"Maps" in Song

A couple of years ago, a friend and I were playing Rock Band (or Guitar Hero, one of those) and he told me, "You have to hear this song. You'll love it." He was right. The song is "Maps" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and it's oddly melancholy and beautiful, predominated by a rather sad chorus sung over arching instrumentals. In the video, the vocalist even begins to cry, then sings the chorus, which is:


Wait, they don't love you like I love you
Wait, they don't love you like I love you
Maps, wait!
They don't love you like I love you...


I've never found out just what the lyrics indicate, but it left me with the impression of someone leaving, packing bags and consulting maps, just as she is able to tell him how she feels-- perhaps too late.

Above is the song, via youtube.


As much as I love the song as it was intended, as a sad love song, I found that the meaning began to change for me the more that I studied GIS and became a complete map nerd.  Suddenly I was hearing the chorus differently, as if it were the maps that they didn't love as much as I did.  I would find myself working on a map late at night and humming to myself, "Maps wait!  They don't love you like I love you!"  (It is currently on my shortlist of songs to learn to play on accordion. If anyone has the sheet music, please let me know.)


Below is perhaps the craziest cover I have yet found of "Maps".  It is performed acapella by one man who sings the drum, guitar, lead vocal, and backings.  If you can make it through the clip, you will be impressed.  Enjoy.

3D Crime Rendering Map of San Francisco

One of my favorite visualization websites, FlowingData, had a really cool link to another blogger's work recently.  Doug McCune, in his blog post "If San Francisco Crime Were Elevation", began with an overhead view of SF and overlaid various categories of crime illustrated as elevation models, equating height of peak with number of crimes and locations of arrest.  Most of the crime maps, such as Vehicle Theft or Vandalism, show a concentration in the city center, with lesser numbers radiating out more or less evenly across the rest of the city.  

Various SF Crimes, Doug McCune
Click to enlarge

The Prostitution map, however, is distinct among the crime maps in that crime "peaks" are sparsely distributed across the city, with a major concentration in the Mission Hill/ Tenderloin area.  

Prostitution Map, Doug McCune
Click to enlarge

The map began to bother me in a way, something I couldn't first describe, that the distribution was very skewed.  I am now beginning to wonder if the lack of prostitution arrests outside of the Tenderloin/ Mission Hill is not indicative of lack of prostitution crime, as it first appears, but rather due to a lack of active monitoring and policing.   I cannot bring myself to believe that prostitution is not occurring in more affluent parts of SF-- rather, that the mode of delivery (as it were!) is more geared towards "escorts" and less towards "streetwalkers".  I find the map interesting more in what is not said than what is being shown.  A map of vehicle thefts will of course peak at higher population centers, as there are more vehicles to steal.  But lesser populated or better patrolled portions of the city still have thefts.  The Prostitution map shows wide swaths of the city wherein no prostitution crimes are occurring, an unlikely scenario.  One would have to be terribly naive to believe that sex is only for sale in the Tenderloin or Mission Hill.