249 – South of No North: Country Music’s Favourite States

Off the top of your head, how many songs do you know that mention US states, either in their title or in the lyrics? Here’s how far I got:

• “It Never Rains In Southern California” (The Mamas & The Papas?)
• “Paris, Texas” (Ry Cooder)
• “Bikini Girls with Machine Guns” (by The Cramps, although only in the ‘cleaned-up’ version for radio and tv: “I’ve been a drag racer in Tennessee” replacing the reference “on LSD” on the album version)
• “Alabama” (Neil Young)
• “Sweet Home Alabama” (Lynyrd Skynyrd’s response to Young’s lamento)
• “West Virginia” (John Denver)
• “Birmingham” (“The greatest town in Alabam’,” according to Randy Newman)
• “Colorado Girl” (Townes Van Zandt)
• “Georgia On My Mind” (Ray Charles)
• “Johnny B. Goode” (who lived “Down in ‘Ouisiana“)

This totally unscientific sample seems to confirm what this hopefully better-researched map visualises – even though it deals only with states mentioned in country lyrics: that Southern states are sung about much, much more often than Northern ones.

Many thanks to Allen Garvin for discovering and sending in this gem. “I love this map because Texas rightfully takes its place as the largest state in the Union”, writes Mr Garvin, who keeps the map on his website (here).

True, but I think that Tennessee has gained more in size than Texas has, relatively speaking.

• The winners seem to be, in order: Tennessee, Texas and Louisiana.
• West Virginia normally is much smaller than Virginia, but here is almost twice the size of its parent state.
• All the traditional (deep) southern states seem to be represented fairly well, with the notable exception of an atrophied Florida – all those vacationers from the North preclude the profitability of serenading the Sunshine State.
• California seems to be doing relatively well, with a number of ‘in-between’ states receiving some mention: Kentucky, Oklahoma, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio.
• Every other state (i.e. ‘The North’) put together barely seems enough to fill Tennessee. Canada is about the size of Colorado. Mexico is much larger, almost as big as California.

Very few people are neutral about country music – it’s either loved or loathed. It can also be seen in a post-emotional way, as an expression of genuine Americana, living folklore, it’s been used as a yardstick in a variety of scientifical studies.

Mr Garvin has held on to this remarkable map for some years, and unfortunately can’t provide a link to its original context, so it’s difficult to judge the map’s scope and seriousness. The map did remind me of another, more notorious piece of universitary research a few years ago, which did seem to demonstrate a correlation of country music with suicide (“Country music is hypothesized to nurture a suicidal mood through its concerns with problems common in the suicidal population (…)” More here).

A tear in my beer, indeed.

248 – Friends, Polypotamians, Countrymen!

No one seems to regret that Thomas Jefferson’s plan for the division of the Northwest Territory into ten new states was shelved. The proposed names were just too silly, writes 19th-century Jefferson-biographer John T. Morse, Jr.:

“The names suggested for these ten States are a peculiar mixture of Latin and Indian, and while a semblance of some of the names still remains in two cases, in all others it is so absolutely forgotten that the very fact has ceased to be known by many close students of American history. Yet, besides this humane and noble piece of statesmanship (the proposed prohibition of slavery in the territory) we have a glimpse of that absurd element in Jefferson’s mind which his admirers sought to excuse by calling him a ‘philosopher’. The matter is small, to be sure, but suggestive. He proposed as names for the several subdivisions of this territory: Sylvania, Michigania, Cheronesus, Assenisippis, Metropotamia, Illinoia, Saratoga, Washington, Polypotamia, and Pelipsia.”

In 1787, the fledgling new republic for the first time expanded beyond the borders of the original 13 states. The area between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers was annexed via the Northwest Ordinance, which also resolved long-simmering rivalries between the original states, most of which had claims to territories out west, by creating new states rather than expanding existing ones.

It did take a while before the states as we now know them took shape. Statehood in the Northwest Territory was gained consecutively by Ohio (1803), Indiana (1816), Illinois (1818), Michigan (1837), Wisconsin (1848) and finally Minnesota (1858).

All of which might not have come to pass if the committee, chaired by Thomas Jefferson in 1784, had gotten its way. This committee proposed to divide the Northwest Territory into 10 states of roughly equal size, and even had names ready for them. Names with an antique ring to them, possibly to lend a bit of credibility to the then still precarious business of westward expansion.

