99% Invisible - 393- Map Quests: Political, Physical and Digital

Episode Date: March 11, 2020

The only truly accurate map of the world would be a map the size of the world. So if you want a map to be useful, something you can hold in your hands, you have to start making choices. We have to choose what information we're interested in, and what we're throwing out. Those choices influence how the person reading the map views the world. But a map’s influence doesn’t end there, maps can actually *shape *the place they’re trying to represent and that’s where things get weird. Map Quests

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. The only truly accurate map of the world would be a map the size of the world. So if you want to make a map useful something that you can hold in your hands, you have to start making choices. You have to choose what information you're interested in and what you're throwing out. These choices influence how the person reading the map views the world. But a map's influence doesn't end there. Maps can actually shape the place they're trying to represent, and that's when things get weird.

I love a good map, and today we have three short stories about how maps have changed the real world in big and small ways. Okay, so Kurt Colestead is in the studio with me and he also loves maps. And you've written a ton of articles about maps and map projections and even you didn't article about the design of pins on maps. Oh yes, so the love is deep. It's real.

So we're gonna talk about actually one of your favorite geographical honidies and that's exclaves and enclaves. And these are bits of land cut off from their home countries in various cool ways. Yeah, and they take a lot of forms and it gets complicated pretty fast. So I just wanted to start with something simple that listeners out there might recognize. When you look at a map of the United States, there's this little bump up in the middle and it's called the Northwest Angle

and it sticks up from Minnesota into Canada. And right, okay, I know that one. It's basically how, like, non-Munisotans know where Minnesota is, like, and it tells it from the other, the other States up there is gonna break up. This, like, clean, straight Canadian border running along the western U.S.

and then when it hits the great legs you get this bump. Exactly. So like on the left it's all kind of a straight line and on the right it starts getting zigzaggy. And it has a really kind of neat origin story but I'm not going to go there today. Suffice it to say, cartographical errors were made. And for me growing up in Minnesota I actually always tended to picture this notch as a piece of land, like a solid, because you know, it's like part of the shape of the map. Right, right.

But it's actually not, or at least not entirely. So the southern portion of the angle is water. And above that, there is a patch of land, and that's what's known as a practical exclave. A practical exclave. So, and the basics of exclaves and enclaves. These are areas of land that are isolated or separated in some way from the rest of the country.

But what does a practical exclave mean, like in this case? Basically, the land in the angle is surrounded by Canadian land on most sides. But below, it has this area of American territorial water, which is basically a really big lake. So practically speaking, someone who wants to go directly there without leaving the US, they could do it by boat.

But on land, they'd actually have to drive through Canada to get back into this slice of America, which isn't impossible, it's just impractical. Right, okay, that makes sense. This actually reminds me of Point Roberts, which we actually sent Shreef to do a little story a while ago where he was, you know, went to the post office that people go to and on Point Roberts. That's pretty cool.

Yeah. And it's totally in that same category of X-Clave as Point Roberts. Though in the details, they're really different. The angle is huge. It's much bigger. It's relatively remote. And it's really sparsely populated by comparison. So it only has around 100 permanent residents or so, and the crossing stations are correspondingly

pretty minimalist. So what does it take to cross the border at the Northwest angle? For a long time, you had these little shack-like buildings called outlying area reporting stations or ors and you had to do like a video call with a border agent. Yeah, you're right. You're basically skype into the border patrol. They kind of, you know, like you once over, you show them your passport and you're on your way. I mean, it just wouldn't be practical to, you know, staff these things, right?

Yeah. And then I've been reading about this because I haven't been up there in a while and apparently over the last few years They've been working on streamlining things with the mobile app called Rome spelled R-O-A-M So like a way that you can kind of check in without really going through all these hoops Yeah, that's so cool. So yeah point Roberts. You have Northwest Angle You know these are fairly regional examples, like people that live there interact with them, but most people don't interact.

And they're ones that have like bigger impacts on the world in general. Yeah, I mean, there's ones that people never really think about. And a really good example is the whole state of Alaska. Right, okay, of course. So Alaska is considered to be what's called a semi-X-clave. And it's actually the largest of its kind in the world.

