Looking for women in yoga pants…who aren’t doing yoga?
You’ll probably find them near 14th Street and Montana Avenue, according to one attention-grabbing website.
HoodMaps.com provides a tongue-in-cheek look at more than 2000 local communities, often describing them up with irreverent (sometimes racist) stereotypes.
Individual areas are broken down into color-coded categories: “hipsters,” “normies,” “suits,” “tourists,” “students,” and “rich.”
Visitors can “tag” the maps to add additional commentary about names, demographics and characteristics of their neighborhoods.
In Santa Monica, the area north of Wilshire Boulevard between 20th Street and 26th Street is tagged: “leased Porsche and a studio apartment”.
The intersection near 23rd Street and Colorado Avenue is labeled: “All the places ur friends want to work.”
And the vicinity of Crossroads School on 21st Street bears is tagged: “Most of the students here are on drugs.”
Inspiration for the site goes back to 2015.
It was created in a matter of days by Dutch programmer Pieter Levels, who wanted to give tourists an “honest” guide to cities.
“I very often end up in the tourist center,” he shared in a 2017 blog post. “I’m originally from Amsterdam and I know 90% of tourists will never get any idea about the ‘real’ Amsterdam because they just stay in the tourist center.”
When his friend, Amy, came to visit and asked for sightseeing tips, he created what became the first prototype for HoodMaps.
I made a map for @genericdreams of Amsterdam, just a few parts of Amsterdam that are actually still authentic + fun pic.twitter.com/aZ6Zaw2ZVH
— @levelsio (@levelsio) September 4, 2015
Since its launch, the site has been criticized by some for being too “white-centric.”
“The stereotypes speak mostly to how wealthier, white people might see a neighborhood,” Bloomberg News wrote. “The ‘hipster’ label is especially common in lower-income and more diverse parts of cities, while ‘normies’ is so vague that it’s nearly useless for understanding anything about an area.”
“These broad strokes in particular brush over the varied realities within a city’s neighborhoods.”
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