Oh, Davis, Davis, Davis

The city of Davis, California has an incredible farmer's market. Like, never mind just fresh fruits and veggies at low prices. Forget the occasional olive oil or red wine. The Davis farmer's market has baba ghanoush, homemade pesto, 8 varieties of tortillas at one stand, homemade pickles, hand-made tamales (about 6 varieties, two of them vegetarian), heirloom tomatoes in infinite varieties, golden raspberries, alcoholic beverages I've never heard of, fresh kettle corn . . . anyway, I decided to go the other day, and I got a bunch of good stuff, including a big bag of zucchini, which I used to make zucchini bread (which was delicious). But that's not the story. No, the story is about the journey.
You see, Davis has some kind of juju on it to repel and confuse travelers. Here is my evidence. ONE: There is a fork in the road right at the entrance to the city that divides into three prongs. One goes slightly left, another goes right, and another goes far right. Every person who lives in Davis, when giving you directions, tells you to go straight here. If you choose the logical direction, left (which is the fewest number of degrees off dead center) you get hopelessly lost on the campus of UC Davis. What they really mean is to go right. TWO: There is a grid (ABC, 123), but it's only about 5 blocks square, and beyond that the city is a rat maze. THREE: Most of the streets change names every two blocks or so, so that you'll be driving along, say Lindale, and all of a sudden you'll look up and realize you're on University. Just as you look up at the next street sign to see of you saw right or if the other sign was somehow fucked up, you'll find that now you're on Cornell. FOUR: The street signs are non-reflective, so that while you can see them okay during the day, at night you are shit out of luck. They are absolutely illegible. FIVE: Approximately half of the street signs are either obscured by trees or missing altogether. SIX: Much like the colon, there is only one exit to the city of Davis, and the signs that say "To 80," are located right on it, and nowhere else in town, including two blocks away. SEVEN: The signs are often (seemingly purposely) obfuscating. For example -- I missed my freeway exit and ended up on campus at UC Davis. I decided to try to get to downtown on the surface streets, because it's about a mile and perfectly parallel to the freeway. I quickly ran into a fork in the road, with a sign that said "Downtown Davis" and an arrow pointing straight up, which universally seems to mean "Go straight ahead." About a block later I hit a dead end in a parking lot. I circled back to where I started and, just on a hunch, followed the sign pointing left, which said "Arboretum," and about thirty seconds later I was in downtown.
QED.