February 2012
6 posts
3 tags
Will New Zoning Laws Wipe Out Food Trucks?
A bill in the state assembly is threatening to prevent food trucks from parking within 1500 feet of any school, including elementary schools.
Obviously the food truckers and their fans are riled up over the whole thing. The bill would hamper continued development of the food truck revolution, especially at lunch hour.
Burrito Justice made this handy map to show the difference between a...
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San Francisco Butchery
Here’s a little historical background for last week’s meat map, via the Spatial History Project at Stanford University.
The researchers map the addresses of all the San Francisco butchers in the city’s early days, and find that as the city expands, the density of where people get their meat diminishes.
Looks like they had an abundance of real butchers back in the day. What...
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Birdseye View in 1876
Birdseye view of San Francisco and surrounding country. Drawn by G. H. Goddard, c.e. Lith. Britton, Rey & Co.
And a close-up of Mission Bay, when it was actually a bay.
Zoom in, or see it at the Library of Congress’s 1996-tastic website.
(ht harlequinnnight)
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Golden Gate Park's Hidden Gems
Portland’s Jennifer Reynolds takes a shining to our urban jewel in this bright rendering of the park’s hidden gems.
See more here, and go check out the Shakespeare Garden.
January 2012
4 posts
4 tags
Stereotypes!
This one’s been making the rounds among my Facebook friends. Not much to say about it other than: Oh, San Francisco, you are so self-congratulatorily clever!
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Where the Wealthy Live
Where do the One Percent live?
I can’t tell you that, but the The Bay Citizen does show us exactly how wealthy the 5% are in zip codes across the Bay Area. Probably safe to assume that the top 5% in Hunter’s Point don’t make the top 1%, while those red zips up in Pacific Heights do qualify.
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Meat Map
Uptown Almanac spots a perfect storm of Things San Francisco Loves: Maps of itself and meat.
As long as it’s grass-fed, sustainably raised meat, that is. Sadly, according to the Uptown commenters, it will not be a fancy-pants butcher shop to compete with the Lo Cost Meat Market already serving the neighborhood there.
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Quilted San Francisco
Spotted these understated city map quilts by Haptic Lab on Fab.com (hence all the sale embellishments on the photo). They’re soft white quilts embroidered with a city’s street map, and they’re beautiful.
Log in to Fab to buy one on sale before they’re all gone.
December 2011
4 posts
6 tags
Where are the Jobs?
San Francisco and the Peninsula, mostly, according to this map put together by the Bay Citizen based on state unemployment data.
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Pastmapper: San Francisco in 1852-3
What San Francisco looked like in 1853, geotagged with businesses and people too. Go read what Burrito Justice wrote about it over here, because it’s worth it.
(via Mission Mission/Burrito Justice)
4 tags
Alternate Reality BART Map
Jake Coolidge made this map of the ideal BART system, based in part off 1950s-era plans for the system. He says of the plan map he studied:
Published in 1956, 16 years before the system first went into operation, the plan seemed to me, at the time, to capture a sense of unbridled optimism. The massive region-wide system of modern trains, depicted in well-designed maps and with stylish...
3 tags
Curated Map of San Francisco's Public Art
Via CurbedSF, their favorite 16 pieces of public art in San Francisco. I suppose you could call this a curated collection (pun very much intended).
Previously we featured a map of all public art in San Franicsco, which was collected and mapped using open data from the city.
November 2011
5 posts
4 tags
Tennis Maps of San Francisco
I cheated. There’s a database in here that doesn’t have a map. But it’s useful to sort by which courts have lights.
What are you waiting for? Go find a court and play some tennis.
And let me know if you need a partner.
6 tags
How Much Did Your Landlord Pay for the Building?
The Planning Department put all its information online in a slick searchable, mappable interface. You can look up how much your property last sold for, the value of renovations, all permits issued for the property, whether you live in a historic resource, the zoning, and many other nifty little details.
An architectural historian friend told me that this information all used to be in an old DOS...
5 tags
AirBnB's San Francisco Listing Growth
Airbnb has grown fast and big since they began, in 2008. These pretty pink maps from Stamen Design show the frequency of listings in San Francisco at the beginning (top), and more recently (bottom).
Click through for more intermediate stages.
