Roads Traveled in Town

Looking at some personal maps by people in respective communities, I was reminded of other maps drawn by folks growing up in various communities in another work that I read. That work pointed out the disparity of experience between peoples of various classes, how some folks stay very close to the home neighborhood, and as a result, the mental maps of their city outside of the immediate confines is very vague.

I tend to think of myself as knowing my city fairly well, having been around it now for over a decade and travelling around it quite a bit, especially when I was single and more prone to going out (that said, married life with kids has taken me other places in the city to which I would not have ventured as a single person, so my experiences, while probably less diverse within the last few years, have grown wider in the total sum of my time in town than they would have had my life continued as it had).

I decided not so much to draw a mental map as to draw a map of the streets I actually traveled in a given week. The thicker the line, the more often I traveled it (by walking, car, or bus). What's interesting to me about this map is how thick the lines are toward home (even compared with work). We live at a dead end, so unless the destination is home, there's little reason to come or go from there. If I'm out, I'm likely to run several errands at once rather than returning home. Still, one can be guaranteed to travel the seldom-traveled dead end road at least twice each time one comes and goes out--in other words, almost always at least twice a day. Hence, while work may be more centrally located, it is not someplace I travel on weekends, and the variety of roads that can take me there also means I travel different routes depending on the bus I take or whether I drive or walk.

Certainly, were I to have drawn this map five years ago, in the waning days of singledom, it would have looked different, or six years ago when I worked in a different location. Living in a more central area of the city at that time, the lines would have been thick near home as well--and I would have expected that, because of its very centrality. But what this map shows is that home (even more than a given city center) is generally always central. For my family and for me personally, our little dead end is a heavy-traffic road.

My Downtown Gentrification

I'm reading a book right now that is concerned about "authenticity" with regard to cities and living areas. The author, to an extent, decries change--how a city neighborhood will be taken from the underprivilidged, gentrified (and made safe for artists), and then eventually built over with chain stores and facilities for the very rich. Part of me, though, is skeptical of the whole idea of "authenticity" in a city; cities change always. And this move between these three levels waxes and wains. I'm thinking about three city blocks that were about two blocks from an apartment I lived in for thirteen years. When I first arrived, we called it the "tri-bar" area, because there were three bars there. It was on the west side of downtown, separated from the busier part of downtown by a bank and a church. On the east side, students roamed; on the west side, mostly townies hung out.

But that in and of itself was a creation of sorts. The area I'm thinking of was once known as the Hot Corner, because at one time it had been a vibrant pocket for African American businesses. These historic businesses still hung on in the form of a black barbershop and a soul food restaurant when I moved here. The rest was either abandoned or moving into that gentrifying state--as artistic folks moved in (downtown's migrating music scene). In earlier times, apparently, this part of downtown had had a coffee shop and a furniture store--both were gone when I moved here (though another coffee shop did move in--and out--during my thirteen years).

Now, those abandoned buildings are gone. The working-class businesses have begun moving out--gone are the bike store, the appliance store, and the car repair shop; one of two thrift stores is gone. Nine bars now exist where there were once three; there is another music club, and there is a movie theater. Where once there were two restaurants (one of them soul food), there are now seven restaurants. (The number of restaurants, bars, and clubs is a bit fluid, insofar as some bars serve food and some have music, so some venues could be classified two or three different ways.) High-cost clothing boutiques have appeared. And two new multistory office buildings have been built. Chains haven't moved into the area yet, but they have moved into other sectors of downtown--the migration, I'm sure, will begin eventually. And even parking, which used to be abundant and free is limited and costly.

But what is to say that this downtown is less authentic or more than the one that existed previously? Sure, I miss the quieter west-side downtown with its three bars and its abandoned storefronts and empty parking lots, the feeling it gave me that I was one of the locals who cared about such places. Now, a larger crowd is moving in. So what? And sure, rents are probably rising and things are becoming more expensive, and eventually, some of those small businesses will close and be replaced by chains or high-cost merchandisers, and this part of downtown will lose some of "its character." But it's lost a character before--when black-owned businesses shuttered and white folk moved in. It's simply part of how neighborhoods change. A person moving to town now might well lament all the businesses that closed or changed hands within this three-block set ten years from now too--its loss of "character."

