When someone mentions cross streets, how do you picture them?

I do one of these two:

Do you picture some part of Main that you do know and then mentally travel down it until you get to Tenth?
Do you imagine the closest location that’s familiar and then navigate from there?

If I’m vaguely familiar with it I might spend a little time trying to picture buildings nearby and see if my memory can be triggered to what is in that location to visualize it.

I also estimate where it fits on the map in my brain. Let’s say I know a location north and south of there. I would fill in that section of the map to help estimate the distance and orient myself to the location. The map is 2-D ish like driving through the area and/or a simple road map also.

Mostly, it’s the simple map just to get an overall idea of where it is; the general location.

I visualize it in my memory. I first see a street sign. I picture myself riding or walking one of the streets that i am most familiar with.
I picture a map in my head next with significant locations that are milestones around it.
Lastly I pull it up on google maps. Then zoom in but take note of place of interest around it.

As if I were walking on one and just getting to the other.

I assume those streets are angry for a reason.

I’ll just pull over and Google the site, then proceed from there, with that talking doo dad, turn here, turn there your destination is two miles away on the right. And hope it doesn’t mess up, as it sometimes will do, and give me some crap about, “Make a u turn on the Interstate, in front of that semi truck and Army convoy”. Yeah, right. You useless piece of crap.

If I’ve never been there, I think of as much as I think I know of the map. Or I invent a theoretical map. If I have been there or near there, I think of what I remember of being near there, the places I remember and what I remember of their coordinates, and try to figure out where the named intersection is and what I remember of it.

My mental pictures of map space and memory of places is usually pretty good and detailed, at least for many places. What tends to be poor for me though is remembering what the names of streets are.

In fact, you might say they are mean streets.

These streets have too many names for me
I’m used to Glen Field road
And spending my time down in Orchy
I’ll get used to this eventually I know, I know

unless you are in a location where the streets have no names

If I’m familiar with the area I visualize the intersection itself. Otherwise, I’m lost. I’d have to utilize Google maps or my GPS.