And it's got this semi-modifier, because even though it doesn't border the lower 48, it does have this really long stretch of international coastline, so it really has direct access to international waters. Right. Right. Okay, so those are exclaves. I think those are pretty easy to understand. So describe what onclaves are are because those can be pretty strange.

They really can. And I should note here that there are some nuances to all this and a lot of complexity. Like some enclaves are also exclaves. But like in the simplest and most general terms, enclaves are countries or parts of countries that are entirely contained within another country's territory. So they're totally surrounded. So North West Angle and Point Roberts and Alaska, they don't count because they aren't cut off completely from the US. So you can still get to these places by boat, for example.

Yeah, exactly. Whereas enclaves are fully enclosed. So San Marino in Europe is a classic example. It's this relatively small country and it's completely unclaved on all sides by Italy. I mean maybe it's because the US is so isolated and on its own and surrounded by water that that feels weird to me to be enclosed in another country. I mean maybe if you're like the Czech Republic you're surrounded by other countries. Yeah, we're like Luxembourg or something. It's like, you know, it might have

be one country, but it's still pretty small. But there's still something kind of special about being a country completely inside one other country. Yeah. Yeah. You're kind of dependent on them in certain curious ways. Exactly. And that's sort of just the first level of this, too. These things get even more complex and even more small, in a lot of cases, for example, with counter enclaves, which are an enclave inside of another enclave, or more specifically a piece of the Netherlands inside a piece of Belgium that is itself in the Netherlands.

So the second order enclaves are like enclaves and enclaves. Yes. enclaves all the way down. All the way down. And as crazy as those are, it doesn't stop there. Consider counter enclaves like a piece of India inside a piece of Bangladesh inside a piece of India inside a Bangladesh. And in fact, that triple enclave example is the only known

third-order enclave in world history. Yeah. Well, that makes sense that it would be the only one. Yeah, I mean, it's in so absurd. It's pretty, yeah. I mean, it's pretty hard to picture. So how does that even work in the real world? So basically, for a long time, there were villages within villages and at the middle of it all was this two acre parcel that was owned by a Bangladesh farmer who lived in the surrounding enclave and he would just wake up in the morning, cross into India to farm his tiny patch of land in the middle of this zone and then he would cross back into Bangladesh each night. In 2015, India and Bangladesh finally agreed to this really big cross-border landswap, to essentially tidy up all these enclave within enclaves. And essentially, they ended up handing over dozens of enclaves to each other, totaling thousands of acres.

Did that mean that there were like Indians now living in Bangladesh and vice versa? I mean, yes, in some cases, and I actually thought they handled it pretty well and pragmatically. They basically offered residents of these former enclave as a choice. They could either stay where they were and basically be in a different country than they had been before, or they could move, quote, unquote, back across the border to their official country of citizenship. And it all kind of reminds me like this isn't quite technically an enclave or an exclave thing. But once you start thinking in these terms, there are some other interesting geographical mindbinders out there. So I've got one more for you.

And as far as I know, this place has no official name. So I've just been calling it Inception Island. And it's a pretty normal island located in Canada. But apparently as far as I can tell, it's also the world's largest known island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island. It's like inception. Like there's a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream. Exactly. So that's why you're exactly. So that's why you're calling this one. Yeah, I get it. And it kind of blows my mind in the same way too, right? Like, I have to do some like mental, you know, accounting to keep track of the what's within

what? That's right. As you go a lot. Now in a dream, our mind continuously does this. We create and perceive our world simultaneously. And our mind does this so well that we don't even know what's happening. Does the top keep spinning? Who knows?

Who knows? Who knows? And so of course we have pictures of these all on the website. Oh yeah. Of course. Cool. That's awesome. That's at 9-9-PI.org.

Thank you, Kurt. Yeah, I am Timerman. I'm next is Joe Rosenberg. Okay, so Roman, the best way to get into this story I think is with kind of like a mental exercise, are you game? I'm definitely game. Alright, so what I want you to do is imagine that you are taking a stroll through the British countryside. Okay. Does it matter where in the British countryside?

