Bull Street

    Since the 19th century, the South Carolina state mental hospital, or lunatic asylum, or possibly a few more names, has been on Bull Street at the end of Elmwood Avenue in Columbia. (For people not familiar with South Carolina, Columbia is the capital, and where I live, more or less.) The address has been well-known throughout the state for all my life and probably a century longer. In other words, in any town in SC, if somebody said, "They're going to send you to Bull Street," everyone knew what it meant.
    Now the State Hospital is closed, and developers are going to turn the site into a mixed residential/commercial/baseball (you heard me) development. They've given it a non-mental-hospital-related name and to call for more information, you phone a toll-free number (not 1-800, but for argument's sake), say it's 1-800 BULL STREET. Just me, but I would think that that would be an association that they're trying to get away from. Also NUT HOUSE would have been ever so much more creative. Face. Palm.