UPDATE ALERT: Take Scenic Route Walks Anywhere, Thanks to nextstop.com!!
Hey Brooklyn, you can take a Scenic Route walk now! You can too, Austin. Yep, even you Palo Alto! Any U.S. city that has recommendations on nextstop.com is open for mobile on-demand walking tours from Scenic Route! All thanks to nextstop.com’s API and Gabe’s mashup mastery [1].
We’re really excited about this update because nextstop.com is as good at collecting awesome bite-sized tips and local knowledge as Scenic Route is at delivering it. The mashup makes it more fun to access nextstop.com’s content while also helping us grow from 1 city to a gazillion cities literally overnight. Nextstop is committed to helping people within a community find and share experiences they love (not just stores or restaurants), which is why we chose to use their API instead of the many other great ones out there. Nextstop obviously loves cities and has great respect for the people who enjoy them. Read more about nextstop’s vision here.
If you have a smartphone with a mobile browser, give it a try. We can’t wait to hear what you think!
To get you up a running (er, walking), a little more information about the changes:
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San Francisco Chronicle’s John King’s Cityscape
While reading a recent article about San Francisco’s (promising but obtuse) upcoming legislation to use vacant lots for art and pop up gardens, I discovered John King. He’s The SF Chronicle’s “Urban Design Writer,” and his articles demonstrate some darned good taste in urbanism and culture.
Particularly relevant to Scenic Routers is Mr. King’s Cityscape, which chronicles (in the name of The Chronicle!) the unique history and architecture of a different building in San Francisco every week. If you have a favorite building you’d like him to cover, he’s soliciting recommendations. Be sure to tell him Scenic Route sent you – it would be awesome to see him cross-posting some of these gems at scenicroute.info!
SPUR – Making Better Streets
Gabe and I recently joined SPUR – San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association. It only costs $55 to be a “Young Urbanist,” and it’s worth every penny. They have a really nice, informative print publication which also goes out via email. But the best part is the free or reduced cost access to events about good urbanism for the future.
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SF Thomassons Performance Bus Tour
“In the seventies, Japanese conceptual artist and writer Akasegawa Genpei and his buddies discovered “hyperart,” unintentional art created by the city itself. Everywhere they saw urban objects and structures that had had a use in the past, but were now useless … yet someone was still maintaining them, not removing them. Akasegawa named these objects “Thomassons” after American baseball hitter Gary Thomasson, who was recruited to a Japanese team and paid a mint to look pretty, but whose bat almost never connected with the ball.” (– Kaya / HyperArt / SF Thomasson’s)
Examples of thomassons: a telephone pole that no longer carries a line, a door set high in a brick wall, a walkway that ends abruptly in midair, etc.
On Saturday, Gabe and I went on a performance bus tour around San Francisco that took us to the sites of 5 thomassons around San Francisco where artists paid homage to specific thomassons. We watched newspaper boxes perform a symphony for a bridge, we launched balloon boy into the air, we confessed our sins, we swayed to steampunk / gold rush infused movement and music, and we held our breath while an aerialist defied gravity. We were even punk’d by our hosts!
It was awesome.
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Messages tagged restrooms
I have a challenge for you! Pee in style! Help the Scenic Route community stop peeing in their pants and instead find quality restrooms across the city. If you’re game, keep reading.
Qualifying restrooms should meet these criteria:
- They are publicly-accessible
- They are free
- They are safe and reasonably clean/well-stocked
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Playing With Place: Location-Based Games
I’m putting together a panel on location-based games for South by Southwest and you should all totally come see us! It’s going to be *amazing.* We’re going to talk (and bicker!) about hot trends in locative gaming: platforms, social gaming, virtual items, gps, etc. I’m especially eager to discuss business models and alternate scales/modes of gameplay. Consider: life after check-ins!
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Tell scenic routers about yourself! (+ the start of an FAQ!)
Hi All! Our friends at the New Deal Art Registry have some great spots on Scenic Route. They’ve also been giving us super useful feedback as we iterate. Whenever one person asks a question, there’s a good chance others are silently wondering the same darned thing. And so, I’m going to answer the “Q”’s for y’all as they come in, right here on this blog. They’ll be tagged “FAQ.” Once we have enough, we’ll compile them into a proper FAQ.
Let’s get started!
(viewing your profile - click to enlarge)
Did you know that you can change how your name displays? For instance, my username is “cherdlick” but I like to have my name appear as “Catherine Herdlick” on my profile page. I could change my display name to “Cat Girl!” if I wanted to or “Boom chicka boom” or really just about anything my heart desires. If you’d like to change how your name displays, go to your account settings page when you’re logged in and edit away! To navigate there later, click on your name in the top-right corner of any SR page and then click on the green “This is your public profile. Edit your information here” link. Easy peasy.
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Begin Scenic Route
About a month ago, Gabe and I were in Las Vegas for the National Finals Rodeo (no joke). We decided to take a break from the hullabaloo of the casinos and cowboys – to, uh, take the scenic route! While we were driving out to a ghost town, we spotted this amazing sign:
Scenic Route spotted in Nevada!
We took a LOT of photos, but I think this one gets across the message just fine. Start your year right: begin taking the scenic route! More walking! More messages! More favorites! More feedback! We’ve got fun things planned for you down the road but we need your help making the routes more scenic!
Introducing your city scoresheet!
Hi Scenic Routers,
We’ve made several updates to the site which you’ll see as soon as you log in. The most important of these is that your new home page shows you a scoresheet of your progress in exploring San Francisco. As you take walks, these scores will increase, showing you how extensively you’ve explored the city, both on the web and in real-world walks (indicated by the 
). We’re sure that this will spur a little competitive spirit into the process of discovering your city, and we look forward to expanding on this in the future.
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Hey Brooklyn, you can take a Scenic Route walk now! You can too, Austin. Yep, even you Palo Alto! Any U.S. city that has recommendations on nextstop.com is open for mobile on-demand walking tours from Scenic Route! All thanks to nextstop.com’s API and Gabe’s mashup mastery [1].