Actually, no, it actually doesn't matter. That's kind of the point. It could be anywhere on the island of Great Britain. Okay. So let's ramble through the Lake District. I like a good fell. I could ramble on a fell. Excellent choice. Excellent word of use.

Okay. The hedges around there. Definitely, definitely throwing a good hedge, throwing some sheep. Okay, I'm there in my mind. I'm rambling. It's a beautiful place. I'm glad you're enjoying yourself.

But here's the thing, on this hypothetical ramble of yours, no matter where you chose to go. So long as you are somewhere on the island of Great Britain, after a while, I can almost guarantee you, you will come across an object that looks like this. Here, let me show you a photo. It's like an obelisk. It looks a little bit like a fatter, squatter, washing in monument without a pyramid on top, which is like kind of a tapered concrete pillar. I can't tell from the perspective how quality it is though. It's maybe like four feet high. Okay. Yeah. So in the middle of the countryside,

it's very austere. It looks like a ruin kind of. It has a little vibe of something that has been left behind, but it's cool looking. It's a vocative. Yeah, yeah. I mean, for me, it's almost like a gray concrete version of the monolith from 2001. It's just kind of there. And the thing is, is that these pillars are actually all over the place.

No matter where you are, if you head out a few miles in any direction, you will keep stumbling upon these things. And they all basically look like this? Yeah, they're all identical, exact same shape, exact same measurements. It almost never varies. This one you're looking at is in Wales. Let me show you a few more.

This is one that's actually in an island called St. Kilda that's like in the outer hebrides, like super remote. There's like a band-in settlement there. There's like in the outer Hebrides, like super remote. There's like abandoned settlements there There's all there is as a military base out there But still they have these pillars. They're really are everywhere And like for example not just in these like remote craggy places This one's just in a field in a farm field. Yeah, we got one here that's just like in a kind of suburban backyard So what are they and why are they everywhere?

So the actual technical term for these things are triangulation stations. But in Britain everyone just calls them trig points or trig pillars. And these trig pillars are the remnants of a centuries-long effort to do something that we today kind of take for granted, which was to make a topographical survey of an entire country. Huh. And so a topographical survey of the entire country, I kind of know what you mean, but what do you mean?

Right, yeah, yeah, you're like, yeah, sure, the survey is the right thing. They're not doing the thing. They have those things. And then there's topo maps and it's all taken care of. The kind of broader contextual answer is at least in Europe, as you get into the age of exploration and colonization, but also the age of nation states with standing armies, there is an increased need for really spatially accurate maps. And this is because navigation and military actions and that sort of thing, like you need

to be more precise than you did before, is that the deal? Yeah, exactly. I mean, if you're going to aim an artillery piece, you really need to know. You know what you're going to hit. What you're going to hit, for sure, the earth, things like this, right? Okay. But the first top graphically accurate survey maps were only of certain small areas, like maybe a coastline or a town. And it turned out that most of these maps weren't even that accurate. Because anytime they tried to line them up side by side,

they were never in agreement. Like their longitude and latitude would never sync up. And it was hard to say which map was right, or whether perhaps even all the maps were just filled with errors. There were no national maps, no national grid systems, which is to say there's no set of fixed reference points for all lower order maps to use. And this was really frustrating.

Just like imagine for a moment, not having a consistent map of the country where you lived. Right, like every time you saw a big map in a classroom, the coast would be all different and Florida would look crazy every time. And that sort of thing, like everything would be different. Yeah, because nobody really knew.

Right, right. And I don't know about you, but if that were ever taken away, I would feel its absence. And so in Europe, increasingly, as you get into the 18th century, especially, there is a desire for precisely that, a true God's eye view of the land that would feel like you're just kind of floating many miles above the earth and looking down at what is actually. And this was kind of a new idea to be really accurate in this way. Yeah, because in Europe and the Middle Ages, you didn't need to know exactly how far away bruise was.

