Municipal Planning and Guerilla Dermatology I want to know something and I want to know it now. Whatever happened to street numbers? Was another ordinance passed at a meeting I missed? I tried to find one of those retail package mailing outfits last week. I thought I’d located one in what I suspect was a $200 per month yellow page ad. The address was given in relatively large letters. Being a newcomer I jotted it down so I could find the joint. I needn’t have bothered. I would never see those numbers again. Here’s a happy thought for whoever’s paying for that ad. Give a kid a crayon and pay him to draw the numbers that appear in it somewhere on your building; preferably the exterior. After 20 minutes of scouring the neighborhood in which the ad accuses you of being located, I gave up. Either you don’t exist or have joined an apparently increasing number of successful boutiques grown so exclusive as to lurk in numerical anonymity far from the prying eyes of prospective clients. Let’s call it stealth advertising. And you ne’er do wells at city works don’t escape my wrath either! Where did the numbers go that used to adorn city street signs? One used to be able to monitor one’s numerical progress down the promenade by nodding at the street signs adorning each intersection. There, prominently displayed just under the street name, was a magic number that foreshadowed the addresses one might find in the ensuing block. Number progressions drawing further away from one’s destination suggested that a smartly executed U-turn might be in order while progressions drawing ever nearer the prize encouraged the weary traveler to stay his course. It may have been logic’s last refuge. Try doing that while weaving through traffic on the main drag some Friday afternoon. Nary a number on nary a corner. Now try to pick out an address from fronts of one of the tire stores or burger joints there. (Are there any other kinds of businesses allowed anymore?) I’m convinced archaeologists in the dim and distant future will stand in divided debate on the issue of whether 21st century man invented wheels to expedite burger acquisition or aligned burger joints in logistical support of wheel supply pipelines. Either way, extrapolating a four digit number on 3-inch reflective tape from among the cascading fjords of styrene molded, neon dipped, deep fried, steel belted radial, extra crispy, eye candy along Stone is like checking for a piece of lint on Christina Aguilera’s sequined tuxedo while she does the lambatta. (Now there’s a sentence you won’t find anywhere else in nature.) And to the next person who starts giving me directions by saying “Uh...you ‘member where Maybelle’s used to be?” Let me answer that in words of one syllable. “No—I don’t.” The mere fact that I walk around blinking most of the time should tell people that I’m new here. I’m sure Maybelle ran a fine diner, or hair salon, or meat packing plant. But I do not remember Maybelle, her establishment, nor the relative juxtaposition of its former location to anything else in the charted universe. Let’s just leave Maybelle out of it. Okay? When Napoleon invaded the rest of Europe he made a law that you had to display your house number prominently. If you didn’t he would have your head cut off or make you watch old Jerry Lewis telethons or something. I propose a similar remedy here right here. I am going to start walking into stores wearing a Jerry Lewis mask wielding a well-honed meat cleaver and extirpate the acne-clad noggins of “shift managers” who don’t array street numbers over the doors of their establishments. I am going to single them out, in particular, for two reasons: 1. They are at hand. Franchised Corporate America has learned to maintain a $6.25 per hour phalanx of acne-clad shift managers between their corporate offices and the buying public. 2. I have a host of other unspecified scores to settle with acne-clad shift managers. It pleases me to think of going down in history as a serial killer with a triple major; Retail Management Reform, Applied Municipal Planning and Guerilla Dermatology.