Heard on [adult swim]: "street" to "alley"?

[Laurence Horn]

At 7:25 AM -0400 5/20/09, Herb Stahlke wrote:
>I have not noticed hearing "street" or "road" in this expression, only
>"alley," but then I grew up about twenty-five miles from the
>Ambassador Bridge--on the Michigan side.
>
>Herb

There's even a negative form of the expression:

"This is not un-up your alley."
(Don DeLillo, Underworld, 1997, p. 202)

LH

>On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 2:03 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>-----------------------
>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>>  Subject:      Heard on [adult swim]: "street" to "alley"?
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>  "Announcer" spoofing the BBC on Lookaround U, a Brit comedy show:
>>
>>  "Wherever your _alley_, we are right up it."
>>
>>  Among the *very* few people from the various branches of the past and
>>  present kingdom that I've known, I've heard, "right up your _street_"
>>  and "right up your _road_," but, never before, "right up your alley,"
>>  except from Canadians.
>>
>>  Speaking of whom, according to another show, the present-day United
>>  States would be located in Canada, had not the the American Indians
>>  graciously chosen to die out and had not a multitude of black Africans
>>  rushed to take advantage of a generous offer of lifetime employment in
>>  exchange for free passage to what was to become the United States.
>>
>>  -Wilson
>>  ---
>>  All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
>>  come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>>  -----
>>  -Mark Twain
>>
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>>
>
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