Hand-drawn maps on display

Jocelyn says: "As the last installment in Julia Turner’s Signs series for Slate, Julia presents a professional analysis of hand-drawn maps that were submitted by readers. These humble, messy maps are charming and fascinating in their forms, and altogether useful for whom they were drawn for. 

And it's unlikely that any software would produce the map [above], drawn for a Slate reader by a friend: It's a guide to the neighborhoods of Paris, put in terms a young New Yorker can understand. Although the map is simplistic and juvenile, the effort to match Parisian arrondissements with demographically corresponding areas in Brooklyn is a conceptually interesting way to present information about an unfamiliar town.

Wonderful hand-drawn maps from firefighters, club-hoppers, Boy Scout dads, grandmothers, and Alexander Calder

• [Wordguy]

  At first I thought the north-northeast sector was labeled “North African PUG Dealers”.

• [jetfx]

  “And it’s unlikely that any software would produce the map [above]”

  Well, the author doesn’t know much about mapping software then. Short of literally being hand drawn, mapping software can display spatial relationships any way you like.

• [dragonfrog]

  So in 89-90 my family lived among ex-intellectual privileged assholes, about 15 minutes walk from chinese food. Nice and easy to explain…

  Also, North African Pug Dealers is a wonderful image!

• [Rider]

  Is it just me or is that map backwards. Seems like he has the east and west side of downtown Manhattan reversed.

  • [Mark Frauenfelder]

    It’s Paris.

• [Irene Delse]

  The artist forgot to sign his or her name: want to guess it’s “Ugly American”?

  (Ha. I feel strangely proud to live in “North African drug dealers”. Maybe because it’s neither “stoopid”, “disdainful” or “assholes”.)

• [BNtroopz]

  I live in Montmartre and I approve of this map.

• [Irene Delse]

  Oh, and he forgot one important tag in his description: “lotsa roaming tourists”!

  Heh.

• [neward]

  The only way I was able to identify the city was through the Gays + Jews rectangle, Le Marais. I feel so quasi-cool-insider.

  Sometime during high school I discovered I am talented at drawing freehand maps of the United States. It’s been my party trick ever since then.

  A Philadelphia blog also had a hand-drawn map feature. It’s really amusing if you’ve lived there:
  http://www.philebrity.com/category/neighborhood%20maps/

• [Stefan Jones]

  When I get out of town visitors, and it looks like they might borrow my car, I make a schematic diagram of my neighborhood and the surrounding area on graph paper, with sites like “drug store” and “supermarket” noted, and arrows at the edges (“Ocean” to the west, “Portland” to the east). Then I stick it in a document protector and tape it to the roof of my car.

  * * *

  North African “pugs” are often shaved baby hyenas. Just in case it ever comes up.

• [ncm]

  What astonishes me is the excellent spelling. How often can you expect to find “privileged” and “disdainful” correct on such a map? (“Stoopid” is obviously deliberate.)

  I think the border marked “do not cross” suggests a warning to remain in the north-west quandrant, not to stay away from it.

  I got free dial-up internet service from someone in that quadrant in the early ’90s. Thanks again, someone.

• [acb]

  I thought “Do Not Cross” referred to the Péripherique, the ring road which separates the 20 arrondisements of Paris proper from the banlieues (suburbs) outside, which are considered badlands of deprivation and criminality.

  • [Anonymous]

    acb • #11 is absolutely correct. Don’t know if Belleville is the heart of Paris but it is avery cool area

• [Anonymous]

  Here be dragons.

  LOL