6 ms·

A place I've never been to. A place I'll never go

160 points by surprisetalk 3y ago

underlipton 3y ago
I think there is a strong argument for the Library of Congress or some other public/quasi-public entity to archive Google Maps/StreetView data. Redevelopment has been an ongoing fact of life for much of the time I've lived in my area, and huge swathes of the landscape are nigh unrecognizable from when I was a kid. However, a lot of the way things were is preserved in that map and image data. I think this is valuable for any number of applications, let alone the basic act of grounding oneself within the fact of the change that one's environment has undergone over time. Unfortunately, for however grateful I am that Google has made all of this available to us, I don't trust them to preserve it all long-term. I don't think it would be a good idea to let it all slip through our fingers without a plan.
- ogurechny 3y ago
  Why rely on Daddy Google so much in the first place? A couple of months ago, I was puzzled enough by the lack of large scale urban history services in the West to post this question (with examples of what was possible): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38090473 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38090473
  - underlipton 3y ago
    Going forward? We probably shouldn't. Unfortunately, there's no way to go back to 2008 and build a rival dataset. Not without an elaborate space mirror/FTL craft/telescope set-up, at least. As to your question, if I may wax poetic: the history of America (the nation) is short and filled with episodes its residents would like to forget. That brevity makes those events (and the desire to bury them) all the more poignant. As way of an example, which I only recently learned about: Why is much of the East Coast forested? It's not because we didn't clear cut hundreds of thousands of acres of old-growth timber to use for slave-worked farmland which was scarred by the over-planting of cash crops, apparently. I'm sure that's not the whole story, but I imagine that it's part of it. It's so much easier to push New Thing if people don't know what Old Thing is being demolished to make way for it.
- jfil 3y ago
  As a stopgap, you can download Streetview spheres to your computer. Start with one place that's nostalgic/important to you. For one-at-a-time downloads, use a set of bookmarklets [1] I created for this purpose. For downloading an entire area in bulk, I'd like to shout out Street View Download 360 [2] from young up-and-comer Thomas Orlita. [1] https://jacobfilipp.com/streetviewsave/ https://jacobfilipp.com/streetviewsave/ [2] https://svd360.istreetview.com/ https://svd360.istreetview.com/
nomdep 3y ago
Why almost every store have their names written in Chinese (?) and English. Is the post a joke with photos from Asia malls (or AI generated)? Or it’s just common in that part of Canada?
- supportengineer 3y ago
  I see that everywhere in USA also.
  - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
    You see names written in Chinese and English everywhere in the USA? Or did you mean something else? Because if that's what you meant to say, that is absolutely not how things are "everywhere in the USA".
    - Jcampuzano2 3y ago
      I live in Texas, and have lived in California and New York. In all three of these places the areas with a large Chinese presence will have stores with names in both Chinese and English. This is absolutely common in the US in pretty much any large city, I can't imagine someone having never seen this before in the US unless they never lived or went to an area that was diverse. And its not just Chinese, many places will have Korean names, Japanese names, and of course on the other end Spanish names accompanied by english but most are more used to this.
      - AlotOfReading 3y ago
        As someone who regularly shops at those sorts of places, there is a large part of the US population that ignores or is otherwise unaware of them, most of my family included. I've had multiple conversations where people have been shocked when informed that there's an Asian or Mexican market a short distance away that they had no idea existed.
        shermantanktop 3y ago
mitthrowaway2 3y ago
I have a similar feeling when I bring friends to places I spent lots of time, but which have now been completely transformed by redevelopment. I can walk through and visualize my old surroundings as if they were still there, but I just can't convey them to others who are visiting to the first time. The best I can do is show old google maps photos.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  > I have a similar feeling when I bring friends to places I spent lots of time, but which have now been completely transformed by redevelopment Our family's 1800s home was one of five, on 2 forking dirt roads that meandered thru the woods. From our front porch, we could see across the creek, out to where the prison grew alfalfa and corn. Our dirt road+creek met the paved road; that was the school bus stop. Across the pavement and past a 40ac cow field was a domed radar installation. It served a nearby Nike missile base. The prison guard towers, maximum security and it's railroad were a half mile to the side. The missile base left in 75. The train ended in 77 w/ stock sold by 80. My brother evicted us in 87 - and for good measure razed the house and every tree. I married and left the area in 90. The sprawling prison complex sold to developers in 2000s. I visited my birth home (site) in 2019. I needed a map to find it. The paved road I knew had been ripped up and replaced with a different road going different places. The cow field where I waited for my bus was a forest. In it's way, this was the most disorienting part of the visit. The dirt road forking off of ours led to a sportsball park. It continued on a bit and was bisected by an 8 lane cross-county highway. My dirt road was paved and ended at a cul-de-sac of townhouses where my neighbors had been. Our lot was occupied by the commercial nursery that my brother had built and later sold. Our ramshackle garage still stood for some reason. The fields across our creek were more townhomes. I have historical photos of our home and nearby. However, I regret that we never took pictures of the 2 miles around our home - the land we walked and drove 1000s of times. It certainly never occurred to any of us that the roads themselves would disappear.
- mrweasel 3y ago