The map below shows how these three blocks looked when I moved here on the left; the neighborhood as it stands now is on the right. Blue represents new businesses (if a new bar or restaurant opened in the location of an old bar or restaurant, it is blue also).

More interesting to map might be Washington Street between Holliston and Allen, in California, where I grew up. When I was a kid, it was home to a number of thrift stores, local businesses (radio repair, bakery), used bookstores, oddball eateries (nonchain fastfood), and Armenian shops to which I never ventured (delis, groceries, repair shops). I didn't think much of it at the time, but now I think that area would have been rather neat and funky, and I'm sad I didn't venture more often into some of those odd stores. Of course, I was a kid and not terribly adventurous, nor did I have much money to spend or much reason to spend it on many of the things on offer. When I last returned, in 2010, some of those businesses were still there, but many had been replaced--with cafes and other fancier/gentrified fair (and some businesses simply didn't need to be anymore, technology having moved on). I figure I'd have really liked said neighborhood now, were I living there as an adult--and a single. (As a married man with family now, I find myself returned to my childhood proclivity to stay home rather than venture out--I'm poor again and often the family or wife doesn't want to go out when I do, even when we can afford it, or doesn't want to go to the same kinds of places--kids, I find, love chains, much as I did, whatever is familiar or advertised heavily.)

The Washington Street area reminds me of the Normaltown area of the town in which I live now, though the Washington Street commercial district seems much larger. Normaltown would be another interesting one to map, though I don't know that I could map for certain all the businesses that were there when I moved here. There was an Army-Navy thrift store, a small local hardware store, a Pizza Hut delivery outlet, a local Mexican restaurant (the best in town), a Mexican grocery, a gas station, and sundry other little shops that have rotated in and out over the years (Asian grocery, scooter shop, computer repair shop, thrift store, church office); there were also a bar (Foxy's) and a bar and grill (Allen's). The building in which the latter two were housed was knocked down, and the businesses relocated elsewhere before closing forever. In place of that building, after years of fighting with community boards and residents, a new office building is finally going in. Meanwhile, that little sleepy part of town with largely local businesses is becoming what the west side of downtown used to be: there are now three bars in the area (two of which feature music, one of which features food), and many townies now venture there instead of downtown, and the place continues to hop into the early morning hours. A coffee shop has opened; a fancy bakery has moved in. The Mexican restaurant and grocery are still there, and some of the small rotating businesses too (computer repair). But Pizza Hut is gone, and I fear the hardware store and/or Army-Navy store's days are numbered.

Church Retreats

Each year I attend a convention held by my church. I've done so since I was a baby. I only remember the locations from age five on. I've gone to sites outside the United States six times (to Argentina, Australia, Britain, Canada, and Spain). Here are the states I've been to and how many times:

Interstates I've Driven and Ridden On 2

It's been a couple of years since I last updated this, so I thought it might be good to feature this map again. Trips (by bus and car) to Indiana and (by car) to Raleigh, North Carolina, and within parts of Colorado mean I've seen a few other roads.

And if you find the map above interesting, someone else has a whole set of U.S. maps about linguistic differences from place to place around the country that you can find here. I often don't seem to fall into either the California or the Deep South camp; I have no idea why my pronunciations are so generally strange (for example, I say q-pon, not koo-pon for coupon, which apparently is odd just about everywhere).

Local Spending in April

I hadn't done a survey of my local spending--or an accompanying map--since near the start of this blog two years ago, so I decided to do one in April. Here's where I spent my money locally in April:

If these places were sized on a map relative to how much money I spent, here's what the map would look like:

Etienne--great food, first time I'd eaten there. But it's a bit above my usual price range, so I doubt I'll return anytime soon. Credit an acquaintance with blowing my entertainment budget for the month.

Places Heather Has Been Sited

My friend Heather requested to be part of a chart on my blog, so here it is.

I live in what is in some ways a small town, even though well over one hundred thousand people live here. What I mean by that is that within certain circles, one tends to come across certain people with a degree of regularity. Hence, you'll meet someone who you might well have met many times in the past but never really registered as more than a face.

