How Many San Francisco Streets Can You Name? There's a Game for That

How well do you know San Francisco streets? A new game by product designer, illustrator and public transit advocate Chris Arvin will give you an exact number, down to two decimal points.

It’s a simple game — a webpage with a map of San Francisco prompts users to type a street into a text box. Once the street name is entered, the street is highlighted on the map and a scoreboard displays the percentage of total city mileage that has been identified. That percentage increases as more streets are named.

During a walk around San Francisco, Arvin and a friend wondered how many city streets they could name from memory. How well did they really know San Francisco? The first version of the game was then sent around to Arvin’s friends about a week-and-a-half later.

This past Tuesday the game went public. Arvin’s tweet announcing the game to the public was viewed over 127,000 times. And that day, over 6,700 people visited the game page, trying to see who knew San Francisco best.

The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. People have spent entire days competing with co-workers over Slack, they’ve told Arvin. Some even said they’d stayed up late into the night trying to name just a few more streets. Arvin likes putting the game on a TV, inviting friends over, and working together to see how high of a score they can reach. (The best they’ve achieved is around 75%.)

So, how does your knowledge compare? “The average is probably around like 40%, but I’ve seen a lot of people get to 50% for sure,” said Arvin. “The really good scores are once you start to get to 70% or higher. I think I saw someone get to 80%, which is really impressive.”

Said one Twitter user: “throwing in the towel at 65.01%. this was a blast! will have to try again in a few months and keep better notes of the streets i walk/bus/bike on!” Another person responded with a screenshot showing a 25.36% score, saying “This is the baseline. I’m from the Midwest and have only been to San Francisco twice. Anyone from the Bay Area who can’t get more than this isn’t trying.” Consider the gauntlet thrown.

The game isn’t just a memory test. Neighborhoods with streets that follow a convention, like states or alphabetical order, can often be figured out even if players can’t necessarily remember the exact name. In fact, Arvin hopes to build out the game even more in the future, potentially adding streaks for naming so many streets in a certain theme and making the map interactive.

For some players, the game has also changed the way they look at San Francisco. Arvin has noticed that people who play are paying more attention to street signs or going out of their way to visit areas in the map that they weren’t able to fill in.

Arvin says that most of all, they hope people have fun playing and see it as a way to learn more about San Francisco. “I hope people use it as a way to think about the city differently and to think about which parts of the city they maybe haven’t explored a lot or want to explore more,” said Arvin. “We have a pretty small city, seven miles by seven miles, but there’s so many different neighborhoods and so many great places to explore.”