Some Yahoos Map Southern Brooklyn
Does anyone use Yahoo Maps? I’ve been using Google for my online mapping needs for the past few years*. So I didn’t know about an interesting feature that Yahoo had added last year – at the second and third closest zoom levels, they have color shading for different city neighborhoods. Pretty cool, yes?
Cool idea, anyway. I find their accuracy somewhat lacking. As in, not accurate.
8th Avenue Chinatown is in Borough Park - Rlly? Is this a ploy by Hasidic real estate agents to make Sunset Park more appealing to their prospects? Well, Sunset Park should be used to it, considering how many “Bay Ridge” apartments I used to be able to find in the 40s and 50s.
Little Odessa is a nickname, kids - The name of the neighborhood that Yahoo thinks is Little Odessa is actually called “Brighton Beach.” And we all know what they say about Russophones from Brighton Beach.
A bad end for Gravesend – Yahoo gives this member of the Original Six the double middle finger and maps the whole thing to Bensonhurst. All the history of the only English settlement in the Dutch colonies, flushed away into Gravesend Bensonhurst Bay.
Such a dim understanding of Brooklyn neighborhoods. I’m guessing some Yahoo from Manhattan drew this map.
* P.S. It needs to be said that I use Streetwise for my exclusive walking-around map. I love me some Streetwise. The preceding statement is totally true, and no one paid me or gave me any free maps to say that, though I wouldn’t mind a Good Boyfriend point or two.
Comment from Sheepshead Bay News Blog
Time November 20, 2009 at 9:04 pm
Not surprising. It appears very few Brooklynites really know the borders of their neighborhoods, and even less so of other neighborhoods. And in New York City, the boundaries shift, old names fade away, and new ones pop up quicker than lightning (one of the papers did a story about this last week, quoting Gravesend’s Joseph Ditta, who we interviewed here and discussed the history of his ‘hood: http://www.sheepsheadbites.com/2009/08/gravesent-brooklyn-joseph-ditta-intervie/ ).
Some neighborhoods are just… I don’t know – forgettable? If any of my readers see this, I’ll be crucified, but I have to say Homecrest is a good example. It’s been absorbed by Sheepshead Bay, Marine Park and Midwood. Just yesterday I was on Avenue U meeting with a potential advertisers. “Wait,” he said. “Is this even Sheepshead Bay?”… “Well, technically it’s Homecrest, but we cover it.”… “Huh? What’s Homecrest.”… “Nevermind. It’s Sheepshead Bay. We cover it.”
Still, there are actual agencies that keep records of “official” neighborhood delineations. Yahoo should’ve hit them up. It would’ve made the function way more useful.
Now, on a side note in this already long comment, I’ve noticed sites like Chowhound and UrbanSpoon make nabes like Gravesend bigger than they are. Restaurants that are definitely in Sheepshead are labeled Gravesend. They’ll make corrections if you point it out – but who has the time for that?