It was like three days right away to the left, right? And your field, it wasn't that it was 255 yards long versus 257 yards long. It just ended where the cops of trees was, right? Still the way we use subway maps today, right? Which is something that helps you in practice. But now we're getting into this era where there is a kind of practical need. But also you have this enlightenment idea

that there is some kind of fixed objective reality out there that we have been denied access to up until now. And we need to find out everything we can about it and master it somehow as part of our grand enlightenment project. And so in the 1700s, you begin to see more and more countries start to do national surveys and make the first spatially accurate national maps who kind of official coordinates keep all the other maps in agreement. And so by fits and starts in the 1780s and then officially in 1791, Britain is finally like,

hmm, we should also probably know where everything is. And they said, you know what, we want a national map too, let's do it. Great, okay, so how do you go about making a national map? Where do you even start, right? When you don't know where anything is, and you're not sure about anything's location or the distance between things,

what's your first reference point, like how do you decide where? There it is. And the answer is trick pillars. And this is what they did. They built two triangulation stations, about 12 miles apart. Kind of what Heathrow Airport is now.

And then they used, just so they think they got the measurement exactly right, they used a series of glass tubes. I think each glass tube was like 12 feet long and they just kept placing them end on end over the course of like many, many months until they finally could add them all up and say, okay, this is the distance between these two first triangulation stations. Those two triangulation stations were within sight of the Greenwich Observatory. And the Greenwich Observatory, they were like pretty sure they knew where the Greenwich

Observatory was because it had all these telescopes with which to make celestial measurements. And so like the Greenwich Observatories, the Longitude and Latitude was the Longitude and Latitude they were like the most confident in. All we need to do now is measure the angle between these two stations and the Greenwich Observatory. And now we have the location and distance between all three of these objects. And once they had that, then they were off to the races. Because now you don't need to physically measure layout, like rulers or glass rods or anything anymore. All you need to do is place a new triangulation,

a third triangulation station within sight of the first two, measure the angles again, and then you can just do all the math from the angles and you get to know the exact location of the third triangulation station. Okay. And then you can put a fourth a little further away. Right.

And again, it's along with the site of two, get a fourth station, a fifth, right? And then you just daisy chain your way across the entire landmax. Well, in this case, you mean Great Britain. And that's why there's trig points everywhere. For the entire island of Great Britain, yes, with triangulation stations at every point. Wow. How long does this take? The primary triangulation was finally completed in 1853, so it took 62 years.

And in fact, like, in 1935, they did a re-triangulation. And this time, it was much faster. It only took 30 years. And so all the trig pillars you see dotted throughout the countryside, I have to fess up, are actually from the retryangulation. These are the second ones from 1935. Yeah, and then the reason they installed these new ones is like the original ones were just like holes in the ground. And there's actually hilarious descriptions of where you could find them, like because they'd be like, oh, ask the farmer, lives at the end of

the lane and he'll tell you, do you know what I mean? And those were like, in the official descriptions of where the trig points were. And they're like, this isn't good enough. We need to make better trig points, more trig points. And the reason they are all the exact same shape is because they are literally mounts for the surveying equipment.

Oh, okay, that makes sense. So in the end, for the full survey, how many trig points do they have to build? They built about 6500. Okay. And today, there are still about 6200. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's pretty good. And believe you're not, there is one guy who has visited every single one of them. Of course. It happened a bit by bit really. So this is the guy. His name is Rob Woodall. He is 59.

He works for a Water and Waste Authority in East Anglia. And he honestly cannot tell you what compelled him to do this. You left set out to buy six thousand trig pillars. Yeah, just gradually you get kind of sucked in. I mean, Rob likes the outdoors and he likes a good challenge, clearly. But when I asked him if there was some kind of philosophical reward in it for him, something to do with perhaps seeing all of Britain, he was like, no. But yeah, in terms of discovering stuff, I didn't find it.

