On his way to talking about how to locate radio traffic reports, Doc mentions a phenomenon that leaves me puzzled:
Pointing home a drive. After dropping off David and Dan at the airport in San Diego yesterday at the start of rush hour, I headed home to Santa Barbara on The Five. (In Southern California, highways take articles. Highway 101 in the Bay Area is The 101 in Los Angeles.) Traffic moved smoothly for a few minutes, then slowed to a crawl for the next twenty miles. [The Doc Searls Weblog]
OK, when I lived in Southern California (I grew up down there, only left after college), we did not denote freeways by the definite article followed by the route number: "the 405." Nope, never heard it until recently. Actually, back then (I know, dating myself here), we were just as likely to call the freeway by its common name: the San Diego Freeway, or the Harbor Freeway, or the Santa Monica Freeway. Those are the designations I grew up with, and only later--when I started driving--did I learn the numbers. But this weirdness of calling it "the 101," that's new. I'll bet it was the drive-time jocks from out of town that started that.
8:37:44 PM 
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