  Earlier this week I went back to the small town where I went to school, something I've been meaning to do for the past two years. It's still a nice small touristy coastal town, absolutely relaxing, with wonderful fresh air and a really nice walk in the beautiful spring weather. But it's not exactly the same town. Stores have close, buildings repurposed, neighborhoods redeveloped and some things have just been torn down. I used to recognize a ton of people, but the population have changed over the past 25 years, now I don't know anyone. Going back was nice, especially the few things that had stayed the same, but expecting everything to just freeze and wait for you to return one day was perhaps a little naive.
neilv 3y ago
Interesting malls that disappeared before the Web left less digital trace: https://tanasbournemall.blogspot.com/2011/12/tanasbourne-mall-was-brainchild-of.html https://tanasbournemall.blogspot.com/2011/12/tanasbourne-mal... As a kid, riding on the freeway to grandma's, I'd always wonder what that weird building with the futuristic windows in the distance was. Later, as a teen, working out near there, I learned it was a mall, but already mostly closed down, except for the Chang's Mongolian Grill. Thankfully, someone went to the trouble to retroactively put some information about it on the Web.
morkalork 3y ago
I can empathize with the author after moving away from Toronto almost 20 years ago, so much from when I was a teenager is gone. I'm not "from" where I live now, and where I'm "from" no longer exists, I just feel perpetually detached from everywhere now.
- thenewwazoo 3y ago
  You can’t go home again.
  - netsharc 3y ago
    Grosse Pointe Blank reference? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50G3ScEKP6Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50G3ScEKP6Y Ironically his former home got turned to a, well not a mall, but a convenience store.
    - mikestew 3y ago
      Grosse Point Blank is making a reference to Thomas Wolfe: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Can't_Go_Home_Again https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Can't_Go_Home_Again
  - workingdog 3y ago
    On those who step into the same rivers, different and different waters flow - Heraclitus ~5th century BC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclitus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclitus
- whartung 3y ago
  One of the reasons I like to watch "Colombo" is that it was essentially filmed in Los Angeles and around Southern California. It's an ad hoc capture of the southland in the early 70s. I like to reference IMDB to try to see if the landmarks in the show still exist. Some do, some don't. The criminals used to live in some very nice houses up in Bel Air. A recent example had Colombo at a winery. Well, the Pomona and Cucamonga Valley is where many of the wineries were back in the day. But, that's been transitioning away from that area for some time. The Ontario Airport exists where that winery was in the show. But there's still vestiges of all that in the area, and the area is still in rapid change. What used to be dairy farms are all turning into warehouses or new residences. Yet, there's still that same old local convenience store on the corner in its 70+ year old building just down the street. It's a very interesting place to just watch the change happen around you.
joemaller1 3y ago
> The good thing is that, after 5 years of > construction, a beautiful new mall stan… just kidding! > > This is Canada. The place where construction > has to stop because you’re not allowed to uproot > a tree on your own property. Or a vindictive neighbour > holds up your project in Committee of Adjustments, until > you build them a new deck as a bribe. Or construction > is blocked by a surprise Heritage Listing on your > building. I could keep going! Little throwaways like this are brushstrokes in a much bigger picture.
- Maxatar 3y ago
  Yeah it's an exaggerated rant, including the idea that you can't uproot a tree on your property which is only somewhat true, but it's not much different than most developed countries including the U.S. With little exception, there is a heck of a lot of construction in Canada. Canada has among the highest construction per capita in the world.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - brailsafe 3y ago
    It may be a little exaggerated, but not by much. > With little exception, there is a heck of a lot of construction in Canada. Canada has among the highest construction per capita in the world. Construction of what and where and what does highest mean? If we're talking residential, we're mostly talking about McMansion style new suburbs where there wasn't anything to complain except nesting waterfowl. Vancouver is only barely an exception, and I'm sure others do exist, but it's hardly characteristic of the nation
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- pstrateman 3y ago
  surprise heritage listing? that's not a thing, you would 100% know when buying that a building was listed
debo_ 3y ago
I bought many things at this offshoot of p-mall. It was there long before Pacific Mall, but gradually became its undersized sibling. There was a kitchen supply store there that had great stuff at good prices. I still have many of those purchases and use them often. It had the advantage of being a lot quieter than Pacific Mall, although parking was equally impossible. I'd usually walk through P-mall for fun, and then use this place to actually shop.
gembeMx 3y ago
Why is this relevant to hn ?
- samus 3y ago
  > Hacker News Guidelines > What to Submit > On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
jader201 3y ago
I like that Google Maps now lets you view a time in the past of a location on Street View. I hope this serves as an archive of sorts of how things used to look, at least from the outside, for decades/centuries to come. If the various locations I’ve lived and visited become unrecognizable like this, at least it would allow me to get a glimpse of how it used to look.
wwilim 3y ago
I once went to see an antique palace with my wife, which according to Google reviews was home to a 3-star hotel with a restaurant. Turns out the hotel was long gone, the property turned private, and the new owner didn't notice us and locked the gate when leaving, trapping us and our car inside. We jumped the fence and found the guy and kindly asked him to come back and open the gate.

