{"id":25941,"date":"2020-09-06T17:15:29","date_gmt":"2020-09-06T21:15:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/?p=25941"},"modified":"2020-09-06T17:15:29","modified_gmt":"2020-09-06T21:15:29","slug":"181-everywhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/2020\/09\/06\/181-everywhere.html","title":{"rendered":"181 Everywhere"},"content":{"rendered":"

One photo accumulation I started but lost track of involved sightings of my magic number, 181<\/a>. PO Box 181 has been my mailing address since 1991, when I presented myself with a decision between getting a PO Box or a safe deposit box. I went with the former.<\/p>\n

I had in mind using the PO Box as something like a storage chamber, which is probably illegal or at least against USPS policies. I think my plan was to mail myself something like a spare set of keys, or a pile of emergency cash, and keep the envelope in the box until I needed it. I never did any of that.<\/p>\n

I ended up keeping the 181 as a public address for people who find this website and prefer to connect via postal mail.<\/p>\n

181 has appeared in numerous places since 1991. One of the most memorable appearances was when a friend with whom I corresponded moved to California and rented a PO Box. Without her saying anything or requesting it they gave her 181. It was some kind of magical message.<\/p>\n

I owned the 181.nyc domain name for a year before letting it go. It now contains a site with no content but that looks like it is intended to be a blog about 181st Street, which is in Washington Heights, where I used to live, not on 181st Street, but close enough to include it in my long list of 181 encounters.<\/p>\n

It’s not an obsession, just a fun little thing to keep my ever-active mind engaged, and paying attention. The hand-written ones are the handiwork of postal workers. The green one is from when I used to host a Scrabble site, and I beat someone with a score of 181.<\/p>\n

I’m yet to figure out why, in areas like Midtown and the Upper East Side, so many building numbers get skipped. In some cases it seems obvious enough that a large building replaced a bunch of smaller ones, but it’s not always so. In my search for 181s it’s been uncanny how often it gets skipped over on a street where it seemed like it should have appeared, like when there’s a 177, then a 179, then a 183, but no evidence or reason to believe the 183 building replaced the 181. The magic number just got skipped, like it was harbinger of bad luck.<\/p>\n

In a similar spirit I’ve found all kinds of vagaries and mistakes in the Queens street grid, but don’t even get me started on that. It’s a mess.<\/p>\n

Here are a few 181s. The rest are over in the photo dumps section<\/a>. This is also my first use of the Gallery post format in the Extra Theme.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One photo accumulation I started but lost track of involved sightings of my magic number, 181. PO Box 181 has been my mailing address since 1991, when I presented myself with a decision between getting a PO Box or a safe deposit box. I went with the former. I had in mind using the PO […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25945,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-digital-hoarding","et_post_format-et-post-format-gallery","et-has-post-format-content"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/181-Everywhere-IMG_2053-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1732&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paumAn-6Kp","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25941"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25948,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25941\/revisions\/25948"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}