If you missed our post on Friday of last week, we’ve begun the Tournament of Shitty Intersections! We’ll be going all bracket-style on the crappiest intersections in Gloucester. Get your votes in!
Flannagan Square vs Washington St & Railroad Ave
Flanagan Square. Oh, my. This is easily one of the worst in town – top 3 for sure. If it gets voted down early, I may cry. Let’s talk first about how the stop signs were re-done like what, six or seven years ago? That just adds confusion to the mess (although it makes waay more sense now). The two-way stop is super hard for tourists to grasp, and then good fucking luck turning left there. The parade of assholes who won’t stop to let you go is deep and endless as the ocean twenty feet away. The best part is when some dick goes across when there isn’t room to clear the intersection and fucks shit up in both directions. HEY THANKS BRO.
Washington St & Railroad Ave is another in a series of intersections for which I would rather eat directly out of a strip club’s dumpster than turn left in. You have to worry about the stupid train, people zipping in and out of Dunk’s parking lot, and then BLAM, this intersection. No one has ever stopped turning right from Railroad onto Washington since the dawn of time. Cars would willingly broadside you in order to sneak by before the crossing arms go down, or get a French Vanilla extra extra. Another fun thing that isn’t at all life threatening is trying to cross that stupid intersection as a pedestrian without losing a leg.
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Prospect & Pleasant vs Main & Eastern
Prospect & Pleasant doesn’t seem like the worst intersection upon first glance . But move nearby, and you’ll grow to hate it. Try turning left from Pleasant onto Prospect. Like, within a ten-minute period. You’ll have to dart out because you can’t see who the hell is coming from your left and whoever is is flying, there’s an old man driving 4 MPH on the right, and then randomly a car will come careening across the part where no one usually goes (Left from Prospect onto Pleasant) and not yield or anything. Now that West Parish school is camping out for a few years, it’s not much easier.
Main & Eastern Ave should be simple. “Should” being the key word in that sentence. There are rules of society and the road, and in most other towns and cities, there are few issues. But tourists and the more dense of our pool of in-town drivers make this intersection actually dangerous. For instance, I had to fully lock my brakes up two weeks ago when someone turning left, TURNING FUCKING LEFT, did not yield to me as I was going straight from the fish pier back downtown. He had Maine plates, and looked utterly confused as to what he’d done wrong after I gesticulated wildly and laid on my horn, as is customary in social situations such as that. Do people think there should be a stop sign in front of Lee’s? I’ve been behind people full-on stopping there to let traffic from Eastern Ave take a right without stopping at their stop sign. For fuck’s sake people, this one isn’t even hard to fuck up, how are you fucking it up?
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The assimilation process must be about complete – I read this and think, “What is she complaining about, those intersections aren’t that bad. And, by the way, with just a little work the Flannagan’s intersection could easily be turned into another rotary.”
Flanagan Square, hands down, is the shittiest intersection in town. I could boil a stew with my blood almost every time I have to encounter that intersection. Which is almost every day since it’s right in the middle of town and hard to avoid. And to those who are in the right lane to turn right onto Prospect St. and decide to go straight down Main St….WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!