norwe.jpg

Click here to see the image above in the wild. News story, auto-translated to English in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten. More on Google Maps. (thanks, BB reader Kjetil Rydland in Norway!)

  • Anonymous

    Arrgh! I was home the day the Google truck went past – my vehicles were in the driveway! Missed my chance for costumed immortality…

  • Anonymous

    if you pan up to the building to the right of the attacking scuba men there is a blond woman watching from a second floor window.

    Clearly staged, they aren’t on a dock or near the shore, why would they be in scuba gear other than to prank the Google vehicle. I love it though.

  • jwerner
  • jwerner
  • Anonymous

    After failing to stifle my laughter from watching the recursive podcast and now checking out these Norwegians, my co-workers must think I’m going a little insane.

    It’s too bad they stopped at the intersection. Although I imagine running in scuba gear is no small feat.

  • KongK
  • Anonymous

    We didn’t even know Google Street View had been in our area until a friend across the country told us to check out our house… If we wander a bit east of our mailbox, suddenly there’s our son, riding his bike with a friend (who is on our daughter’s bike, to his everlasting chagrin). A little bit cool, a little bit creepy…

  • Anonymous

    Snorkeling gear, not SCUBA gear.

  • smitty1276

    Sadly, this is clearly staged. If you back the van up a few steps, the lawn chairs aren’t there, despite the van’s obvious speed (determined by watching pedestrians motion per step) indicating that the van continued through that intersection. They almost certainly stopped and backed up to the intersection after Triton set up his chair to get the funny scene.

  • Anonymous

    too funny, i was laughing all day and night, and shaking with laughter

  • Anonymous

    Ha they had their lawn chairs out waiting. Those are two very satisfied Norwegians. How many times would the cops have stopped by to check out to guys in full scuba gear camping out in their own driveway.
    “Just waiting on the street car officer.”

    • Anonymous

      Well, in Norway we are free to do what we want, within the law of course. Police don’t harness the public for nothing. Scuba divers in the driveway is not an offense in Norway, it is called a joke.

  • thequickbrownfox

    Needs to be made into video, with Yackety Sax of course.

  • arikol

    Best streetview prank yet?
    Hilarious, anyway :D

  • Scuba SM

    What I find interesting is the apparent script-based blurring evident in the Google Maps images. In the image shown above, there’s a small circle next to the lawn chairs that’s blurred. In the picture of the guy with the (awesome) hoodie in Toronto, the front of his scooter is blurred. I figure the blurring is intended to block out plates, but what about the lawn chairs triggered it?

  • Nores

    Ah, are we not all ultimately caught on desires fork?

  • KongK

    I doubt that it’s staged. Here’s a video I made (in Norwegian), with their own private pictures: http://www.nrk.no/nett-tv/distrikt/hordaland/verdi/123210/ And you don’t know the cars route through the intersection. They may have gone past without making the turn, then came back minutes, hours or even days later, to get that specific road.

    BTW, pictures were taken 10. July 2009, and back in those days, trees were green and temperature livable.

  • Anonymous

    Great fun reading your comments! Glad you liked the stunt

    By the way:
    Lyster = Fish spear
    Lyst(e) = To lust, desire
    Explains the “Desires fork”

    Until nex time
    Frogman #1

  • Taskbot

    This made my day, I just can’t stop laughing. How absurd!

    • jackie31337

      Likewise! Also, I wouldn’t necessarily say they’re angry, just spirited.

  • Trent Hawkins
    • Anonymous

      hey i know that guy! he kept getting stuck in snow drifts this winter

    • Xeni Jardin

      Trent, that is way awesome.

    • Anonymous

      Hahahah awesomw I have almost the same sweatshirt!

  • Anonymous

    This is just so full of win I don’t know where to start.

    I certainly hope that street view map-jacking becomes more common. It’s fantastic.

  • Anonymous

    @Scuba SM
    It looks like the gap in the shadows between the chairs is somewhat rectangular, and lighter than the surrounding area, so the algorithm detects a white rectangle and assumes a plate.

  • acb

    I wonder how they knew where the car was going to be. Perhaps they were in league with the pranksters in Berlin who put GPS tracking devices onto Google camera cars?

