Inflated Views

From the New York Times, December 8, 2001: On March 29, 1976, a simple, pastel map of New York City appeared on the cover of The New Yorker. Drawn from the perspective of a low-flying bird looking west from Ninth Avenue, you could see the world receding from the city: the Hudson River, New Jersey, Kansas City, then the Pacific Ocean and Japan. It was Saul Steinberg's famous "View of the World from Ninth Avenue," a drawing reproduced and imitated countless times. Every city wanted a version of its own. Steinberg once said that if he had gotten the proper royalties, "I could have retired on this painting." This inflated view of one's own importance is not the first time such a map has been created. Here is another look at New York in relation to the rest of the country, by Daniel K. Wallingford, in 1937; A New Yorker's Idea of the United States of America:

© The Saul Steinberg Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Cover reproduced with permission of The New Yorker magazine. All rights reserved. per Sheila Schwartz, Executive Director, The Saul Steinberg Foundation

Not to be outdone, here is a view from California:



As mentioned here before, Texas is in love with its geographic shape. They also like to tell us how everything is bigger in Texas. Below are two postcards from my collection that illustrate that infatuation:





And finally, on this postcard, Alabama, for reasons unclear, have an inflated view of themselves:

Maps make funny shapes...

In the "Things found while looking for something else" category... well, this time I was looking for myself (I did a Google search on "cartophilia") and I found the xtcian blog, by Ian Williams, with a post from 2003 called cartophilia! in which he has fun with the funny shapes of states...

I like it when states reach for something that they might not deserve. Take Alabama and Mississippi, for instance, both violently sticking out a body part to touch the Gulf of Mexico:

One of his commenters suggests, "Alabama and Mississippi ought to talk about it before going to bed. They look like a couple that's had a fight."

He forgot to note how funny the shape of Florida can be... and how it could be a little different after a little blue pill...