I'm not a kind of guy really. I'm not I'm not in that much poetry in my soul. I'm afraid. Rob has no poetry in his soul for guy. I think it's yeah, he's beat a little self aggregating. I think for sure. I clearly if he did this, he does. He can't articulate it that sense. That's what a... what are what are for more people and i really like them right and and that sense like he is not alone he is part of a small but flourishing community of people called trick backers uh... elective visit and cataloged trick points but so far

rob is the only one to visit every single one uh... he says one guy was neck and neck with him for a while but retired at five thousand came for somebody else that don't fall for000, and then, fortunately, I think he had a row that accident, so he gave up a bit after 4,000. There's a lady called Carol Engle that has done, I think, something like 5,300. I mean, she's about 10 years behind me, but she's very, very keen. You know, I think for most of the trig baggers, the core poetic motivation is the same poetic

motivation as anyone who decides they want to come out. Just because it's there. Precisely. Because it's there. Although, you know, in this case, you might say like there is a lot of there there. Rob says it took him close to 12 years to visit them all. I got there and kind of 5,000 of relatively quickly really but the last thousand of them were really hard. It's what makes the last thousand so hard. Well part of it is that some of them are just in really remote places.

That's what makes sense. You know there are some of them are just like on these sea cliff islands with no real place to land. So it's almost like a mini expedition just to get to them. A lot of them are also just like in these overgrown areas or places left to the elements in one way or another. And Rob says like a lot of trig pillars of starts kind of crumble away. Like there was one that was on the edge of a sea cliff apparently that a few years back was about to tumble into the sea.

And yeah, so somebody noticed it fallen over and then the next people went, he's been finding down the bottom of the cliff and the farmer had actually managed to rescue it and pull it back. We just get back from the cliff and the farmer actually managed to rescue it and pull it back. You know, when you get back from the cliff and re-arrêt to it, a little way back and that was really nice. But if the farmer put it back up, did he put it on the exact same point?

I mean, does it still serve? As a trig point, if you move it to another place. No, he had to move, obviously, like, the point where it was was now just in mid-air. Right, right. And so we had to move it, and so where it was was now just in midair right right and so we had to move And so no longer is a functioning Trig point and there is a further irony which is that all of this wear and tear can also make certain trig points somewhat paradoxically hard to find Sometimes they just disappear completely and sometimes they reappear somewhere completely unexpected

There's one that he turned up in Scotland, not seeing yet. Yeah, they do come back sometimes. I don't even know what that means. It just means that they will disappear from their known location and then reappear in a new location and exactly what hands they passed through in between is no one knows.

Rob actually says that at one point, another trig pillar showed up on eBay, and one of the UK trig backers had to intervene to make sure it wasn't sold overseas. Although most trig points, if they are interfered with, are interacted with in kind of more innocent ways. So as more and more people have learned about them in recent years, more and more getting painted, let me show you with you. This is an English rose. Yeah. It's kind of been stenciled on a red English rose. This is a well-strag and well-strag and very good. So obviously in Wales. But my favorite has to be the minions.

It's a straight-up minion. It's a straight-up minion. But the proportions are very good. Very good. You like someone to realize this these things are minions. It's a straight-up menu. But the proportions are very good. Very good. You like someone to realize these things are miniatures. They nailed it. They nailed it. So I really is. I find it really quite charming. But the thing that Rob told me that really got me thinking is that the trick pillars are

only the tip of a much larger surveying infrastructure that is actually all around us. Because those just provide the starting points for any given map. For all the lower order measurements like the streets and hills and the rivers and the slopes. Surveys used much much smaller markings, really just these little notches made in the landscape. It's sometimes a small plaque called a benchmark, but sometimes it was like a notch just called a cut mark. If you keep your eyes out, you tend to see it in the UK anyway, you tend to see them. The huge numbers of them, it's probably about a million of them put in, I would think. There's a million at least, much marks, just around the landscape. Wow. That was my reaction as well.

I've got one about 200 meters away from my house, actually. Just jizzled into, I think, it's number 40, and I was state. That's incredible. And so like someone like your neighbor down the street, like do you do know whether they know that that mark is on their house? I've never thought of mentioning it, actually, they probably don't might be fun to mention sometimes, but a bit of a strength into us, really.

