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Thursday, February 12, 2009

Street View

Many years ago, I thought that someone should take a video camera and drive down all the streets in a certain part of a city, and then stitch it all together on a computer so that people who bought the "San Francisco" CD-ROM or whatever could simulate driving through the city, picking any random street they want to see.

Of course, Google has now done this with Street View. Moving down the street can be a little laborious because you have to keep clicking the arrow to move ahead, so it's more like walking than driving (if they could format a version better suited to wandering down the street, that would be great). But it's totally amazing, and covers an astoundingly large part of the U.S.

I've written previously about how much I love meandering around unfamiliar cities in Street View (Detroit, for instance). Now, Google has apparently also added some pretty obscure places, which is a pretty effective way to get me to waste a lot of time...

There's this house in Clint, TX overshadowed by its shrubbery.

This
big-ass bridge in Astoria, OR.

Or there's the (quite vacant) downtown of Teague, TX.


(Just be careful not to hit any deer.)

2 comments:

David S said...

that bridge in astoria is awesome! some friends of mine and I just drove over it last weekend - on the way to (and back from) cape disappointment for some 'camping' in yurts. fun times. i'll post some pictures soon...

Teague said...

That area looks beautiful. (Then again, most of the Pacific NW looks beautiful.)

A yurt-related aside: A former housemate sent me an email that began: "I left my pillow in a yurt in California." She meant that a package would be arriving returning the pillow, but this has become sort of a personal catch-phrase for me. I left my pillow in a yurt in California... Sort of like I left my wallet in El Segundo.