    • Anonymous

      They actually knew the driver of the car so they had an estimate timeframe when the car would drive past. They sat on their lawn chairs for about an hour before he came past them.

  • brooklynp50
  • misanthrophic_principle

    Has anyone considered staging short plays in front of the Street View car? I could imagine getting a 60 Second Shakespeare in before the car sped off down the road…

    • limepies

      i’m sure you could get in more than that.

  • Anonymous

    Spawning season. Google should have known better (or at least googled it)

  • oheso

    Can we please have the old BB back? It took me way too long to find the Comments link on this story. Seriously — reversed text on a screen overlay? Please! What was wrong with putting headlines and links above images, where people could actually find them?

    I’d have submitted this comment to the managing editor or webmaster, if there’d been any information about how to contact them. (So please do be angry that my comment is “off topic.”)

  • Anonymous

    Looks like the woman on the other side of the road liked it too. Also, if you go backwards to the intersection they are not there in the chairs, so they may have seen it go 1 direction and quickly got ready on the other road.

  • urbanspaceman

    I’m not sure that I’d ever do in this situation what the Norwegians would!

  • Anonymous

    Norwegians and Scuba Gear are funny by themselves, but this…

  • Anonymous

    This is the best pratctical joke on google maps up to now. According to Norwegian news they told that they knew the guy that got the job to drive the google car. But the google guy did not know that they later on came up with this idea. They sat in their-….., wathever you call it in english, for approximate an hour reading the newspapers before he arrived. What I want to know is when they pass by my area…

  • pahool

    Who chases Google with desires fork?

  • KongK

    There were news stories on which days the car would be in which city, so I guess they just waited. It’s a small town. Hopefully the guilty parties will come forward soon, and we can give them the keys to our city.

    • Anonymous

      Well, It took them 2 months to complete driving around Bergen, so its not THAT small ;)

  • Anonymous

    For the record, “Who chases Google with desires fork?” was my favorite episode of Star Trek TOS.

  • inFinit Loop

    holy s. thank you so much. that just turned a really crappy day into an effing amazing one. the comment about “are we not all ultimately caught on desires fork?” was the icing on the cake. i think i may have injured myself laughing…

  • Anonymous

    I can’t tell you how many times this has happened to me. You’re just hanging out with your buddy on a sunny day. Sitting in lawn chairs at the end of the driveway with your scuba gear, an umbrella, and a trident, and before you know it you’re chasing a Google van down the street.

  • Feenicks

    HAH! Awesome.
    One of the most seriously hilarious things I have ever seen.
    Epic win Norwegia!

  • kullervo

    Is it Friday already?

  • Anonymous

    Trent, I’ve seen that guy scooting around downtown Toronto on numerous occasions. Used to just always wear a white balaclava, though. Good to see he’s upgraded to the gangsta skeleton hoodie.

  • Anonymous

    Isn’t it February in Norway too? This is funny enough, but it is either old or photoshopped (my preference).

    • jackie31337

      The Streetview car drove past my office in Helsinki, Finland last summer (I think it was July), but the pictures just went live yesterday. I suspect the Norwegian pictures were taken around the same time.

  • Anonymous

    It rains a lot in Bergen. So that scuba gear is not a prank, it’s a necessity (even on a sunny day, just in case)

  • michael_r

    “chilling by the wayside”. My late new year’s resolution

  • Alan

    My opinion of the Norwegian people just went way up.

  • adam

    Oh. My. God. Wow.

  • Anonymous

    Awesome. We Norwegians rule! :p

    Is there any way to know when the Google car is comming? My town hasn’t been mapped yet, or the pictures haven’t come out at least..

  • Anonymous

    This is my favorite picture. Ever.

  • Anonymous

    Maybe angry scuba norwegians really hate red google VW Golfs cars. The google car made a photo of itself in a mirror in a pole after meeting our heroes, same street, number 33.

    http://maps.google.com/mapsf=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=33+Rugdeveien,+Bergen,+Hordaland,+Norge&sll=60.360997,5.370705&sspn=0.006685,0.017531&g=33+Rugdeveien,+Bergen,+Hordaland,+Norge&ie=UTF8&

  • Anonymous

    Edvard Grieg should be used as a soundtrack for this footage . . .