This Holiday Season, “Civil Unrest!” Brought to you by LEGO

Get me an Arab Spring set! Gimme Gimme Gimme!!!

Occupy my nightstick FTW!
SS

Decolonize BART!

Happy Fall Decolonization Fest part II!
What are you thankful for? Decentralized movements for social justice? The building up of a post-capitalist solidarity economy? Maybe just the sheer joy of public transit??

So many opportunities to reflect on the legacies of colonialism, slavery, genocide, and imperialism for those of us in the Western Hemisphere. Good tidings, and may this map of a reclaimed San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit system keep good company to you and your people.

Thanks to my buddy Kenji for this cartographic gem!

If you’ve missed other awesome/ imaginative BART maps, you can click here and have your mind ravaged by BARTOR- the Transitator!!!

June Jordan bound train arriving at platform ONE in seven minutes…
Angela Davis International Airport bound Train is now boarding…

Sunshine Superboy

Back to Skool? Procrastination Interlude- True Blood and itunes

Too much workies makes my head hurt!

Slide the maps aside. Take a break and listen to some tunes!

then we can take a gander at the spatial arrangement of our favorite pulp Louisiana VampTown, Bon Temps!

but first! … oh fanfiction. how we love your imaginative airbrushing:

The merry land of True Bloodletting:

(click the map for clarity)

have a bon temps!

Sunshine Supergarçon

Back to Skool Map-stravaganza: Home Ec.

Today’s atlas is inspired by your goofy Home Economics course. Do kids till have to take that??

Cartographic décor for your everyday life!

Word Cloud Couch Potato:

Coast to Coasters!!

A little isthmus thermos!

a globe of the good stuff, ol chap!

I’m sure you’ve all seen plenty of the world map shower curtains and such, so we’ll leave it at that, and if you have more Martha Stewart Cartophile gems you’d like to share, leave a comment below!

Up up and away,
Sunshine Super Stewart

Back to Skool Map-Fest: “Foreign” Languages

Is that the Eiffel Tower or are you just heureux to see me?

Every Western European country gets to have its moment of ethnocentrism and false superiority! ¡Qué Bueno! ¡Viva España!

I’m sure I can Brussel up a game or two!

take a quick walking tour of central São Paulo! Andar com a gente!

oh hell, I give up. Just throw them all in there!

(right click to enlarge in another window)

Ooops, whats that you noticed? China, the US, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Japan, and all of Eastern Europe can fit comfortably inside of the African Continent?! OMG, with a lifetime of distorted map projections, who could have guessed?!!

Sorry, we veered away from our non-english languages, subject. Whatevs, at least we learned something… Thats all for today kiddies!

Ciao, Au Revoire, Hasta Luego, Até Logo, Sianara!

Sunshine Superchico-garçom

Back to Skool: Kick-starting our Map-tastic Week from Art and Foreign Language, to Geography T-Shirts!!!

We were on a little “summer” “break” there for a spell (I use both words in quote, cuz it was already September, San Francisco doesn’t have a summer, and I hardly had a moment’s rest!), but we are back with a compendium of maps to keep your trapper-keeper in engorged! Hooray for overcompensation!!

We’ll post at least a map a day for the next week, marching right through some of our least (?) favorite school subjects- further proof that you can use maps in whatever area of study. Hooray again! (Sorry, I get excited about September. Its really a spectacular month, isn’t it?!).

Lets start with Geography:
A hilarious, if at times scary personal US geography tee-shirt design from our buddy pals at Threadless (they’re not a Black Maps sponsor….). We’ll start with another T-shirt model, and skip along to a zoom on the map itself.

Hooray!

Sorry New England… erm, and the “corn” states
If it makes you feel any better, I’m from the Commonwealth of “Blah Blah History”…

A tearful farewell to our last month of t-shirts. Come back for more Back to School Maps!

LoveAlwaysYrPal,
Sunshine Superboy

LOLZ. Can’t help myself…. Classic emo jam. Horrendous homemade video!

Congraduations! Post-Tassle Hipster Migrations

Spring is ending, and with it, so are “the college years” for so many hip youngsters. Once the commencement speeches have all been uttered, these gen Y-ers will be unleashed! But where will they go???

It might be hard to read below, so just click (or right click) the map and it’ll open bigger with a zoom/ magnifying glass jawn that makes it hell big. Certainly enough to have you LYAO.
Behold:

this is kinda amazing. Some of my favs:

Seattle: Depressing Weather= Good Punk Scene + Coffee.
Detroit: Street Cred. Something vague about hopeful post-apocalyptic urban gardening.
Washington DC: “I don’t believe change can come from within the system, but this internship I found on idealist.org will look great on my résumé so I can deal with it for a year or two until law school.”
Portland: “if only there were more diversity AND I could find a coffee shop job while I work on my music.”

kinda awesome. me? college is only gonna get more ridiculously expensive, but I’m working on a PhD so I’m gonna send my kid to regular-type high school, and then home-school her for her bachelor degree cuz bloody hell this tuition crap is robbery!

Up up and away with you!
Sunshine Superboy

Somebody’s Sydney

A thoroughly entertaining map that projects different perspectives/ stereotypes among the locals of Sydney, Australia.

this one is dedicated to my Aussie buds:

Having never been to Sydney, I have to admit that all of the references are pole-vaulting over my head, but I do get the sentiment.

All I can think of is “gosh, if anyone attempted to make a map like this of Philly we’d have an ugly riot on our hands… though we’d all be laughing”. On the other-hand, the New York part of me is like “yeah… all New Yorkers basically already walk around with a 5-borough version of this in our heads at all times,” which isn’t that funny.

Aussies! Not to cause a civil war, but which version of this map gets your personal blessing?

G’Day, G’Day, Up Up and Away!
Sunshine Superboy

United States of Autocomplete

I came across this map a few months ago and am just utterly charmed by it. Its pretty straight forward: go to a search window, begin typing the name of a state, and see what the top autocomplete option is. Repeat for all fifty states. Bonus points if you’ve been to all Fifty (I will never let you forget that I in fact HAVE). The map is dated with the moment of its composition, since, obviously, top search findings are dynamic, and change over time.

The map is a little small here, but if you click on the map it will load in better resolution in another tab or window.

In terms of decoding the results, it looks like Blue is for sports related autocompletes, Green represents college & university names, the Rust-colored-Red is for media, and everything else is just rando. Everything from Louisiana Purchase to Hawaii Five-O (a personal favorite).

Soak it up and enjoy.

Up Up and Away,
“Sunshine SuperBowl”
(an autocomplete)

The Geography of Procrastination

For those of you who are looking for the ultimate excuse, I sheepishly offer the Bermuda Triangle of Procrastination Productivity!

For my own part, Gmail is my bedrock for jamming out ‘n’ gettin’ shit work done. Not being familiar with “the Twitters”, I try to avoid the more tempting isles of Facebook, which have inspired many a circuitous journey leading to nothing but a lost afternoon. A three-hour tour indeed.

Anyways, thanks for passing through the shallow waters of my wordpress blog. I appreciate the support given that you prolly have more productive things to do.

What are you waiting for, a motivational speech? Git off yr brassy and git focused!

Up up and Away,
Commodore Sunshine Superboy