6 tags
Historic Aerial Photos of San Francisco
The waterfront, the Mission, and Buena Vista Park as seen in high-resolution photos recently added to the David Rumsey Map Collection. The set totals 164 photos, all from the San Francisco Public Library, which the online collection has scanned, indexed, and made available to the public online.
The photos were taken in the 1930s and show remarkable detail.
3 tags
San Francisco's Underground Water and Creeks
The Oakland Museum publishes maps of underground water and watersheds in the Bay Area, including this one of San Francisco. But the publishers, Janet Sowers and Christopher Richard, have recently found historical evidence that indicates that the so-called Laguna Dolores did not exist. They’ve issued a new map without the lake, which is available from the Oakland Museum.
A 1912 map of...
October 2011
4 posts
5 tags
Every Tree in San Francisco
Every tree in San Francisco, with a surprising amount of detail. Add your own trees, or search for a particular species in the city. I found 4 flowering cherry trees right off Octavia.
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Colors
A different color for every city block, by Jen Maravillas.
via Mission Mission
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Mission:Bay Area :: New York:World
Because Bernal is definitely where the surfer-slacker-Hollywood types and OC ladies in the city settle…NOT
Each version of this map seems to get more and more provincial, to the point where now we have our very own for the Mission.
6 tags
Bike Coalition Bike Map
The San Francisco Bike Coalition’s city bike map shows major bike routes, bike lanes, bike parking in downtown, and, best of all, the slope of the city’s steepest streets, so you can figure out how to avoid the hills.
It’s the first map I recommend to new bikers in San Francisco, and the best response to all those naysayers who think San Francisco’s hills make it hostile...
September 2011
9 posts
5 tags
Find a Cab in San Francisco in Real Time
Cabspotting tracks Yellow Cabs on their runs around San Francisco. Then, they make the location data available for artists, data miners, and others.
Thinking of changing the name of the blog to “Mapspotting”. Thoughts?
4 tags
Crimespotting San Francisco
Pretty sure that the crime data is one of the most frequently visualized data sets from datasf.org.
This one, by Stamen Design, highlights clusters of activity, lets you toggle time periods and day/night, and has all kinds of other nifty sorting features.
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Lit Map of San Francisco
San Francisco has long captured the imagination of literary types. This collection of quotes about the city originated as an art piece in the Chronicle, and was detailed further by Strange Maps.
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San Francisco's Public Art
Those red dots aren’t zits. They’re markers for public art in the city. The lines are for elevation, because it’s best to know before you visit the Upper Noe Recreation Center how far up you have to bike.
Bonus: All the data comes from datasf.org, the city’s open data repository.
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Uber Trips per Neighborhood
BREAKING NEWS: Most people use Uber in the downtown and SOMA neighborhoods. Who would have thought?
Good thing there’s a map to tell us.
(via the Uber blog)
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Seeing on Flickr, Saying on Twitter, All in San...
Eric Fisher’s latest is a series of maps showing where people use Twitter or take Flickr photos in metro areas around the world. Red is for photos on Flickr, blue is for Tweets.
Very few Tweets in the Western part of the city, and fewer Flickrs in the southern part. Lots of both downtown, where office dwellers fritter their days away on the Internet.
(via Eric Fisher’s Flickr)
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Specimens of Modern Architecture Around San...
The fabulously arcanely named Docomomo-Noca brings us this map highlighting seemingly nondescript buildings about town. The buildings, wouldn’t you know, are fine examples of modern movement architecture.
They include eyesores such as a Lower Haight union hall and iconic structures such as St. Mary’s Cathedral.
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Fresh food famine in the land of gourmands
Even in the Bay Area, home of Alice Waters, locavores, and slow food, many people lack access to fresh, healthy food. The USDA defines food deserts as a “low-income census tract where a substantial number or share of residents has low access to a supermarket or large grocery store.”
Unsurprisingly, San Francisco’s Bayview area, parts of Oakland, east Redwood City/Menlo...
August 2011
17 posts
8 tags
San Francisco's Alternate History
I vaguely recall San Francisco being attacked by sea monsters in the fleeting moments between the Gold Rush and 1906 earthquake.
