baker street

one of gerry rafferty's most famous songs (see: right down the line)

my favorite lines go like this:
well another crazy day, you'll drink the night away
and forget about everything.
this city desert makes you feel so cold
it's got so many people but it's got no soul
and it's taken you so long to find out you were wrong
when you thought it held everything.

it's also reportedly the inspiration for slash's epic solo in sweet child o' mine, according to slash himself.

when sherlock holmes stories were first published, the street numbers on baker street only went up to 100. sir arthur conan doyle deliberately chose a fictional door number to avoid disrupting anyone's real-life residence with the immense popularity of his stories.

the road that now includes 221b baker street, located north of marylebone road near regent's park, was actually called upper baker street during conan doyle's lifetime. in his earliest writing, conan doyle placed sherlock holmes' home on upper baker street, explaining it with, "if i had a house in mind, that's where it would be."

later on, nigel morland, a british crime writer, claimed that conan doyle, later in life, pinpointed the intersection of baker street and george street, about 500 meters south of marylebone road, as the true location of 221b.

today, this address is home to the sherlock holmes museum, which still receives letters addressed to sherlock holmes from fans all over the world.