New York Toilet Map

by Abha Malpani on

When you gotta go, you gotta go — surely something artist Tommy Mintz had in mind when he created a toilet map for New York City, plotting 250 places to do your business in the city. Mintz was inspired to do this project as he suffers from ulcerative colitis, a long-term disease that causes frequent diarrhea.

The map is a laser printed, wallet-size fold-out that marks out well-known as well as obscure toilets across the city, assuring that you will never have to hunt for one in NYC again.

It is displayed at the Jewish Museum as part of their Off The Wall exhibition and can be bought for $2 on the Internet.

Not pocket-able, but another well known effort to do the same was that of New York Restrooms a couple of years ago.

[Via Gridskipper]

Where does your news agency report the most?

by Anna Brones on

L’Observatoire des Medias, a French media blog, put together an interesting project that shows maps of the world according to the attention each country gets from major Western media agencies. Called “The world in the eyes of an editor-in-chief,” the maps give a very good visual idea just how important Western media considers some places.

This map shows the reporting of the New York Times. Go here to find out how other major newspapers, like The Guardian, The Economist and The Sun, see the world.

[Via Boing Boing]

Maps: Changing your global perspective

by Anna Brones on

The way we look at the world often depends on where we come from. Take maps for instance. A typical map that most of us Americans had in our grade school textbooks is the North America-centered one, with our continent smack dab in the middle. Often these maps are not completely true to scale, which can lead to a misunderstanding over the true size of a country or continent. What about other maps that are not so traditional?

As avid travelers, we here at Gadling are pretty obsessed with maps so it’s no surprise that we’ve already written about ODT’s upside down map (or is it right side up??), but the map company also has population based maps as well as equal area ones. These maps put more than just where a country is located into consideration, giving us a better perspective of how many people are in one place, and the evolution of the global population over the years, as well as what size countries truly are.

As for North America-centered maps, they have those too, along with Pacific-centered and Africa/Eurasia-centered, all to make you question your own global perspective.

New Maps and Subway Sketches in New York

by Kelly Amabile on

Two new travel-related items out of New York this week, that I discovered over at the always resourceful NewYorkology:

First up, a new map that charts Jewish New York, the result of a collaboration between the New York Board of Rabbis, Jewish New York History & Heritage Project and grants from the City of New York. Locations plotted on the map include NYU, Temple Emanu-El and spots associated with folks like Woody Allen, Sarah Jessica Parker, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Marx Brothers, Simon & Garfunkel and Dr. Ruth Westheimer. The map is on sale for $6.95 at the Brooklyn Tourism and Visitors Center and will eventually be available online as well.

And an artistic travel-inspired exhibit to check out later this month:The Transit Museum will display the subway-inspired sketches of Marvin Franklin, a former track worker who was killed in an on-the-job accident in April. Franklin’s watercolors, oil paintings and etchings will be showcased through the end of March at the museum’s Brooklyn location, which is housed in a former subway station.

One for the Road: London – A Life in Maps

by Kelly Amabile on

Let’s close out the month with one final map book selection. London: A Life in Maps, similar to yesterday’s book, is the result of a collaboration between an independent scholar and a major research library. In this case, Peter Whitfield teamed up with the British Library to produce this history of the city through the plans and maps that have represented and shaped it — over 200 maps spanning the last 500 years. The book was released earlier this year, in conjunction with an exhibit at the British Library.

A recent New York Times article highlighted this book, as well as additional cartographic titles that have been published lately. As the author notes in his piece: “Unlike calendars and telephone books, maps combine form, function and fantasy, a potent blend that might explain a recent surge in books on cartography and the continuing effort to humanize the contours of the earth.” We’ve mentioned several of these map books already — a plethora of grids and lines that have directed (or misdirected) explorers, city dwellers and nomads through the years.