Artsy Wednesday: Radical Cartography

Last week, Apartment Therapy linked to the kind of site where I can lose hours and hours of my day. Radical Cartography is the brainchild of Harvard grad student Bill Rankin. AT honed right in on some of the prettier, older maps, like these maps of the Mississippi River from 1944 - and they are definitely worth a look.

But from a research geek perspective, I was more interested in some of the maps that Rankin and his friends created themselves. I'm still batting around food mapping ideas, and I found a lot of inspiration here. For example...

The density of the Hispanic population throughout the US - this has surely impacted food choices and offerings, right?

Thinking historically, I wonder how the creation of the National Road influenced regional cuisine. The families that traveled the road, did they leave bits of their histories behind? Can we still see their influence today?

This little series of simple maps might have resonated the most with me. Rankin and two of his colleagues created their own "personal maps" of cities. This one, of Philadelphia, shows Rankin's movements around the city, how he gets around, and what he does. Overlay a bunch of additional people's maps on top of this one and you have a really interesting study of city use.

Philadelphia

Philly is popping up all over the place for me this week. Yesterday, I emailed a bit with one of the contributors to this blog, a really nice comprehensive resource if you're interested in local food in the Philadelphia area (side note: if anybody in Baltimore wanted to start a site like this...I'd love it!).

Today, I just got back to my email after lunch with my sister to find a note from Erin's friend Libby (of Untergunther article fame). Part of her job at work involves marketing the city of Philadelphia to people who might like to come stay. Baltimore's close, so obviously we're a hot market for the city.

In case anyone's thinking of taking a little overnight trip up 95 sometime soon, you might want to book sooner rather than later. Here's why:

GoPhila has a really good deal on a hotel stay, but you have to book by Wed. January 9th (as in tomorrow by midnight!). You can get a 50 dollar discount on any hotel room over $150 dollars (that's 30% off), but you have to do it through the site. It says that you need to redeem by January 9th, but you can redeem it anytime as long as you book by January 9th.
http://www.gophila.com/holidays/ (use the travel widget on the right).

Libby also mentioned that Philly's full of great restaurants and some cool foodie-ish "destinations" (my marketing-speak is showing), like Reading Terminal Market and the Italian Market.

So if you're thinking about a little trip...now's a good time to get on it!