’s faster?

(Side note: I did not include St. Paul in this list because the entire city of St. Paul is itself one giant clusterfuck intersection.)