From the Etsy page of Alternate Histories (my new favorite faux cartographer):
Woe betide the sailor or shipping merchant who failed to heed the warnings of Bessie, the South Bay Behemoth. This overhead map kindly shows the usual location of the mighty Bessie in a...
8 tags
Pedestrian Fatalities in San Francisco
It’s shaping up to be a depressing week here on Maps of San Francisco. First homicides, now pedestrian fatalities.
Transportation for America is ON THE CASE of preventable pedestrian fatalities in America’s cities. San Francisco doesn’t crack the top ten metros most dangerous to pedestrians.
Between this and Monday’s map, we can now safely conclude that being a...
6 tags
San Francisco Homicides 2011
Because it’s nice to know there are no homicides in the Sunset or Richmond in 2011…yet.
The SF Appeal is keeping track of every homicide in the city in 2011 on this Google map. Stories available on the full map if you click through.
(Full Google map here)
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The Gangs and Cupcakes of San Francisco
Because you always need to know which gang’s territory you’re visiting when you go to the bakery.
Or something. But seriously.
MissionLocal provides this map of bakeries in the Mission and gang territories. It doesn’t exactly map (pun intended) with the story about gang violence that follows it. In fact, there’s barely any mention of the bakeries in the story.
The...
3 tags
Old-Timey San Francisco Photos
Because seeing old photos of the city geotagged to today’s map makes me nostalgic for the past (oh, the petticoats!).
But seriously, it’s an awesome project.
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USGS Bay Area Earthquake Map
When I was in 4th grade, I spent several minutes on the phone each day calling the USGS earthquake hotline and recording the magnitude and location of California earthquakes. Now, they have the internet for that kind of thing, rendering my homemade school project California earthquake map an artifact of elementary school that today’s children will likely never know.
This one shows the...
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Where the Tourists Snap Photos in San Francisco
This one was created about a year ago by Eric Fisher, whose Flickr stream is full of interesting maps, many of them of San Francisco. The red dots are for photos taken by tourists, and the blue by locals. Yellow means the photo could have come from either a local or tourist. The map represents photos geotagged on Flickr.
Obviously, most tourists don’t seem to take many photos of San...
2 tags
Where to Find a Cab in San Francisco
View Best places/streets to find a taxi cab in San Francisco in a larger map
Because it’s always impossible to find a cab on the street in San Francisco.
Or you could just call Uber.
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The Definitive Cable Car Map
Because every city should have an animated gif transit map.
Via the 2003-vintage Cable Car Website, the online home of the world’s first Interactive Cable Car.
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If San Francisco Crime Were Elevation
Doug McCune is responsible for these fascinating maps showing what San Francisco’s infamous hills would look like if they were created by crime frequency instead of geology.
Most of the elevation profiles are opposite of San Francisco’s actual elevation profile, showing little crime in Twin Peaks/West Portal, and more in the flatlands of the Mission/Market corridor.
He covers...
Wearable San Francisco Maps
They’re antique! And cufflinks! And available on Etsy!
Get ‘em from dlkdesigns.
2 tags
San Francisco Solar Map
Because you’ve always wanted to know where to solar-charge your Tesla Roadster. Typically.
FWIW, this map told me I could save almost $4000 by installing solar at my house.
Brought to you by the folks at SF Environment.
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Find the Food Trucks!
Because everyone should spell it like “trux” more often. And you gotta have something to wash down the beer.
(TruxMap)
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Visualizing Mental Maps of San Francisco
Because we all have our own ideas of the city, and coloring isn’t just for kindergartners.
Some awesome grad students at Berkeley made a website for their master’s project that’s packed with conceptual maps of San Francisco. The maps are based on geography and a whole bunch of interviews they did with city residents.
They even made up an INVISIBLE BIKE RACE game for the...
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Map & Type & SF = Bliss
Because I’m a huge nerd for typography (and maps, obvi).
Poster size makes a perfect gift for that special someone with a soft spot for The City.
Made by the amazing folks at Axis Maps.
3 tags
San Francisco Neighborhood Psyche
Because there’s nothing we love more than overanalyzing our neighborhood differences.
By Wendy MacNaughton, for 7x7
3 tags
San Francisco Beer Map
Because the people need to know where to drink.
(Also check out the comprehensive geography covered when you click through)
From the Beer Mapping Project.
July 2011
3 posts