Back toward the end of March, I met a gal who I didn't recognize at first as someone I already sort of knew. The reason: She was wearing glasses, which I'd never known her to do before. She is someone who skates in similar circles. I'd seen her play in a band a friend of mine was in, and I'd seen her play one or two solo shows when she was playing among a list of other musicians I knew. Finally, I'd seen her a few times--and been introduced to her or vaguely hung out on the edge of shared conversations with her among shared acquaintances--at a bar I frequent. She struck me as an attractive woman I would likely not have much in common with. I don't know exactly how I came to that assessment, since we'd probably exchanged all of two sentences in the years I'd known (of) her. Perhaps, it's that I'm a personally very conservative person, while most of the people I have contact with in town trend pretty liberal (that said, most of my nonchurch friends are fairly liberal and many of them would say I'm liberal too--I guess much just depends on how one assesses these things; I tend to feel like an leftist oddball among religious people and a rightest oddball among the artistic crowd I often mix with).

So in March, I went to see a performance of Indonesian-like music at the college music hall, mostly because a band I like called Electrophoria was among the participants. Heather struck up a conversation with me as I walked into the hall. Should I sit with her? I wondered. Well, why not? Neither of us were with people, a friend of mine having turned me down for the event. I'm glad of that, since it meant I got to spend the evening getting to know her. It was only after she mentioned being a musician that I realized who I was talking with, that I already kind of knew her, and that we had a ton of friends in common. And it was only after talking with her--spending time with her, at a bar after the show--that I realized that we actually had more in common than I'd have imagined and that my assumptions about her had locked me out of what might have been an interesting friendship much earlier (though, fact is, I probably wouldn't have had the guts to talk with her anyway).

Anyway, since that evening in March, I've had several more occasions to run into Heather or hang out with her, and it's been a joy each time. Heather is this incredible combination of sweetness, cuteness, strong-headedness, quirkiness, and, well, funness (is that a word?). I'm glad I've gotten a chance to get to know her and to spend time with her. Below is a map of places at which Heather and I have been present at the same time:

Interstates I've Driven and Ridden

I have lived most of my adult life in the South. Hence, most of my Interstate driving has been in the South, as this map shows, the West Coast driving being mostly my moves back and forth and back from California. The yellow are the Interstates, the purple those I've driven.

However, if we include driving from when I was a kid, and my parents took me with them on various trips, my West Coast Interstate experience increases exponentially. Most of the Interstates I knew, in fact, back then were western. The few Northeast Interstates I've ridden on are from trips I've taken as an adult, which generally involve flying to an area to visit with others who then drove me to other places. The yellow are the Interstates, the purple are those I've driven, the red those I've ridden.

My U.S. Map by Decade

I wanted to see how much where I live affects how much time I spend in various states. It's interesting how the trajectory changes as I moved from the West Coast to the East Coast. The 1990s, where I lived in three different states and did significant in-state travel represent the time when I was present for a time in the most states. The 2000s, where I've spent most of the decade in Georgia fill in a few of the eastern and midwestern states, but the West Coast now has started to look anemic, as the East Coast did when I was younger. One difference: I have family on the West Coast, so there's still an excuse to go back.

In the maps below, the black states are those I lived in during the decade. The dark gray states are those I spent at least one contiguous week in, and the light states are those I at least "touched."

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

So far the 2010s are shaping up to look similar to the 2000s.

Floor Plans of Places I've Lived

I've recently been working on a story that involves much attention to the rooms of a house, which has gotten me thinking a bit about the floor plans of the places I've lived. So here that are, from oldest to most recent. The house I grew up in worked around in a circle of sorts. It's not quite to scale, as none of them are. My bedroom was the smallest, but its smallness here is a bit exaggerated by poor drawing.
The first apartment was pretty swanky, what with a wet bar. Unfortunately, I never stocked it. I was underage for much of the time I lived there and too poor for the rest. I kept motor oil and stuff like that behind the bar. Unfortunately, the place smelled of cats, a smell that never went away. It was located in a pretty nice part of town, not far from the south end of a fancy shopping district and from my job.
The second apartment was a weird one full of octagonal rooms, much smaller--the smallest place, in fact, that I've ever lived, though it's kitchen was more generous than any apartment I've had since.
The third apartment was pretty nice, though smaller than the first. It didn't really offer a place for dining, though.