• Sylvania would have covered much of present-day Minnesota, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and some of northern Wisconsin.
• Michigania would have incorporated most of Wisconsin, but nothing of Michigan.
• Most of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula would have been the state of Chersonesus, which is simply the Greek word for ‘peninsula’.
• The northern part of modern-day Illinois would have been the state of Assenispia, after the Assenisipi River, also known as the Rock River.
• In between Assenispia and Pennsylvania would be the state of Metropotamia, a name referring to the many rivers originating there.
• The states of Illinoia, Saratoga and Washington would have incorporated large parts of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio respectively.
• Polypotamia (‘Land of Many Rivers’) and Pelisipia would have covered the western and eastern parts of Kentucky, mainly (and therefore are partially outside the Northwest Territory, as it is bounded to the south by the Ohio River, Kentucky’s northern border).

There is some disagreement as to the spelling of some of the states (Chersonesus is sometimes spelled Cherronesus or Cheronesus, Assenispia is sometimes rendered as Assenisippis or Assenisippia) and even on the number of proposed states, with some saying Jefferson had 17 new states in mind (although only 10 are named in his proposal).

Adding to the confusion is the unclear status of the territory south of the Northwest Territory (nowadays the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi), contested between the Spanish, the US and several states with individual claims.

Jordan Penny, who was kind enough to make and provide this map of the ‘Jeffersonian’ Midwest, populates the area south of Kentucky with the states of Equitasia (western Tennessee) and Jefferson (eastern Tennessee), and has three states where there now are two: a more narrow Alabama, a state of Adams in the southern part of Mississippi, which in this version covers only its northern part.

Is anyone able to provide more information on the names of the states and their exact location in Jefferson’s “absurd” plan?

247 – All the World In A Song

As most news bulletins prove, the world is not, alas, an harmonious place. The same point is proved, if inadvertently and on a more symbolical level, by this stunning musical map of the world.

This is a pretty clever translation of the shape of the world’s continents into the dots, ties and bars of traditional musical notation, but ironically, its main claim to harmony is visual, not aural.

For even though the legend over the top left hand corner of this World Beat Map reads harmonious world beat, I suspect the result of this piece being played would be anything but harmonious to the ears.

I don’t read sheet music (I prefer to listen to the stuff), but the outline of the continents, though perfectly familiar and expected as such on a normal map, seems just too jagged and capricious when translated into notes – not to mention temporally chopped up by the bars travelling from left to right and top to bottom.

Of course, I could be wrong. Anyone more familiar with music in its written form, and how to squeeze it out of an instrument, is cordially invited to comment on this song’s playability, enjoyability and harmoniousness.

This map is published by Wild About Music, Inc. and is for sale at this page of their website.

UPDATE: On April 19, 2008, Krissy Clark of Weekend America interviewed James Plakovic about his harmonious world beat map. Listen to the interview – and the map – here.

246 – Southern Sauce Sources

  ”Tell me what you eat”, the famous quote by legendary chef Brillat-Savarin goes, “and I’ll tell you who you are.” The dictum also applies very locally, to South Carolina, and very specifically, to barbecue sauce.”We barbecue enthusiasts find it fascinating,” says John Shelton Reed about the peculiar example of culinary cartography he sent in, which was taken from ‘South Carolina: A Geography’ by Charles F. Kovacik and John J. Winberry (if you don’t at least have a middle initial, you’re not really Southern).The map shows the state of South Carolina divided into four regions, according to the preferred style of condiment used on barbecued food.

• The vinegar and pepper region covers the eastern quarter of the state. This is “a southward extension of eastern North Carolina-style sauce,” states Mr Reed.
• “The tomato region ditto for North Carolina’s Piedmont- or Lexington-style sauce, which is basically the eastern sauce with a little tomato added, still thin and vinegar-flavored.”
• The ketchup region is influenced by what they serve in Georgia “and most of the trans-Appalachian South – or for that matter in grocery stores – a thick, sweet, ketchupy sauce.”
• Unique to South Carolina, though, is “the mustard sauce of central South Carolina, (which) is unique to that state, and (which) gives it more distinct barbecue regions than any other.”

This peculiarity can be explained by “the German names of the principal purveyors of mustard-based sauces (…) it does seem that most are descended from the great 18th century wave of German immigrants to the Southern uplands.”Thanks for that fascinating bit of gastronomy-meets-genealogy-meets-cartography, Mr Reed. I’m feeling a bit peckish now…A final word on that most appetite-inducing word, the barbecue – its etymology is not, as I always thought, French (from the roasting of wild boars snout to tail, or in French barbe à queue) but apparently it’s an americanism, in fact a real Southern word, derived from the New World-Spanish expression barbacoa, itself taken from the Arawak language, where barbakoa means something like ‘wooden support beam’.