160 points by surprisetalk 3y ago

I think there is a strong argument for the Library of Congress or some other public/quasi-public entity to archive Google Maps/StreetView data. Redevelopment has been an ongoing fact of life for much of the time I've lived in my area, and huge swathes of the landscape are nigh unrecognizable from when I was a kid. However, a lot of the way things were is preserved in that map and image data. I think this is valuable for any number of applications, let alone the basic act of grounding oneself within the fact of the change that one's environment has undergone over time. Unfortunately, for however grateful I am that Google has made all of this available to us, I don't trust them to preserve it all long-term. I don't think it would be a good idea to let it all slip through our fingers without a plan.

ogurechny 3y ago
Why rely on Daddy Google so much in the first place? A couple of months ago, I was puzzled enough by the lack of large scale urban history services in the West to post this question (with examples of what was possible): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38090473 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38090473
- underlipton 3y ago
  Going forward? We probably shouldn't. Unfortunately, there's no way to go back to 2008 and build a rival dataset. Not without an elaborate space mirror/FTL craft/telescope set-up, at least. As to your question, if I may wax poetic: the history of America (the nation) is short and filled with episodes its residents would like to forget. That brevity makes those events (and the desire to bury them) all the more poignant. As way of an example, which I only recently learned about: Why is much of the East Coast forested? It's not because we didn't clear cut hundreds of thousands of acres of old-growth timber to use for slave-worked farmland which was scarred by the over-planting of cash crops, apparently. I'm sure that's not the whole story, but I imagine that it's part of it. It's so much easier to push New Thing if people don't know what Old Thing is being demolished to make way for it.
jfil 3y ago
As a stopgap, you can download Streetview spheres to your computer. Start with one place that's nostalgic/important to you. For one-at-a-time downloads, use a set of bookmarklets [1] I created for this purpose. For downloading an entire area in bulk, I'd like to shout out Street View Download 360 [2] from young up-and-comer Thomas Orlita. [1] https://jacobfilipp.com/streetviewsave/ https://jacobfilipp.com/streetviewsave/ [2] https://svd360.istreetview.com/ https://svd360.istreetview.com/

nomdep 3y ago

Why almost every store have their names written in Chinese (?) and English. Is the post a joke with photos from Asia malls (or AI generated)? Or it’s just common in that part of Canada?

