Changing at Baker Street

This is a family blog – normally – so please excuse my brief foray into the crude…

Everyone who spends any time in London develops a mental cop of the famous Underground map originally designed by Harry Beck, with it’s simplified mapping of lines each with their own colour and clear indications of interchanges between tube lines.

When my brother came to stay with us for a summer in London almost a decade ago, we spent a drunken night (or two) with my Brent colleagues. I don’t remember much about our tours of the drinking dens of Wembley, but I do remember one person referring to anal sex as ‘changing at Baker Street’ – because it’s the only station where you can change from the pink tube line (Hammersmith and City) to the brown line (Bakerloo). We rolled with laughter and unfortunately I’ve never been able to receive or give instructions about changing at Baker Street station without a brief tour through the gutter.

Yesterday Dana Franks shared a London-tube-map style of the US Interstate system. It’s a pretty cool representation. I had to check out Knoxville, the city of my birth. And what do I see? It’s the only place in America where you can change from the pink line to the brown line. It’s brings a whole new perspective to the I-40 to I-75 interchange.