245 – Love’s Topography: la Carte de Tendre

One of the earliest, and most influential examples of sentimental cartography is the Carte de Tendre, an example of the highly refined imagination prevalent in 17th century French literary salons.  (another one is entry #59 on this blog, a German map of the Empire of Love) 

The fictional country of Tendre (‘Tender’) was inspired by Clélie, Histoire romaine, a novel by Madeleine de Scudéry (1607-1701), whose much-frequented and tone-setting salon was one of the focal points of Préciosité, a rarefied literary genre noted for its effusive erudition and gallantry.

The map of Tendre is a topographic allegory, representing the stations of love as if they were real paths and places.

The country is bisected by the Inclination (‘Disposition’), a river that runs south to north, joined by two smaller rivers, the Estime (‘Respect’) and the Reconnaissance (‘Gratitude’), before plunging into La mer dangereuse (‘the Dangerous Sea’), which is separated from a reef-ridden narrows from Terres inconnues (‘Unknown Lands’). To the west are the decidedly choppy waters of the Mer d’Inimitié (‘Sea of Enmity’).

The smooth flow of the rivers symbolises the control over passions, the perils of the sea the danger of unbridled emotions. Straddling the rivers are three eponymous capital cities: Tendre-sur-Estime, Tendre-sur-Reconnaissance. Places along those rivers mark the waypoints of ‘civilised’ love – and some of its pitfalls:

Marking the road from Nouvelle amitié (‘New Friendship’) to Tendre-sur-Reconnaissance are the following towns, purportedly representing a gradual increase of affection:

• Complaisance (‘Kindness’ or ‘Smugness’)
• Soumission (‘Submission’)
• Petits soins (‘Care of Small Things’)
• Assiduité (‘Attentiveness’)
• Empressement (‘Eagerness’)
• Grands services (‘Great Favours’)
• Sensibilité (‘Sensibility’)
• Tendresse (‘Tenderness’)
• Obéissance (‘Obedience’)
• Constante amitié (‘Constant Friendship’)

However, close to the forbidding rock fortress of Orgueil (‘pride’) in the extreme south-west are places to be avoided, such as:

• Meschanceté (‘meanness’)
• Medisance (‘disparagement’)
• Perfidie (‘betrayal’)
• Indiscretion (‘indiscretion’)

Equally avoidable are the localities leading from Nouvelle amitié towards the Lac d’Indifference (‘Lake Disinterest’): 

• Négligence (‘Negligence’)
• Inesgalité (‘Inequality’)
• Tiédeur (‘Lukewarmness’)
• Légèreté (‘Levity’)
• Oubli (‘Oblivion’)

Leading towards Tendre-sur-Inclination and beyond to Tendre-sur-Estime are the towns of:

• Grand-esprit (‘Great Wit’)
• Iolis Vers (‘Beautiful Verse’)
• Billet galant (‘Gallant Letter’)
• Billet doux (‘Sentimental Letter’)
• Sincérité (‘Sincerity’)
• Grand Coeur (‘Magnanimity’)
• Probité (‘Probity’)
• Générosité (‘Generosity’)
• Exactitude (‘Punctuality’)
• Respect (‘Respect’)
• Bonté (‘Goodness’)

This map was found at this page of the University of Richmond (Virginia, US).

244 – 5 Million Hits – The Atlas of Strange Maps – Your Help Requested

5,000,000 Hits

Thirty hits – that’s how many this blog accumulated for the whole of September 2006, the first month of its existence. The numbers for October were a bit better – 3,000 hits – but still nothing to write home about.

The 123,000 hits for November were a bit of a shock for me, but in December the numbers slumped again, to under 40,000. The numbers kept on climbing and falling, with the generally upward trend so beloved by stock traders, and the 500,000 mark was reached on March 24 of the next year, after about 90 posts.

The millionth hit swung around on June 3 of 2007, and thanks to a few very popular posts, the 2 million mark was reached barely a month later, on July 10. Although the hits haven’t kept on increasing as near-exponentially as they did then, the number of visitors has been steady, and high: 10,000-plus on most days, a couple of ten thousands on busy ones.

