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Obsessively Detailed Map Of Springfield
An anonymous reader writes "With all these stories going around about governments' abilities to pinpoint our location via various means, it's quite surprising that one group of people have avoided them for so long. That dastardly family, The Simpsons, have been hidden in Springfield for far too long. Which brings us to the following obsessively detailed map of Springfield. From Jerry Lerma and Terry Hogan: "The mapping of Springfield began in the Spring of 2001 when we realized that no adequate map of Springfield existed either online or in print.""
Why not just have a game of simpsons hit and run? Gives you a pretty detailed 3d look of springfield. And its from the makers, so more reliable.
I.O.U One Sig.
I don't think there is any consistency to the locations in the series. The Simpsons' house alone has been located in a residential neighbourhood, beside Moe's Tavern and beside the nuclear power plant. How do you create a map where the locations are so fluid?
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
...the writers themselves have said on the DVD commentaries that although in the first few seasons a concious effort was made to keep geography accurate, after that they found it easier (and funnier) just to mess about with it, meaning the Simpsons' house is in many places (next to moes, next to the power plant, etc.).
Seriously, I love it. Yes, I understand that you can never have an accurate map of Springfield (there are contradictions across episodes) but this is about as good as you can get. BTW, wasn't the Michael Jackson Expressway (formerly the Dali Lama expressway) renamed to the Matlock Expressway ?
there's no Flanders' house! What gives?
Even though you have a troll rating at the moment I write this I'd like to answer this question because I think it isn't trolling what you're doing... just a bit of missing the point ;).
The Simpsons are funny if you are the kind of person to understand and like the jokes. You don't have to like them. But others do for the humor, for the political and social critics na dfor many more reasons. Sure, it's fictional. But what is not ficitonal in one or another way today? The Simpsons bring fans together and make them DO something together.
So you can define this work as a way to waste your time or you can see it as a way to honor a piece of work that has brought and continues to bring people together.
That is the reason why I think this project is plain cool.
Where's the only bridge out of town?
From the episode "Bart's Comet"
http://www.snpp.com/episodes/2F11.html
I see at least three bridges.
The nuke plant.
The Springfield brdige.
Kwik-E-Mart
As an aside, a theatre show that my sister worked on (she's a sound and lighting engineer) called for a very deep silence, just as you come into the last act. How do you come up with a silence sound effect? Well, from a minute or two before doors, right the way through, she had some white noise playing through the PA, very quietly but noticeably. Because it was there when you walked into the auditorium, you don't notice it. Then, when you drop it out...
mitch
Northern Kentucky.. They actually came out and told us in episode that looked like a VH1 "Behind the Music" episode.
I emailed the editors to tell 'em it was a dupe, but I guess I wass too late. The original story had better info.
Maybe we should ask the editors to start up a new section called dupes.slashdot.org to better let people to ignore them :)
Following the insanity of /., that'd probably soon be the place where we'd actually get to read all the real news.
Am I the only one that thinks that now that a full map of Springfield is out there its only a matter of time before someone capitalizes and makes a Simpsons MMORPG. All of Springfield could be rendered 100% accurately now. Woo-wee!
which always makes me wonder.
Why has taco not touched slashcode to make real improvements for almost 5 years?
a simple modification to make the editor's side of the system to require a pull up query of all stories based on keywords in the headline would kill 90% of the dupes.
I know that slashdot is and never has claimed to be a journalism site, but the amount of dupes is getting way out of hand.
how about no ONE editor can publish a story but requires a second editor to approve the first approval?
I have heard it is Springfield, Oregon.. Matt Groening lived up in Oregon, there is also a Shelbyville up there. Additionally, there are references to various characters as landmarks, street names,... I think Superintendant Chalmers and Principal Skinner.
Also, there is an episode where Homer pulls out this chart of states they are banned from (the episode where they go to Florida, I think) and Oregon is one of 3 or 4 that they are not banned from...
Ask anyone from Oregon, they will probably be able to explain all the little tie-ins with the area better.
So where is the georeferencing information? I want a World File!!
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
(it must exist in a higher-dimensional space)
Actually, I believe Springfield is a network of interconnecting plates which levitate. These plates reconfigure themselves into whatever layout is funniest at any given time, and the whole assembly moves to new locations, which is why Springfield is within an afternoon drive of every major traffic location in the US and Canada, including Hawaii. This does, however, raise questions as to why the Simpsons flew to Australia and Japan.
Although the Simsons' live adjacent to the Nuke plant in one episode, they have a picket fence (not a chain-link and barbed wire fence) accross their back yard with another row of houses behind it in another. In one episode, there's an air view of the area in which the Simspons' discover that everybody in Springfield has a pool except them, but in other episodes, shots of the Flanders' back yard reveals no pool.
In one episode, Moe's is less than a block from the Simpson's house, but at the end of the Flaming Moe's episode, there's a panning shot revealing several blocks of Flaming Moe ripoffs in both directions from Moe's. Sometime's, Moe's is on a corner, sometimes its next to the music store where Lisa got her saxaphone, and in the episode where they hit oil under the school, it was sandwitched between the nuke plant and the school, with nothing else around but a thin chemical haze from the drill site.
All this can easily be explained by the levitating plate theory, since the superior intelligence controlling Springfield simply reconfigures the city into a more amusing and/or ironic layout. I can only assume that Shelbyville, and possibly Capitol City, are also on the plate construct, as they are the only cities at a fixed distance from Springf field, and probably experience the same phenomena.
As for the episode where Homer becomes sanitation director and destroys the city, I believe that the plate design originally included some comparatively pristine wilderness area, which became Springfield Site B when they moved the city.
Yes, I watch WAY too much Simpson's. Yes, I'm also the same person who went equally in-depth explaining plot inconsistencies in all five Star Trek series and Farscape. No, I don't have a girlfriend, if you have to ask.
You're missing the even more subtle joke: the episode says "...this kentucky/missouri family..." referring to their quote-unquote real life status, not the characters they supposedly portray in the show.
Remember, the show essentially posited that its not animated, but rather enacted by a real family. As such, wherever the 'real' family is located/from, the show they act in may be in a different location.
"Stumble before you crawl"