I guess the point is that these thousands of trig pillars and however many benchmarks and millions of cut marks are just kind of secretly all around us. That's so cool. Yeah, and they're not just in Britain. Like, lots of countries have some form of physical surveying infrastructure in place. So India has its own kind of triangulation stations, so does Japan and the US. And the only reason we're not as familiar with them is they're not as dramatic looking.

They're more like, they're more like cut marks. They're just like little cairns or poles or plaques in the ground. They are everywhere, and it's strange to think that there is this kind of invisible network of objects all around us that actually is responsible for giving us a way to look at ourselves from outside ourselves. That's kind of amazing, that it gives us so much these little things. That's awesome. Well thanks Joe. Ramen thank you so much. What happens when the map says there are monsters everywhere and people flock there to catch them all after this. After this Here is Vivian Lei Roman have you ever heard of a town called acaquan?

Say it again. Have you ever heard of a town called acaquan? Acaquan Nope, never heard of a town called Ocaquon? No, I don't say that. Just for the town name. Ocaquon. No, I've never heard of it. Ocaquon is this beautiful little town in Virginia, and it's very old, and it's right on the water, and it looks like pretty much the perfect setting for a CW drama about a prestigious East Coast boarding school. Perfect. So it's quaint and vintage and kind of playing up on the history and the country style but also very upscale. So who is that? So that is Lauren Jacobs. She's an artist and a teacher based in Northern Virginia. So in 2015, Lauren won a

jury prize, meaning she'd get to exhibit and sell her work at a gallery in Ocaquon called the Artists Undertaking. The artist's undertaking gallery is called that because it used to be the Undertaker's house. Oh nice. It's like haunted. It's like God. It's like God. I love it. The town is like 300 years old, so you can find like a ton of these really cool historic sites like that around Ocaquan. I mean, it's completely full of really interesting history. Like they have this famous ghost tour and Ocaquan has all of these kind of quote, unquote certified ghost sites and ghost sightings.

What does she mean when she says a certified ghost? Like, how do you get a ghost certified in this world? There's an organization. They'll come by and then confirm the validity of your haunting. Of course. And I think I unintentionally made Occoquan sound like the town from Hocus Pocus.

But it's actually this really nice area to go shopping. There's lots of one of a kind mom and pop shops that tend to do cater to definitely a wealthier demographic who wanted to spend the day strolling along the river and maybe buying a $400 pair of sunglasses and then go in teaking. This was more or less the type of clientele that Lawrence gallery depended on for sales too. At the time, we were working a lot off of walk-in traffic, clients who were coming in and they were looking for a really special gift and coming in to spend several hundred dollars.

And I know this sounds like kind of a lot, but it's not like the artist's set or gallery where you're getting rich off of these sales. From what Lauren tells me, it was really mostly just people who wanted to have, you know, like a presence in the local arts community, you know, make their rent at the gallery, and then maybe earn just like a little something extra

on the side. And for a while, everything was going great. The direction this is going indicates to me that things are not going to be going great soon. And then, okay. So in 2016, Pokemon Go comes out. Oh, okay. Well, that's not what I was expecting. So Pokemon Go comes out. Oh, okay. Well, that's not what I was expecting.

So Pokemon Go comes out. How does that change everything? So have you ever actually played Pokemon Go? I have not played it. I feel like I'm familiar with it a little bit. It's kind of like a augmented reality game where you go find these creatures in the built environment. Pokemon? augmented reality game where you go find these creatures in the built environment. Pokemon. Right. Right. Okay.

And then you find, it's like a scavenger hunt on your phone. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to clarify it just a little bit. Okay. So you're right. It's an augmented reality game. And it's based on your real world locations.

So you will find things in the game by physically going to those places on the Pokemon Go map. So to capture a Pokemon, or there's these things called PokeStops, where if you go there, you'll get prizes within the game, like Pokeballs and potions and stuff. But you physically have to be at those locations in order to access things within the game.

