Build Date: Fri Oct 4 11:40:11 2024 UTC
It's raining out now. I'd go out and run naked except that I'm in Oakland and I'd probably be arrested.
-- The Compulsive Splicer
Google Maps Street View Bypasses the Hood
2007-05-29 18:43:32
Today google maps unveiled "street view" which gives you a 360 degree camera angle view of the nice areas of some major cities.
I had fantasies when I was a child that if I stared close enough at a map, I could see the people move. Now, google maps has made this a reality. Currently, if you go to google maps and look at Miami, New York, Denver, Las Vegas, or the SF Bay Area, you can get a street-level view of the map. This is accomplished by vans driving around with high-tech cameras, soaking in all that they see.
Noticeably missing from the SF bay area are almost all of the ghettos. All of San Francisco is mapped but there is suspiciously no Hunter's Point or Bayview District. The vans drove all the way to Berkeley but never took one picture of Richmond. San Jose and Mountain View are blanketed, but only one street in East Palo Alto has a "street view."
Luckily for would-be drive-by shooting planners using google maps, some hoods were mapped in Oakland. A few scenes were captured that residents may have not wanted on the internet. For instance, if you go to B and 89th St. and look Southwest, there is currently an image of two ladies sitting on the hood of a Jaguar while one woman in a miniskirt jumps into a Cadillac. If you roll the shot backward (by going NE), you can see her talking to the guy through the driver side window a few seconds earlier. This may be her grandfather in the car, but it still sparks the imagination of this casual onlooker.
Amazingly, google decided it was too much trouble to blur anyone's license plate or face. There are some obvious questions only time can answer. When is google going to take the first picture of a guy breaking into a car with salad tongs? How long it is going to take before some dude sues google for taking a picture of them in front of a motel with someone who is not their wife?
Google, if you're listening, please map out some of the streets with homeless people, dice games, drug dealing, and other interesting things to see. For instance, roll through 82nd and Birch a couple of times, why don't ya? What is google scared of, someone carjacking their van?
T O P S T O R I E S
Another Nobel Prize-Winning Author Describes Drunkenness
This book won a Pulitzer Prize. Here's its famous paragraph on getting drunk... (More...)
'Why I'm pretty sure JD Vance had sex with a couch'
True or false? The answers await us in that magical land where all truths are revealed -- the internet. (More...)
In 2010 Dr. Cheng-Huai Ruan discovered a way to cause a patient with an abnormal heartbeat to get back into a normal rhythm by sticking a finger up the patient's ass. (More...)
WKRP in Cincinnati aired from 1978 through 1982. Howard Hesseman played Dr. Johnny Fever, a DJ from Los Angeles who was fired from his previous job for saying the word "booger" on the air. In the show Hesseman would do some dialogue, introduce a song, and start the song. You'd hear a few notes, but never the whole song. (More...)
SF Hippies Can't Get Their Act Together
The annual 420 Hippie Hill event in Golden Gate Park, where large crowds of hippies, wannabe hippies, and hippie poseurs drape themselves in tie dye t-shirts and gather on a hill on 4/20 to smoke weed, was cancelled this year because the organizers couldn't get their act together. (More...)
Mozart to be inducted into the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame
Joining such hard-rocking inductees as Abba, Chet Atkins, Nat King Cole, and Neil Diamond, the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame is proud to induct Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
Clowns Take on God in Mysterious Annual Ceremony
Last Sunday's (the 6th) Grimaldi Service at a small church in East London was a red-letter day for clowns worldwide. About a hundred old-school red-nosed clowns made the sombre trip to darkest Dalston to pay their respects to clowns who died in the last year and to thank God for the gift of laughter in a bizarre ceremony presided over by the eccentric Reverend Clown Roly, resplendent in a garish red lumberjack shirt with oversized gold lapels. (More...)
The Liquidation of Hobo Junction
Albany, CA's homeless hooverville by the Bay, "Hobo Junction," is going to be torn down by The Man. Entrances are already being blocked off, and it's now difficult and dangerous to get there. Worse, these obstacles are making it hard to get to the nearby HORSE TRACK on foot. Local historian, Pao Tzu, has an overview of situation. (More...)
Paranoid Strippers & Psychotic Crack Dealers (Tales of Christmas Eve)
Christmas day, for the last 17 or so years has bored me. I find that the real fun and excitement always takes place on Christmas Eve. Every other year, it's the excitement of the metaphorical hunt instead of the kill. Otherwise, it's just plain bad craziness. (More...)
Skunk School -- Learn Why Not To Keep Skunks As Pets
There is an alarming trend in pet purchasing habits this fall. People inspired by the WWII film, "Life is Beautiful" -- the one with that annoying Italian guy -- are buying descented skunks by the millions. (More...)
Australian Troops Set for Days of Debauchery to the Tunes of Kylie Minogue
This weekend Australian troops in East Timor will be able to put their feet up and push all the images of mass graves and charred remains from their minds as they relax to the giddy melodies of Kylie Minogue - including exclusive unplugged performances in the militia-ravaged and blood-spattered border towns of Balibo and Suai. (More...)
The Walken / Country Bear Conspiracy
As has been recently reported in the PDJ, Christopher Walken, evil s00per villain extraordinaire, will be appearing next month in Disney's newest release, The Country Bear Movie. Always playing some wicked and very disturbed badass in movies like Sleepy Hollow, Illuminata, The Prophecy I, II, III, Pulp Fiction, Batman Returns, The Milagro Beanfield War, A View to a Kill, The Dogs of War, Heaven's Gate, and The Deer Hunter, Walken is unsuprisingly a big favorite in the PDJ news room. (More...)
