Judgemental Day

Dude; Where's My Personal Space
 

© Dan Steiner 2014.  Click To Enlarge!  It's Easy, And Fun, Too!

 On March 29, 1976, The New Yorker ran a cover graphic by illustrator Saul Steinberg (1914-1999), "View Of The World From 9th Avenue", which depicted in graphic terms the importance of the rest of the world from the relative perspective of those living in a specific New York City neighborhood.

It wasn't a new concept in illustration; there are examples of similar 'maps' in what passed for cartoons in England and Europe of the 17th and 18th centuries, and America in the last quarter of the 19th. But it hadn't been used in so long that when Steinberg resurrected it, the idea was 'fresh' again (True in Art as well as Life: No New Thing Under The Sun).

Steinber's 1976 Cover: Click On Image To Englarge -- Easy! Fun!

In the years that followed, the concept Steinberg played on visually (human tendencies towards insular, 'Our Crowd' snobbery, and to see where you live as the center of the known universe) was seized on by other artists, who spun off similar maps of their own regions or towns. A variation on this idea is the map of a geographic or urban area, with legends to describe the denizens of various neighborhoods, and/or the activities which go on there. These maps are generally heavy on Irony, Snark, and full-on Sarcasm. 

So, with that in mind, the fabulous infographik people at JudgementalMaps ("Your City. Judged.") created a site for graphics types, who specialize in observing local and regional Snark, to offer their pictorial contributions -- and in particular, this San Francisco map created by Dan Steiner, where Dan describes my area of The City [Nob Hill] as "Horrible People".  

I'm not one of the wealthy (I just use one of their zip codes; you should see the join-our-exclusive something / Black-Amex-Card blind solicitation mailings I get), but those who live in this area are mostly clueless, brittle, demanding and entitled.  So I'd say, from my low-to-the-ground Dog's perspective, Dan is spot-on.

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