Okay, that makes sense. So it is a way to explore the environment. That's where I remember people walking around parks. Yes, yes, and staring at the phone. I remember the exact day that Pokemon Go came out. And I remember exactly where I was, because this was podcast movement 2016, Chicago. And because the gameplay is based around real-world map data,

usually the best places to play it are, you know, populated cities like Chicago or, you know, like New York. But sometimes these little random places just become hot spots for Pokemon activity, which is exactly what happened in Aquaquan. Aqua Aqua had always been this kind of sleepy town and you would go and it was very comfortable walking around on these picturesque historic streets and it was kind of this very relaxed kind of outing and all of a sudden it was like a river that was far too full to teaming with fish. You know, you just

couldn't walk down the streets. They were so crowded. Wow. And so I can get why New York and Chicago in San Francisco would be hot spots, but how did Alcaquon become Pokemon Central? Yeah, so Pokemon Go was created by this company called Niantic and years earlier, Niantic had come out with this other location-based AR game called Ingris. And I've never played it before, but Ingris' this game were like this mysterious, trans-dimensional force appears, and you as a player have to interact with these portals based on your actual GPS location. So it's kind of a similar concept of using your real-world location to access things within the game. But these portals within Ingress are all based around real-world landmarks.

And the cool thing about Ingress in particular was that game users could add landmarks to the map within the game. So if you reach a certain level, you can add a historical site or a mural or whatever to the map. So years later, when Niantic teamed up with the Pokemon company to release Pokemon Go, they reused the same map information. And all those portals within In ingress became Pokemon Go Poké Stops. So all those historical sites and even like the certified ghost haunting sites all

became like Poké Stops along the way. She told me that from like while she was working the gallery from her seat she could access two Poké Stops without ever leaving her chair. Thank goodness for have go. But as you can imagine, this kind of sent the town into a tizzy because it's such a small town and they weren't equipped to handle the sudden influx of people, like walking all over the streets. In the beginning, an enormous pushback. That summer, nothing but pushback.

But mostly because the residents were like, well, this has got to be, can we just make it illegal? And the town kept on being like, no, no, what? What? A legal for what? What exactly you mean that people should not be allowed to walk on our streets anymore? What exactly are you proposing? And the businesses are like, well, can we like hang signs or something? You can't what? When has a business ever hung a sign saying that a certain contingency of people isn't welcome? Where you thought that possibly history would think that that's okay. Yeah, historically, she's right, historically, that is not a good look. Yeah, historically, she's right. Historically, that is not a good look.

No, it's immoral. Okay, so I do remember when Pokemon Go came out that there were these stories of places being inundated with Pokemon Go player, especially trespassing on private property and all that sort of. And what was one, I feel like there was other sort of sacred places or something like that the Holocaust Museum had to be they had to say please Don't play Pokemon go at the Holocaust Museum. Yeah, okay It was yeah, it was a big deal But but I but I if this place is you know kind of meant for a little bit of tourist action

Is there some way that they could have just capitalized on it and just sold more things or something like that? Yes, and you know, this did happen. Lauren told me that there were businesses that kind of adapted and popped up to like this influx of people, you know, like snack shops would appear and, you know, tourist traps, souvenir type Pokemon Go theme businesses. And she even said that there was a Pokemon Go cruise that opened up that would take you across the Alcacone River at just the right speed

so you could hit all the Poke stops. But if you remember, Alcacone was this place that was known for this kind of upscale shopping. And the people who are going to Alcacone to play a video game aren't gonna like drop in and buy an antique clock. Okay, so they had the ability to kind of like take advantage of a bunch of bougie rich people, but they didn't have the ability to take advantage of ten year olds with eye bones glued to their face.

We don't know what to do in these children. They're not buying antique clocks these kids today. Yeah, but like not only were the children not buying antique clocks, because of all this foot traffic, it was the Pokemon Go players were pretty much driving away at the regular clientele, who helped pay the bills, because you know, you go to a place like Aquaquan for the quiet vibe, and you know, the historic feel, and all of a sudden, it's just teaming with a bunch of people on their iPhones.