The fourth apartment is more of a studio efficiency than anything else. Its main advantage is its location.

States I've Been To

I've been to most of the U.S. states. I'm missing, however, a huge chunk right at the top of the country, and another swath in the nation's mid-Atlantic region, as is evidenced in this map of the states to which I've been. The darker highlights represent those states in which I've spent at least twenty-four consecutive hours. The number of states in which I've done this actually surprised me, as I thought there were more states of the type like Oklahoma, where I spent probably just an hour--one Sunday, when I was living in Texas, I drove up and across the border to eat at Carl's Jr., just to be able to say I'd been to the old Indian Territory.



But twenty-four consecutive hours may not even be the best way to describe legitimately large amounts of time--after all, some states I may not have spent a consecutive twenty-four hours in, but I've so often been through them that I probably have spent more than twenty-four hours in total. Another way to think of time spent might be to color those dark the states that I've spent a night in:



To what extent are the states that I've visited a reflection of the places where I've lived? I thought that might present an interesting map in itself, and it does. Notice that I've spent the majority of my life in the band of sunbelt states, and my travels mimic that to a degree. Those states farthest from where I lived are often those I haven't journey to.



If I were to color this map as it would have appeared when I was twenty, before I took a trip by train across the nation, the highlighted states would be almost entirely in the west, like this:



Even after that trip, the other states wouldn't fill in for years, because I was still until age twenty-four a California only resident:



One day, perhaps, I'll get to the other twelve states I'm missing. I hope I don't have to move to North Dakota to do it though.

Pool Time

It's the middle of summer and the days are hot. In fact, summer seemed to have come this year, early in May, a month early (early, early, early). At one time, my apartment complex had a pool, but no longer. About seven years ago or so, it was filled in, apparently "unable to be updated to meet state regulations." I rarely used it anyway. I don't particularly find sitting in a pool fun. I wonder what to do, and I am self-conscious about the lack of dress. Still, in the middle of summer days like these, I find myself wishing I had access to the pool again. So I decided to take a survey of pools within close walking distance of me. There are only two that I know of, in hotels. Those two pools are outside and can be seen from the Google maps satellite image. But there are also a number of other hotels in the near distance and one time share, all of which I suspect have pools, even if those are indoors. So here it, the pools I know are there in blue, the pools I suspect are there in light with questions marks. Unless I want to rent a room, however, I'm out of luck about usage.

Places Paint Is Wearing off My Car

The gray represents the places where the paint has worn to the second level--that is, the lacquer or whatever it is has pealed off, leaving the bare burgundy beneath. On the roof, what is still lacquered is so worn out, though, that it doesn't shine in the sun, not even after a washing--hence, those parts where the paint has worn off, right after a washing, actually look more shiny. A couple of tiny spots on the doors have gone to the gray base beneath.

I plan on keeping the car a while longer, so I'm weighing whether a paint job may actually be worth it, since the mileage isn't so high. I'm not even sure how much a paint job costs, but I figure it's ridiculously expensive. I saw some paint/body work done on a car when I was a teen, and it seemed like an incredible amount of work, such that I wasn't capable of it myself.

I notice a lot of other cars with a kind of paint fading that has taken place now. I guess it's to be expected in the South among older cars, especially when you have no garage and park outside day after day after day.

My Local Spending: An Updated Account for May

So I decided to give May a full slate of local financial statistics, as I did March and April. Sure, it was an uncharacteristic month in that I spent quite a bit on one-time purchases that were out of the ordinary for me. But one-time purchases do happen, and in any given year, it's thus likely that I might visit a store just the one time. So here is the graph for May:



And here is the map, with sizing of places based on how much I spent at each place:



Golden Pantry and Kroger still manage to eat up a huge chunk of my expenses, but with the bigger purchases at Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and the Shoe Department, things actually look a bit more spread out. What's interesting, however, is what happens when I plot this on a three-month pie chart:



Here, Kroger and Golden Pantry return to prominence. It would likely take some huge expense, like a major car repair, to displace them from the position in which they fall over the long haul. As a result, the map below may in fact be a fairly accurate, though somewhat random, reflection of typical spending.