All of which today adds up to the ten-fold of that first milestone, less than a year ago: 5,000,000 hits. That’s, erhm, stupefying. The last time I had any personal connection with a number that big was when as a kid I was given some bank notes in lira, the famously worthless Italian currency, and became an instant millionaire – just like most of the beggars on the streets or Rome at the time.

This numerical enumeration should not detract from the fact that Strange Maps is not about big numbers, but about, well, strange maps. The mission of this blog remains to find, present and discuss cartography that is fictional, obscure, bizarre, or for some other reason not readily available in regular atlases. To the readers of this blog: thanks for your continued interest, your many map suggestions and your often illuminating comments.

The Atlas of Strange Maps

Strange Maps grew out of a love for maps, and a frustration with atlases. As much as I love to read atlases, most of them essentially tell the same story. The blog was meant to be a repository of maps unlikely to be included in one of those ‘regular’ atlases – an ‘anti-atlas’ (geography buffs might appreciate the double-entendre) aiming not for any kind of comprehensiveness, but only to surprise and delight the many people who love maps.

Even an ‘anti-atlas’ itches to be published, and the 5,000,000 mark might be a good moment to announce that there shortly will be a real-life book, tentatively titled The Atlas of Strange Maps. An agreement to that effect has been concluded with Viking Studio Press, an imprint of Penguin USA.

Although the Atlas will be based on the blog, it will not be a quick-and-dirty blogsploitation job. I’m selecting the best maps on the blog for the book, rewriting the entries to incorporate the many necessary corrections and helpful additions provided. I’m also looking for maps that have not appeared on the blog to be incorporated into the book.The Atlas of Strange Maps will be inspired by the eponymous blog, but will stand apart from it.

Your help requested

I am still determining which of the maps on the blog can be included in the book, and which other maps currently not on the blog might be interesting additions for the book. Several factors are at play – originality, quality and beauty of the map – but an equally crucial one is copyright.

For maps to be included in the book, I will need written permission of the relevant copyright holders. I have been contacting some of those copyright holders (and gotten positive responses from most), but this is a slow, sometimes frustrating process, because copyright holders are often very difficult and sometimes even impossible to trace.

I therefore would like to take this opportunity to put the question directly on the blog, and hopefully reach as many copyright holders as possible this way.

If you are the copyright holder of a map on this blog (or of a ’strange map’ not yet included here), and would like to be included in the Strange Maps book, please do send me a mail.

• please include your name and address, as those will need to be on the permission form that I will send you, which you will need to sign and return to me, either via regular mail or as a pdf.
• your copyright will be mentioned in the book, as well as the books or other media context in which the relevant map appears.
• All copyright holders whose map(s) will be included in the book will be provided with a free copy of the book (due to the large number of books to be sent, postage will have to be charged).

All correspondence should be directed to strangemaps@gmail.com. Please mention the word ‘copyright’ in the subject header.

Thanks!

243 – A Map of the Republic of New Netherland

New Amsterdam never gave way to New York. The Dutch kept the whole of their North American colony out of the hands of the perfidious English, in fact. New Netherland today constitutes a thriving Republic stretching from the Atlantic coast to Québec, dividing New England from the rest of the United States.

This Republik van Nieuw Nederland is the brainchild of Paul Burgess, who’s been fleshing out its allohistorical details since his mid-20s – he’s even devised a pretty cool flag for the Republic, not to mention an anthem (‘Onze Patrie’ – ‘Our Fatherland’), names for the baseball teams in the Knickerbocker League, a list of the best places to smuggle goods across the border to the US and even call letters for New Netherland radio stations. And, of course, this map.M

r Burgess’ fictional country has its origins in a PoD (Point of Divergence) in the year 1638, when not the irascible Willem Kieft, but the level-headed David Pietersen de Vries is appointed Director-General of the colony. De Vries pushes for colonisation, good relations with the Five Nations tribes, self-government and expansion and consolidation of the borders.

New Netherland achieved independence in 1798, after the ‘old’ Netherlands were overrun by the French. Philip Schuyler, the last Director-General of the colony, became the first Prime Minister of the independent Republic. Influential successors were PMs Maarten van Buren (1820-1856), and the Roosevelts: Theodore (1897-1919), Franklin D. (1930-1945) and Quentin (1948-1965), Theodore’s son.