supportengineer 3y ago
I see that everywhere in USA also.
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  You see names written in Chinese and English everywhere in the USA? Or did you mean something else? Because if that's what you meant to say, that is absolutely not how things are "everywhere in the USA".
  - Jcampuzano2 3y ago
    I live in Texas, and have lived in California and New York. In all three of these places the areas with a large Chinese presence will have stores with names in both Chinese and English. This is absolutely common in the US in pretty much any large city, I can't imagine someone having never seen this before in the US unless they never lived or went to an area that was diverse. And its not just Chinese, many places will have Korean names, Japanese names, and of course on the other end Spanish names accompanied by english but most are more used to this.
    - AlotOfReading 3y ago
      As someone who regularly shops at those sorts of places, there is a large part of the US population that ignores or is otherwise unaware of them, most of my family included. I've had multiple conversations where people have been shocked when informed that there's an Asian or Mexican market a short distance away that they had no idea existed.
      - shermantanktop 3y ago

mitthrowaway2 3y ago

I have a similar feeling when I bring friends to places I spent lots of time, but which have now been completely transformed by redevelopment. I can walk through and visualize my old surroundings as if they were still there, but I just can't convey them to others who are visiting to the first time. The best I can do is show old google maps photos.

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
> I have a similar feeling when I bring friends to places I spent lots of time, but which have now been completely transformed by redevelopment Our family's 1800s home was one of five, on 2 forking dirt roads that meandered thru the woods. From our front porch, we could see across the creek, out to where the prison grew alfalfa and corn. Our dirt road+creek met the paved road; that was the school bus stop. Across the pavement and past a 40ac cow field was a domed radar installation. It served a nearby Nike missile base. The prison guard towers, maximum security and it's railroad were a half mile to the side. The missile base left in 75. The train ended in 77 w/ stock sold by 80. My brother evicted us in 87 - and for good measure razed the house and every tree. I married and left the area in 90. The sprawling prison complex sold to developers in 2000s. I visited my birth home (site) in 2019. I needed a map to find it. The paved road I knew had been ripped up and replaced with a different road going different places. The cow field where I waited for my bus was a forest. In it's way, this was the most disorienting part of the visit. The dirt road forking off of ours led to a sportsball park. It continued on a bit and was bisected by an 8 lane cross-county highway. My dirt road was paved and ended at a cul-de-sac of townhouses where my neighbors had been. Our lot was occupied by the commercial nursery that my brother had built and later sold. Our ramshackle garage still stood for some reason. The fields across our creek were more townhomes. I have historical photos of our home and nearby. However, I regret that we never took pictures of the 2 miles around our home - the land we walked and drove 1000s of times. It certainly never occurred to any of us that the roads themselves would disappear.
mrweasel 3y ago
Earlier this week I went back to the small town where I went to school, something I've been meaning to do for the past two years. It's still a nice small touristy coastal town, absolutely relaxing, with wonderful fresh air and a really nice walk in the beautiful spring weather. But it's not exactly the same town. Stores have close, buildings repurposed, neighborhoods redeveloped and some things have just been torn down. I used to recognize a ton of people, but the population have changed over the past 25 years, now I don't know anyone. Going back was nice, especially the few things that had stayed the same, but expecting everything to just freeze and wait for you to return one day was perhaps a little naive.

neilv 3y ago

Interesting malls that disappeared before the Web left less digital trace: https://tanasbournemall.blogspot.com/2011/12/tanasbourne-mall-was-brainchild-of.html https://tanasbournemall.blogspot.com/2011/12/tanasbourne-mal... As a kid, riding on the freeway to grandma's, I'd always wonder what that weird building with the futuristic windows in the distance was. Later, as a teen, working out near there, I learned it was a mall, but already mostly closed down, except for the Chang's Mongolian Grill. Thankfully, someone went to the trouble to retroactively put some information about it on the Web.

