How it all works.

I'm trolling New York City collecting maps from flyers, government reports, informational brochures and such with the notion that all these maps will all somehow join together to create a complete map of NYC. The maps have to exist in real life- no downloads and cannot be rescaled or cut to fit.

Monday, July 18, 2011

Tokion

There’s a newspaper I get every Thursday, it's called Tokion, I believe. It is written in Japanese. Of the contents of this newspaper I know nothing but one article and I’m there every Thursday at Sunrise Mart ripping out the article putting the rest of the paper back. I used to throw the paper away but it seemed like a waste. Anyway, this article is very interesting to me because in it the author chooses a NYC subway line to follow, visits each station and describes some things that may be found around and about, including a nice little map. The map of course interests me and it has provided some cheerfulness in drab corners I never thought I would ever find a map for. Also, it provides a bit of continuity, stitching great areas together with uniform cute blue maps.




I discovered it right at the beginning of the map project, a map the Mott St station of the Far Rockaway A line, which is right at the beginning of that route. Had I put two and two together at the time I would have many beautiful maps of areas I despair of ever finding a map for. By the time I rediscovered it, the A train had been over and done and the author was in the middle of doing the J train. I have been collecting them ever since. I even went to their office on Lafayette where a nice lady called Keiko gave me a load, but not enough old papers to chop up.



Last Christmas the J train reached the last stop at Broad St and my life was filled with great excitement as I waited to see what the next train line would be. I was kept waiting for three whole weeks! They waited for the holidays to end, they were snowed in during the crazy snowstorm and then, then they brought out an issue. It was the D train, very good- I don’t have any of that area at all. Sigh, anyway the next post will be better, I promise. I include an early version of Bed-Stuy for illustrative purposes, Bed Stuy looks much better now.