The Landdag (Parliament) is comprised of the lower House of Burghers and the higher House of Peers.According to the 1980 census, New Netherland measures 71,288 square miles, counts 31,2 million inhabitants and is divided in 13 provinces, one city (New Amsterdam) and one freeport (Philadelphia). Most populous city is the capital, New Amsterdam (7 million). About 85% of the New Netherlanders speak Dutch, 9% English (mainly in Philadelphia, New Haven, Hartford and eastern parts of Vermont and Long Island) and 6% one of the Iroquois languages. This excludes the rather more complicated situation on the New Netherland Antilles. The provinces and their capital cities are (English names in between brackets):
• Adirondacken (Adirondacks), capital Plattsburgh
• Antillen (Antilles), capital Willemstad
• Bergen, capital Amboy
• Kaatskillen (Catskills), capital Wiltwyck
• Zwaanendael (Delaware), capital New Amstel
• Erie, capital Buffalo
• Genesee, capital Irondequoit
• Hudson, capital Fort Orange
• Iroquois, capital Onondaga
• Nassouwen (Nassau), capital Heemstede
• Nieuw-Haven (New Haven), capital New Haven
• Oranje (Orange), capital Fort-Nassau
• Vermont, capital Burlington

With thanks to Mr Burgess, for providing a higher-resolution map than the one on this website (please scroll down).

242 – Nearer the North: Australia in the King Projection

For cartophiles, the main problem with this map is not that interviewer Larry King’s head covers most of Europe, or that the bulky figure of his guest, moviemaker Michael Moore, obscures much of America. The problem is not what it hides, but what it misplaces.

See the huge island continent of Australia? Well, you shouldn’t. Most of it should be hidden beneath the desk, in between Messrs King and Moore. But Oz seems to have lost its mooring, drifting north to the latitudes of the Philippines, immediately off Australia’s west coast, and Hawaii, not far from the Queensland coast (but obscured by Moore’s black sweater – an unfortunate choice and probably proof he’s not a regular viewer of the show).

The island of New Guinea, to Australia’s north in real life, has gone along for the ride in this fantasy world of the King Projection and will, if present drifting persists, bump into either the Kamchatka or Alaska peninsulas.

Why did Mr King deem it necessary to move Australians closer to the region they call the Near North (and many others still call the Far East)? Maybe it’s that talkshow décors share with nature in general that they abhor a vacuum. That would explain the Brazil-shaped blob behind Mr King, headed for Europe and soon colliding with Ireland, filling out the otherwise glitterless Atlantic Ocean.

Thanks to Josh for sending in the picture, by the look of it a grab off YouTube.

241 – Every Englishman Is An Island…

… But some are more insular than others. Turner Prize winner Grayson Perry, according to this disputed article on Wikipedia “best known for his ceramics and his cross-dressing”, is the artist behind this obsessively detailed cartographic self-portrait.

His Map of An Englishman (2004) is a mock-Tudor etch of an imaginary island, not coincidentally resembling a brain, surrounded by Psychopath, Bipolar Disorder, Schizophrenia, Delirium and other unpleasantness at sea; divided into counties with alluring names such as Tender, Bitch, Romance, Cliché and Guru – Normal and Easy are pretty small areas, and Fear is a large, scary forest in the east.

Hills, houses and castles, but mainly churches, dot the countryside, each bearing the name of character traits (or flaws) or other words somehow connectible the artist, expressing prejudices, fears, desires, vanities and other attributes of the artist, ranging from Two-Car-Family and Stuck over Cuddly and Intersubjectivity to Dream-Date and I’m-Out-Of-Control.Some elements seem to be thematically grouped together, hence the region labelled Posh is thick with place-names like Chattering, Broadsheet, Yoga, Chardonnay, School Run and Bulemic.

The map was sent in by Paul Razell, who “saw Grayson Perry’s Map of an Englishman at the British Museum in November 2007, and have been meaning to bring this to your attention.” Many thanks! The original location of this image is here, some more info on the map here at Artificial Gallery.

240 – The American Eagle, About to Spread Its Wings

In 1833, The United States didn’t have an East Coast yet, for lack of a West Coast. The gigantic Louisiana Territory, acquired some 30 years earlier from the French, gave America dominion over the Mississippi basin, but Mexican land and the Oregon territory, claimed by Great Britain, still stood between the US and its ‘Manifest Destiny‘ – to stretch “from sea to shining sea”.

That’s a line from Katharine Lee Bates’ song ‘America the Beautiful‘, composed in 1893 when the west was won, mainly by the Mexican-American War of 1846-’48. It would be many decades before all the lands between Mississippi and Pacific would enter the Union as full-fledged states, but the iconic shape of America’s lower 48 states was there.