morkalork 3y ago

I can empathize with the author after moving away from Toronto almost 20 years ago, so much from when I was a teenager is gone. I'm not "from" where I live now, and where I'm "from" no longer exists, I just feel perpetually detached from everywhere now.

thenewwazoo 3y ago
You can’t go home again.
- netsharc 3y ago
  Grosse Pointe Blank reference? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50G3ScEKP6Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50G3ScEKP6Y Ironically his former home got turned to a, well not a mall, but a convenience store.
  - mikestew 3y ago
    Grosse Point Blank is making a reference to Thomas Wolfe: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Can't_Go_Home_Again https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Can't_Go_Home_Again
- workingdog 3y ago
  On those who step into the same rivers, different and different waters flow - Heraclitus ~5th century BC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclitus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclitus
whartung 3y ago
One of the reasons I like to watch "Colombo" is that it was essentially filmed in Los Angeles and around Southern California. It's an ad hoc capture of the southland in the early 70s. I like to reference IMDB to try to see if the landmarks in the show still exist. Some do, some don't. The criminals used to live in some very nice houses up in Bel Air. A recent example had Colombo at a winery. Well, the Pomona and Cucamonga Valley is where many of the wineries were back in the day. But, that's been transitioning away from that area for some time. The Ontario Airport exists where that winery was in the show. But there's still vestiges of all that in the area, and the area is still in rapid change. What used to be dairy farms are all turning into warehouses or new residences. Yet, there's still that same old local convenience store on the corner in its 70+ year old building just down the street. It's a very interesting place to just watch the change happen around you.

joemaller1 3y ago

> The good thing is that, after 5 years of > construction, a beautiful new mall stan… just kidding! > > This is Canada. The place where construction > has to stop because you’re not allowed to uproot > a tree on your own property. Or a vindictive neighbour > holds up your project in Committee of Adjustments, until > you build them a new deck as a bribe. Or construction > is blocked by a surprise Heritage Listing on your > building. I could keep going! Little throwaways like this are brushstrokes in a much bigger picture.

Maxatar 3y ago
Yeah it's an exaggerated rant, including the idea that you can't uproot a tree on your property which is only somewhat true, but it's not much different than most developed countries including the U.S. With little exception, there is a heck of a lot of construction in Canada. Canada has among the highest construction per capita in the world.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- brailsafe 3y ago
  It may be a little exaggerated, but not by much. > With little exception, there is a heck of a lot of construction in Canada. Canada has among the highest construction per capita in the world. Construction of what and where and what does highest mean? If we're talking residential, we're mostly talking about McMansion style new suburbs where there wasn't anything to complain except nesting waterfowl. Vancouver is only barely an exception, and I'm sure others do exist, but it's hardly characteristic of the nation
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
pstrateman 3y ago
surprise heritage listing? that's not a thing, you would 100% know when buying that a building was listed

debo_ 3y ago

I bought many things at this offshoot of p-mall. It was there long before Pacific Mall, but gradually became its undersized sibling. There was a kitchen supply store there that had great stuff at good prices. I still have many of those purchases and use them often. It had the advantage of being a lot quieter than Pacific Mall, although parking was equally impossible. I'd usually walk through P-mall for fun, and then use this place to actually shop.

gembeMx 3y ago

Why is this relevant to hn ?

samus 3y ago
> Hacker News Guidelines > What to Submit > On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

jader201 3y ago

I like that Google Maps now lets you view a time in the past of a location on Street View. I hope this serves as an archive of sorts of how things used to look, at least from the outside, for decades/centuries to come. If the various locations I’ve lived and visited become unrecognizable like this, at least it would allow me to get a glimpse of how it used to look.

wwilim 3y ago

I once went to see an antique palace with my wife, which according to Google reviews was home to a 3-star hotel with a restaurant. Turns out the hotel was long gone, the property turned private, and the new owner didn't notice us and locked the gate when leaving, trapping us and our car inside. We jumped the fence and found the guy and kindly asked him to come back and open the gate.