...this is what a Chicken Corner reader, Jennifer Lerew, has to say in regard to your steep grading system (in which Baxter and Fargo potentially lose their status as meanest streets).

Lerew writes:

Just try driving down Baxter from the top as I did (at age 18 no less) in a 1973 Cadillac and you’d agree with me that THAT sucker is the steepest—don’t care what an assayer says. Never since, including in San Francisco, have I had such a pants-wetting driving task. That, and parallel parking on aforementioned Baxter-or, yes, Fargo. Good luck to your friend, though. L.A. is waiting for the answer—the better to strike the champion demonic pavement off our Google driving maps.

As the Beegees once said: How steep is your street? How steep is YOUR street? We really need to know.

Private street surveyor Chris Nichols also is author of The Leisure Architecture of Wayne McAllister.