In 1833, other icons were still vying for public acknowledgement. For example, this Eagle Map of the United States, Engraved For Rudiments of National Knowledge.

The map represents America as an eagle (it looks more like a dove), with its head coinciding with New England (except Maine), its eye with Vermont, its neckline following Lakes Ontario and Erie, the wing outlines Lakes Huron and Superior (and further west the eventual Canadian-American border at the 49th parallel).

The eagle’s breast follows the Atlantic seaboard, its talons form Florida – even though the claws protrude far from the coastline, and somewhat ominously, towards Cuba.

The real reason why this particular iconic representation of America’s national bird never caught on, is in the tailfeathers – shaped to follow a border no longer in existence by 1848. The western borders of the subsequent independent and later US state of Texas are recognisable, for now as the dividing line between the US and Mexico. The feathers follow the US inland border as it moves north, and disappears out of sight at the area disputed with Great Britain.

Meanwhile, the great inland empire of Louisiana is already being divided up into US states, with Louisiana and Missouri separated from the ‘mainland’ of the formerly French lands.

This map was published in Philadelphia in 1833 by Carey & Hart, in a now extremely rare atlas, the Rudiments of National Knowledge, Presented To The Youth of the United States, And To Enquiring Foreigners, By A Citizen Of Pennsylvania.

An image of this map was sent in by antique maps dealer Barry Ruderman, who recently put an original copy of the map up for sale. It’s yours for just under 20,000 dollars, indicating just how rare it is. “This is the first example of the map we have seen on the market in the past 10 years,” states the relevant page at Ruderman’s website www.raremaps.com – not in any way affiliated with Strange Maps, I hasten to add. It just so happens that in this case, the rare map also is a strange one.

239 – Mall-American

Egyptians one generation more ancient than the ones we usually call Ancient Egyptians perhaps thought the pyramids to be detestable eyesores on the desert skyline, and Greeks old enough to remember the good old days before poetry, medicine and architecture might have had a Prince-Charles-like disdain for the doric ‘carbuncles’ clunking up the Acropolises of their once fair country.

But age becomes architecture, and the triangularity of Egyptian and Hellenic architecture is now considered ‘classic’. Similarly, many of the buildings we now find hideous might one day seem so precious that we’ll end up protecting them. No such luck so far for that great American contribution to suburban architecture, the shopping mall, which is still too ubiquitous to be considered salvage-worthy.

A shopping mall can be defined as a conglomeration of retail shops, usually under one roof, with an ironic twist to its accessability: typically only reached by car, as attested by the huge parking areas surrounding it, the attraction of a mall consists of its pedestrians-only policy indoors.

One unconfirmed piece of shopping mall trivia holds that the US has more malls than high schools. While these must include many tiny malls, there are also more than 1,100 ‘regional shopping malls‘, targeting potential customers as far away as 25 miles and often extending to a million square feet.

The shopping mall has been one of the US’s most succesful export products, mushrooming in every corner of the Free World. But in its homeland, boom seems to have turned to bust, with shoppers now being drawn in droves to open-air ‘lifestyle centres‘ or doing their browsing and buying online. Many malls are now abandoned to decay, much like the boomtowns turned ghost towns of the nineteenth century.

Whole websites are dedicated to shopping mall postmortems, which detail the afterlife of these palaces of retail. Malls are intended to be cheery rather than leery, to induce consumption rather than consternation, but they nonetheless have a macabre quality, especially obvious when they’re defunct (as on www.deadmalls.com), serving as a refuge against man-eating zombies (as in George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead), or otherwise closed for business.

Consumers have a love-hate relationship with malls: we go to them because we love to shop, or just hang out there, but also because there’s nowhere else to go. Malls are convenient, but also monotonous – any mall is just a reconfiguration of the same store brands you’ll find in any other mall.

Something of that annoyance with the mall-induced Gleichschaltung is expressed in this cartoon, presenting America as one giant mall, completely covered by just over a dozen of brand names. From Starbuck’s over WaldenBooks to Walmart, the shopping needs covered by this relatively short list are so diverse that one could imagine living at the mall without ever leaving it. And why would you? Mr Romero’s zombies sure seemed to like it…

This cartoon, ‘America the Mall’, was sent in by Josh Bloom, who scanned it from the Boston Globe, in which it appeared in August of 2000 – still very much the heyday of the shopping mall.