The secret economics of Google Street View

There's a whole world of Street View economics. You just have to know where to look. Here's the video.

How this video happened

I'll be transparent — my video about Migrant Mother was a burnout cure, but it was also a flop. I wanted to find something zeitgeisty and considered a few ideas — but then I completely fell in love with this topic.

After two weeks of work and conversation with tons of people, I don't have a clear memory of the initial strangeness of this world. But hopefully it's there for people watching.

Check out more

Here's a link to the reaction video (for some paid tiers).

What's inside this building? And who is this man?

I found a lot of unofficial locations by browsing maps, clicking at random, and looking down. That's how I found this.

(I'm leaning heavily on images in this, so Patreon email server, don't fail me now. And if it did fail me, just click through for the post.)

You can go closer.

And inside, you see this. An otherwise empty room with this Vigo-The-Carpathian-posing man.

I was desperate to find out who this man was. And why he was here.

After a week of getting most of my info from interviews, the only way I could get started on this was with some AI-aided translation: copying and pasting signs into ChatGPT and hoping for a clue.

First result for a sign:

The text in the image is in Bulgarian and translates to:

"Land of the white Danube, where the winged sound of the firmament splashes."

Bulgarian? But I was in Ukraine.

I looked around and found some other rooms, but not enough clues for me.

What does the thing under his painting say?

ChatGPT:

The text in this image is in Bulgarian and translates to:

"Petar Borisovich Burlak-Valkanov – Patriarch of the Bulgarian poets in Bessarabia."

This refers to a prominent figure, Petar Borisovich Burlak-Valkanov, recognized as a leading Bulgarian poet from the region of Bessarabia.

Now we're getting somewhere.

But we've reached the spot where Wikipedia does not tread. By reading this article, I got a few more clues: Burlak-Valkanov was an important Bulgarian poet and author (he died in 2005). But the more important clue might be that tidbit about "Bessarabia."

This region has a big thick Wikipedia page that we can pore over, and it provides some of the answers. There's even one for Bessarebian Bulgarians.

Driven to Bessarabia by Russo-Turkish wars, among other things, Bessarebian Bulgarians formed communities that maintained ties to their ancestral home. The region became part of the USSR and tradition faded but, when the USSR began to decline, there was a revival of Bessarebian identity — a revival that included Burlak-Valkanov.

My obvious takeaway is the dizzying weirdness of finding out about a centuries-old expat community via browsing around unofficial Streetview coverage. The collision of tech and history is always something to gawk at.

But it's also made me reflect, as I'm often forced to, on my own historical self-centeredness and myopia. I'm embarrassed to admit it here, but not only have I rarely thought about Bulgaria, but I never would have thought about a community of Bulgarians in Ukraine and Moldova, even though enclaves like these are common in the United States.

It's a good reminder to have some curiosity and humility, rather than confidence, judgment, or fear, when you step inside strange rooms.

Sources for the video

Most of the sources are people I talked to! Matt, Federico and Dimitar, Amy, and Chad all have sites. Peter and Darren are just friends o' the map. And do check out Neo, Chuppl, The Present Past, and Echo Zero, my buddies in the game.

• Here you'll find my map I used in the video. I would have made a bigger deal out of you being able to check out the locations in the video, but Google My Maps is a bit clunky and harder to use than I'd like. Nevertheless, if you're curious, you can probably click your way through to all the locations...

• Play An Unofficial Street World on Geoguessr! It did make normal Geoguessr seem easy.

• Geoguessr tools were invaluable for research/finding unofficial coverage. This map generator features prominently in the video. There were a couple other tools I used but I can't find em just yet.

• This is a fun article about unofficial coverage enraging Geoguessrs.

• Photo Auto-Maps!

• A history of Google Street View cameras.

• About halfway through, I felt like I was kinda ripping off this show I listen to. It's one of the extremely rare examples of actually consuming the "content" of somebody I used to work with. So I think you'd like it too.