We always had the thing growing up - "oh, we need a shoulder of lamb, someone ought to go down the shop on the high street and get it." Here, Main Street USA seems an honestly different thing, more a mythical idealisation of what America At Its Best Should Be.

Opinions? Anyone? I always mentally place Main Street as the place where "Happy Days" is supposed to take place, or all of "American Graffiti".

There's one at Disneyland...it's all big and wide, with pickets and a mercantile. Does that help? See also, Pleasantville.

Main Street, USA. Smalltown, USA. Right there in my head with Route 66, Burma Shave! billboards, American Graffiti....

I'm now completely fascinated by the different perceptions of High Street, Insert appropriate '-ich' township, UK, versus the high street in all small towns and quite a few London neighbourhoods, which is just the automatic "where they keep the shops." Even in London, there's Kensington High Street (just sort of southwesty from Ambassador's Row and Knightsbridge and all). You never say, I'm going down to have tea or buy a rude teeshirt on Kensington High Street; you say you're off to Ken high. It's just, where all the exhanging money for goods is kept in a given spot.

Pleasantville -- that's exactly what Deb's description evoked. Americana, and apple pie.

Yeah -- the H section of the London A to Z is huge, because there're so many High Streets. A street would be minding its own business, suddenly become high, sell stuff, and then come down.

Because I am an American this is making me picture greasy guys talking into grates saying "You get the first taste for free." Cause, the street gets high, right?

I think "high street"'s closest US equivalent would be something like "downtown" or "near the big shops." Main, to me, implies a specific street called main, and also possibly the Pleasantville concept.

erika's making me wonder about the origin of "high street". My immediate thought is that it's geographical - something about being on a hill, because besides the shops, the high street in the UK almost always has the town churches on or right off it, and churches and hills, well, the church bells were used as warning and summons and message givers for centuries. So a hill would give the best acoustics.

It's probably something either much more obscure or much more prosaic, though.

"No," Anya said. "It's all a secret, and you're not allowed to know. Go home."

Oh, the look on Lex Luthor's face when he's told such a thing flat-out by no-nonsense Anya. I laughed and laughed.

But the man should really have his license revoked, shouldn't he.

"Main Street, USA" is a more mythic ideal than the prosaic "high street." In older towns in the Eastern United States, the main street is sometimes called High Street, as is the case in my home town back in Pennsylvania.

I'm not sure when the term "Main Street" became so iconic. It harkens back to the 50's thing, "Happy Days" and "Pleasantville" and the rest. I'm not sure it every really existed, except in hind sight. It's become an advertising shorthand of an annoying sort, because it evokes things that aren't real and a mindset I feel is damaging, no matter how multi-cultural they try to make it by inserting blacks, Asians, etc.

I've lived in lots of very small towns where "downtown" and "main street" were the same place, and meant going to the shops, or where the (very little and very boring) action was. My mom, as a teen "dragged the gut" and later "dragged main" which meant driving up and down the main street of town in order to be seen. I did a little myself at a similar age. Sometimes where the shopping is might be downtown, or Elm street or some other tree name, instead of main, but in very small towns you could say something was at the end of Main, or on the corner of Elm and Main, or Downtown at Elm and Main, but then the street really was named Main. I don't know if any of that helps or not.

Yes to all who mentioned our down town or [Town Name Here] Square are the closest USian things to UK's high street.

eta...

Deena - the story will be back up. It's just that I lost a sizeable chunk of the corrected version of the first entry. I have to recreate it. It seemed silly to keep the rest up with the beginning missing. I probably have enough room to still split all those entries up more evenly and repost them in those spots. I mostly feel like a big spaz for having lost it.