Tag: Maps/Google Maps/Google Earth

Hong Kong Hustle: A Growing Google Map for An Upcoming Trip

A spontaneous purchase of cheapish airline tickets means a family trip to Hong Kong.  As with all future trips, Google maps is amassing links and locations for places of interest.

There are loads of Hong Kong travel guides online, but they mainly touch just the mainstream destinations and strategies.  So, I am surfing hardcore to find the instructive and unique websites to maximize our time while there.  The following link barf is all the sites that I have gleaned at least one salient bit of info from.  And most of the locations of the maps cite some info, to provide a reminder to myself as to why they were mapped in the first place.

Masonic Texas: Hiding in Plain Sight


IMG_2011, originally uploaded by old.curmudgeon.

Freemasons.  You know, the sneaky, conspiratorial architects of doom secretly plotting secret plots to take over the world the day after tomorrow.  So sneaky, they have websites, public tours of lodges and extremely large memorials to previous brothers.  How insidious.

Since the Masons started as a guild of skilled labor, many of their lodges are architecturally striking.  I had been working on a map of such places in the US when some productive Googling over the holiday led to this discovery…

… a map of Masonics lodge in Texas.  Complied by a brother Mason, this is a gold mine for me.  With 1,400 locations listed, I don’t have a need to visit every small town lodge in rural Texas.  However, it may lead me to some new intriguing places to visit, in hopes for finding some architectural treasure I would have been unaware of otherwise.

My wife walked up behind me as I was looking at the Texas Masonic map, and knowing my love of road trips and strange attractions, started hitting me on the head and saying, “No! No! Bad! Bad!”  I reassured her that we wouldn’t have to visit every lodge in Texas.  Just some of the more interesting ones, I thought silently. 

 


Plano Texas Masonic Lodge, originally uploaded by Coyote2012.

Masonic Temple Waco, TX, originally uploaded by Seth Gaines.

NarrowLarry presents: Selected Visionary Folk Art Environments in the United States

I love weird roadside attractions, so when I discovered Houstonian NarrowLarry I was pleased. He’s a fountain of information and one of his many interests is American folkart environments. A recent visit to his site shows the welcome addition of a google map with over 100 such locations. Most of the places have corresponding weblinks and he has visited many of the places personally. A quick look at some of the Texas locations has me itching for a roadtrip. With gas so cheap, we could even afford it!

The embedded Google Map below may not be displaying correctly, a problem on Google’s part. This KML link can be opened in Google Earth and will properly display the locations that Narrow Larry has kindly placed for all to see.

More Mapping: Google Maps Addiction

I continue to add place to my Roadside Attractions, Museums, Etc. google map. As I cruised the net amassing more weird and unique places to visit, my wife looked over my shoulder and said something to the effect, “This used to overwhelm me, I thought we were going to have to visit every one of these places last summer.” While in a dream-world, cruising the U.S. (before tackling the rest of the world) would be a wonderful way to spend time, I like being married more.

Back to my latest find. Margaret’s Grocery and Market is an almost perfect intersection of my interest in folk art and masonic tourism.



This fantastic place was built by Reverend H.D. Dennis and named for his wife.

From Lucky Mojo’s entry on Margaret’s Grocery and Market

“…what will be apparent to any Freemason viewing this illustration, is that the Double Headed Eagle atop the signage is not just any eagle: it is that of the 32nd degree of the Scottish Rite. Furthermore, the two pillars flanking the door of the store are marked with the golden letters B and J, initials familiar to all Masons.”

This place look fantastic, and so worth a visit. Must drive more!

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Roadside Art Online: Margaret’s Grocery environment
Flickr: Search for “Margaret’s Grocery”

Derby! Derby Map…

Sunday’s derby bout was fantastic. I won’t go into detail but it was one of the best bouts I’ve seen yet between the Atlanta teams.

So, I got thinking about where other places have derby. Wikipedia has a list of roller derby leagues, old and current. To narrow it down, I stuck with members of the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association. They have a map…

… but being addicted to Google maps and Google Earth, I whipped up one of my own.

Women’s Flat Track Derby Association Locations

And that’s how I spent my time… instead of doing something more productive. But now I know what cities would be worth moving to next.

Fun In San Fran: Another Return Back From Yet Another Ship

Back to Atlanta from yet another lighting installation on a cruise ship.

This time was 6 nights in San Francisco. While every work night was spent on the ship, our last travel day was spent running around the city. I forgot how much I loved the city and this recap won’t do it justice. I didn’t hit all the strange places I wanted to visit (The Wave Organ on the bay & the Camera Obscura near Cliff House) but I did manage to hit the badly great Musee Mecanique on Pier 45 (location on My Google Map.) This is now a new favorite place of mine and I’ll be singing its praises! Check its link for a more thorough details on this odd museum.

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Musee Mecanique, originally uploaded by Octoferret.

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Opium Den at Musee Mecanique, originally uploaded by lindn.

