10/12   Why do numbers in some street addresses have so many digits?  There are
        only ten houses on the one-block dead-end street in Fremont that I live
        on, but the numbers start at 34000.  On the other hand, street numbers
        in the Bay Farm area in Alameda only have two or three digits.
        \_ IIRC, numbers don't repeat in a given "line", so if you find the
           next street before/after that cul-de-sac that's roughly in a line
           w/ it, the numbers will continue that way.  I have a similar deal.
           I'm on a relatively long st. w/ a 4 digit address, but the 10 house
           cul-de-sac around the corner is 5-digit, because it points the
           direction of the rest of the (fairly long) city.
        \_ some address numbering trivia.  There are a number of long streets
           running through Orange County which go through multiple cities,
           each with their own numbering scheme.  Usually, it's not a source
           of much confusion since most cities cooperate.  But there are/were
           small stretches (like < 6 blocks) in unincorporated areas of the
           county which are on the county numbering scheme -- usually 5 digits
           instead of the 4 digits that most cities use/used.  Yeah, that's
           fun trying to find an address -- 3340 3350 3360 27400 27420 3520 ...
           \_ In Florence (Italy), numbers run in disjoint blue (residential)
              and red (commercial) sequences.  So you can have 1 2 3 4 1 5
              6 2 7 3 4 8 and so on.  -tom
              \_ disjoint is not really the right word.
              \_ How do you tell which sequence it is from the address on an
                 envelop?  Are people required to write/print with red and blue
                 ink?
                 \_ Dunno, maybe they just do "R15" or something.  -tom
                    \- on an envelope or otherwise you write ###r if it is
                       "rosso". Stendahl's famous novel "The Red and the Black"
                       is about a fight between people with red and blue/black
                       addresses in Florence, which he wrote after having a
                       breakdown there trying to find the right address.
                       YMWTG(stendahl syndrome, florence).
           \_ All I gotta say is "Japanese Addressing Schemes" particularly
              say in Tokyo or Kyoto.  Street numbers are picked on totally
              an arbitrary basis many times -- family tradition, good luck,
              numerology, whatever.