On No Name Street in Rolling Hills Estates, residents form a road bloc

ANONYMOUS AVENUE: Maybe you’re a movie star, or a Mafia don, or simply a hermit. Whatever the case, if obscurity is your desire you may want to move to No Name Street in Rolling Hills Estates.

What started as a driveway that peels off Palos Verdes Drive North between Dobbin and Rawhide lanes has evolved into a street that serves eight homes. Although it warrants an unlabeled line in The Thomas Guide and street directory, it has managed to avoid a name.

City officials have left it nameless, says longtime resident William Pace, because they don’t claim it as city property. They are happy to continue classifying No Name as the driveway it started out to be, which is fine with Pace, whose mailing address is Palos Verdes Drive North.

“We take care of it, we maintain it, and we’re satisfied with it,” Pace says.

Most of the eight families who live there like calling No Name Street their home. They are used to the occasional confused visitor, the occasional package that ends up in the Twilight Zone.

Some express deeper concerns on naming the street, such as having to change legal documents, deeds and return address labels if it suddenly gained an official moniker. And some fear they would be required to install curbs and gutters on the side of the street where they are absent.

Plus, it would take time for the map books to catch up if officials gave it a name. “It would be pure havoc, and that period of confusion we don’t see any point to,” Pace says.

But No Name Street is a place where confusion already reigns, says resident Thomas Peterson. He often has difficulty receiving mail and directing visitors and fears being missed by emergency crews.

When a rider fell from his horse at the end of the street a few years ago, Peterson made sure to specify No Name Street when he called for help. “If we had given them our Palos Verdes Drive North address, they would have had no idea where we were,” he says.

Pace says he has had few such problems while living on the street for more than 30 years. And when he has, he says, “I go down to the main street with a flashlight so they can find me.”

2-TO-1 FAVORITES: For newlyweds Nora and Gary Stines, choosing a wedding site was simple--they just went to the track.

The West Hills couple, who end up at the horse races most Saturdays, said their vows in the winner’s circle of Hollywood Park in Inglewood before the first race Saturday.

“It was a symbolic thing,” Nora said. “I feel like he’s the biggest trophy of my life, and where else to get presented that?”

The two have been race fans from the start, Nora says. Gary hit her with a one-question pop quiz (“What is a ridgeling?”) a few hours after they met. She passed, and they have been betting buddies ever since.

They even managed to win a $180 wedding gift Saturday when they stayed around to play the ponies and, get this, a horse named Go Gary Go came in for them.

The wedding itself had a few nice touches: The park bugler, for instance, played an impromptu medley of “Here Comes the Bride” and “Call to the Post” during the ceremony. “I don’t know too many weddings with a bugler,” Nora says.

--Compiled by DAVE GRIMM