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Musée Mécanique, originally uploaded by SRLrobot.

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can-can | musee mecanique, sf, originally uploaded by solsken.

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Musee Mecanique, San Francisco, California, originally uploaded by Blazenhoff.

All the pix are from different flickr people because I forgot my camera. Also on the tour of San Fran’s greatest hits was walking from the pier to Coit Tour to Lombard St. to China town before I got to meet up with a friend.

While waiting for her in front of City Light’s Bookstore, I got to witness the disturbing criminal act/street theater of a cracked-out pimp messing with his equally cracked-out prostitute. They argued in the street, got into a headlock on the sidewalk and generally freaked out the people nearby. Fortunately Kelly soon picked me up and took me on the second most crooked street in the city and later that night to the St. Francis Fountain, a nice soda fountain

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St. Francis Fountain, originally uploaded by Telstar Logistics.

Kelly was a great tour guide, took me to the airport and she promised in the future to point out spelling errors/typos on my site, which she reads on a regular basis. What else could I ask for? So, Kelly, thanks for a great end to a long week.

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The Other Georgia Stonehenge: I Went There So You Never Have To

Few things disappoint like an interesting theme poorly explored. Take the idea of naming a neighborhood Stonehenge ( Google Maps), in Athens, GA. Even at the height of the 70’s this could not have sounded like a wise choice for community development: druids, strange street names like Salsbury Plain Dr., Sersen Cir., and Heelstone Ave., the hope/fear of human sacrifices. So, the likelihood of an interesting spectacle is always something to be hoped for, and the reason for a trip. At the best it could be a fantastic recreation in stone, honoring the spirit of the original and infused with something additional from the new place it was built. If nothing else, it might look funny, like the scene in “Spinaltap.” ( tiny audio file)

All I knew was there was a recreation of the Druid’s monument there, courtesy of someone on Virtual Globetrotting. Armed with a map, we headed out. Little did I know when my wife and I ventured out to Athens, Georgia in search of this local stonehenge that we would be seeing the least-interesting Stonehenge ever. We’ve seen stonehenges made out of cars, and one in North Georgia dedicated to population control and insulting politicians. There are loads of amazing stonhenges that populate the US. This was not one of them.

If I sound disappointed, it’s because so many of the other roadside attractions I’ve visited have been interesting in at least one way. So many of them have been kitschy, well-made, historically interesting, etc. The Stonehenge of Athens was a complete letdown, however. Barely henge-like. And the neighborhood that was behind the shrine, boring. Just regular house, some with cars being worked on in front and no sacrificial alters.

But a trip into Athens proper, and the sweet shoes and wallet found on sale at Junkman’s Daughter helped ease the “pain”. There are many times that I hope people go where I got a chance to visit. This isn’t one of those times.

Juxtaposition: Them, Me

Michael Hughes’ photos tagged with ‘souvenirs’. First seen on Neatorama – Same Place, 50 Years Later.

Link: “The idea was to revisit historic photograph locations and take identical photographs, as if the camera never moved and the world changed around it. It’s a little more difficult than I expected due to variations in lenses, inaccessibility of locations and a lack of constant markers. Still all of these are close to correct(some are better than others).” First seen on Neatorama – Trompe l’oeil Photography: Souvenirs in Front of Landmarks.

Something I did myself, pet projects. A Las Vegas map (1952) from University of Nevada Reno’s online Nevada in Maps collection overlayed on Google Earth. And in Chicago, a map of the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893.

Getting in Trouble at the Bar, Weird Georgia, and God in Las Vegas

What’s better then trying to get your friends in trouble at the bar? Not much.

The girl that was making a spectacle of herself by bumping and grinding her girlfriend all evening left her purse open on the bar. Only the sharp eyes of one of our friends prevented us from putting his phone number on a napkin in the purse. So close! And they thought I was going to pussy out and not join them. How could I not, I had my Communist Party T-shirt on.

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My email had the newsletter from Weird US.Com talking about Tiger Ridge, GA. Their messageboard reposted the newsletter titled, “TIGER RIDGE, GA: INBRED AND LOVING IT?”

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Knit Motorcycle, originally uploaded by Extreme Craft.

Also, I may have to take a trip to Athens to see Theresa Honeywell’s Knit Motorcycle at the Georgia Museum of Art.

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2005-06-19+12-43-59, originally uploaded by Frank Peters.

Atlanta blogger hannahbeth just got back from Vegas, and noted, “God seems to be missing in Vegas and it’s palpable and it made me very uncomfortable.”

Being a 5-year resident of Vegas, I can tell you that’s not true, he visits the strip just like every one else (map). Right off the strip is the Guardian Angel Cathedral. This modernist catholic church was built on land donated by the former owner of the now-destroyed Desert Inn, and features a stained-glass cityscape of Vegas with a collection of casinos depicted.

So far a google search finds no pictures of the cathedral’s stained-glass. That’s something I may try to remedy when we hit Vegas on our cross-country roadtrip.