June would feature some new places, like Sumo, a dessert shop on Broad that I tried out with a friend Monday night. Interesting place--the dessert is made from shavings of ice milk or something like that. Supposedly, it is low in calories, though with all the added syrup and toppings and such, I'm not sure it how low in calories it stays. The folks running the place were kind enough to open up just for us, just as they were closing. I've got to think it's pretty tough for small business owners who ply a trade at something like desserts as opposed to groceries (or even electronics), but then, I guess their profit margins are higher to make up for it.

Al Is back in Town

My friend Al is moving back to town this weekend. This means that I'll be seeing him on regular occasions again. He's been gone about four years, off at two different graduate schools in two different states. Somehow, we've managed to keep in touch. It helps that his love of Athens has never subsided and his parents live nearby. Hence, he's been back with some regularity.

Al is a mysterious guy to me--he never seems short of friends or of new acquaintances. I, on the other hand, feel perennially short of them; I find making new friends or feeling comfortable around new people--or even many "old" people--difficult. But Al puts a person at ease.

That I still know Al, after having met him over fifteen years ago, seems in some ways amazing. We went to graduate school together. We were in a writing group together, and on a few occasions did social things together. But I wouldn't have thought of him at the time as my closest pal at grad school. After he moved on, we exchanged letters and more rarely phone calls (this, before the days when e-mail was common, so we're talking real letters). In other words, we stayed in touch. I only stayed in touch with three other grad students, one of whom has since dropped out of my life and two of whom (i.e., a couple) have kept up a very irregular though wonderful acquaintance. With Facebook, LinkedIn, and the like, a lot of other friends from those days have since gotten back in touch, which is great too.

But Al has become something more than a grad school buddy. He's become one of my closest friends.

Recently, Al completed a novel. I haven't read it--not that I don't want to (but I haven't been given a copy). Others have, though, and I've been told I am in it, neuroses and all. One of those neuroses is what inspired me to start doing this blog--my desire to document things in a statistical format. And so, it seems fitting, since Al is moving back to town, to document what interactions I've managed to have with Al since he left. That information, however, would have been very difficult to put together, so I've settled for this much more narrow graphic--the interaction I've had with Al in the past year. So here it is, a map of places I've hung out with Al since last May.

My Local Spending

Much has been said about the difference between core inflation and inflation, but if my own spending habits over the course of the past two and a half months is indication, "core" inflation doesn't mean much to most of us. As one can see in the following charts, groceries (Kroger) and gas (Golden Pantry) represent most of the local spending I do from month to month (that is, what I buy locally rather than sending a check in to some distant office).

March

April

May

But what I was mostly intrigued about with regard to my personal spending was, if one were to make a map, based on these spending amounts, what the largest businesses would be versus the smallest. In other words, determining major landmarks of the town by my spending, what would they be and how large would they be? I was thinking, Flicker, a bar I frequent, would be fairly large. But in fact, despite the amount of time I spend there, the amount of dollar spending I actually do there is relatively small. Compare that to, say, Kroger, where I might spend one hour every two weeks and the amount of money I spend there. (The actual relative size of Kroger to Flicker on the map might be close to right.) Or even more so, check out Golden Pantry, a gas station. That place is tiny, but according to what I spend, it would be in relative size comparable to Kroger. Match this to how much time I spend there, which is maybe fifteen minutes a month, and one sees that these folks are really making money from their patrons (save that, the profit margin on gas is extremely low, as compared to alcohol).



The map, however, only includes the first twenty days of May. Last night, I splurged and bought a few clothing items I needed to replace and a cheap digital camera (since my old camera was kaput). If I added those in, J. C. Penney's and Wal-Mart would shoot to a higher end of spending this month and fit prominently on the map. However, in terms of repeat purchases and visits, as the charts above show, these two would likely only show up every few months. Flicker, Kroger, Golden Pantry, and the U.S. Post Office at least have consistency going for them, even if the first and last here have a relatively small portion of the dollar amount each month.