One time my uncle sent me a letter and couldn’t remember the address of my place at the time, so he addressed it to, “White house a block away from the corner of [street] in [town, state]” and it made it here.
This was, obviously, well before you could just use Street View or whatever.
“You know, the house next to the one that has that little cunt kid. You know the one. Always leaving his bike on the lawn, and being a real disrespectful little shit if you try to explain it’s gonna get stolen in THIS neighborhood. The house next to that. The white one, not the blue one on the other side.”
Mailman: “Oh. Yeah. I DO know that little fucker. Damn near tripped over his bike when it was covered in snow, and I didn’t know it was there.”
The postal service is one of those things that’s amazing the fact that half the things arrive at their intended destination knowing what is involved in the logistics of the whole thing.
I attempted to find the article but search engines are terrible. They mentioned that advertising companies often have a book of mail tests; things they attempted to mail to see if they would be permitted. Some of the examples included:
A sock with an address written on it, partial addresses, wet paper, vague addresses like your example, local names like “sues bar”, tom cruises house, a sandwich in a bag, poster board, flags. They get pretty creative and like a record of what might work for pitch meetings. Generally if it looks plausible, they attempt it.
One time my uncle sent me a letter and couldn’t remember the address of my place at the time, so he addressed it to, “White house a block away from the corner of [street] in [town, state]” and it made it here.
This was, obviously, well before you could just use Street View or whatever.
“You know, the house next to the one that has that little cunt kid. You know the one. Always leaving his bike on the lawn, and being a real disrespectful little shit if you try to explain it’s gonna get stolen in THIS neighborhood. The house next to that. The white one, not the blue one on the other side.”
Mailman: “Oh. Yeah. I DO know that little fucker. Damn near tripped over his bike when it was covered in snow, and I didn’t know it was there.”
Costa Rica IRL
Yep, when we visited most of the houses had little names they would use for their address. Villa Bonita 200m S of xxx
Iceland, draw a map on it and the right name and that’s all you really need.
The postal service is one of those things that’s amazing the fact that half the things arrive at their intended destination knowing what is involved in the logistics of the whole thing.
I attempted to find the article but search engines are terrible. They mentioned that advertising companies often have a book of mail tests; things they attempted to mail to see if they would be permitted. Some of the examples included:
A sock with an address written on it, partial addresses, wet paper, vague addresses like your example, local names like “sues bar”, tom cruises house, a sandwich in a bag, poster board, flags. They get pretty creative and like a record of what might work for pitch meetings. Generally if it looks plausible, they attempt it.