So yeah, it became kind of a big issue for the residents. Not only were we not seeing people in the gallery, the wealthy residents weren't shopping in their neighborhood anymore period. And we have this huge influx of people. And instead of revitalizing the town, it completely destroyed commerce. In this shift in business,

eventually trickled down into Lauren's artwork, because people were coming in wine to spend around 20 to 40 bucks. So some of the artists at the gallery started making things that were smaller and cheaper and just generally more palatable to more people, and Lauren found herself doing the same thing. My artwork has always been weird and contemporary and often creepy and I was bringing in stuff that was more kind of homogenously whimsical and relatable to more people. And I think just, you know, more boring.

It wasn't serving my art at all. I announced that I was going to leave a couple of months ago. And January was my last month that I was at the gallery. Huh. The things go back to the way they were. I mean, like so in Pokemon Go, you know, like it was a big deal a few years ago. It definitely feels like it's, you know, dwindled. Are people still flooding the streets like it was in 2016 that's all started?

Yeah, you know, I think a lot of people in town thought that this was just going to be like a little blip on the radar too, but those core clients disappeared. And because of that, the stores that catered to those core clients disappeared too. And I'm not gonna say that aquaquon is like any worse or better than before, but this one game really disrupted the town enough that it changed it on a permanent scale. Right.

And since Niantic reused the ingress maps for Pokemon Go, if there's a new game using that same engine, it's going to happen again, right? Yeah, and they actually have reused the same maps for different apps that weren't as popular as Pokemon Go. But theoretically, they could make something as popular if not more popular than Pokemon Go, and then they're going to be in another cycle again. Yeah. I mean, it's sort of an amazing phenomenon that you could sort of create a digital map that has so much effect on the real world. It's kind of a strange amount of power we're giving augmented reality that I've never

thought of before. Yeah, yeah. It's like, how do you really regulate something like that? I mean, I mean, I'm probably the answer, because you can't and you probably shouldn't. But a map can really change the meaning of a place. It also just like makes you realize that, you know, like a map for one thing isn't a map for everything. So like reusing these historic sites as,

you know, popular destinations for cartoon characters. I wonder what it is. I can't. She has her head in her hands. That's God. But like we're using like, you know, these historic markers for things that there are game is like, you know, obviously the Holocaust Museum isn't the place for Pokemon, you know, but both things should exist in the world.

Pokemon Go should exist in the world. It should. It's done a lot of great things. So I just wanted to give a special thanks to Lauren Jacobs, who I spoke with for the piece, and also to Alistair Sticco, who is actually the one who wrote to us and made sure that we knew about this story. So thank you, Alistair. Nice. Cool. And if you want to see Lauren Jacobs' self-described creepy art, where can they go? We'll have a link to it on our website.

That's awesome. Thanks, baby. Thank you. 99% Invisible Was Produced This Week by Chris Baroube, Kurt Colstead, Joe Rosenberg, and Vivian Le. Sean Real wrote all the music including this Pokemon song. Kavie Mingle is our senior producer. The rest of the team is senior editor Delaney Hall, Emmith Fitzgerald, Avery Truffaner, Sheree Fuser, Sophia Klatsker, and me Roman Mars.

Special thanks to the radio topiodoners who make everything redo possible, including Alexander Kandiba, Curtis Galawai, Peter Lines Photography, Paul King, Steph Weaver, and Anil Kondigath. We are a project of 9.7 K-A-L-W in San Francisco and produced on Radio Row. You cannot find it on a map. You can find beautiful, downtown, Oakland, California. 99% invisible is a member of Radio Topia from PRX, a fiercely independent collective of the most innovative shows in all of podcasting.

Fun mall at radiotopia.fm. You can find the show and join discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet me at Roman Mars on the show at 99PI org, on Instagram and read it too. But if you want to suggest a story about maps, even if you want to leave a link to the Peter's Projection scene from the West Wing, I know you've been dying to do it. You can leave a comment at 99pyon.org. 4.0-5.1 4.0-5.1 4.0-5.1

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