Yikes!

Why do pictures of urban England always appear to be taken in the sketchiest neighborhoods? Is all of urbanized England such a dump?

Have I missed something?

So do we know when the results of their uber-trawl around the UK will actually appear on Google Maps...?

how quick do you have to be in this place to get a comment like that in?

@Solomon : yes.

There's only one picture of England on that page, and it shows a Habitat shop, which is hardly a dump. I suspect you're referring to the top picture - in which case you might find it useful to look up Edinburgh on Google Maps to discover that is not in England.

And anyway, that's not a dump - it's just round the corner from my work, in the "eastern fringes of the New Town" as this is known...

perhaps Google can publish the car crashes as nerds take a picture of a car with a 1930's camera stuck on top. DON'T USE YOUR PHONE WHEN DRIVING OR YOU WILL BE PROSECUTED!!

when fat chance of that unless you speed past a camera!

A Google car was left in Chingford over the weekend.

It was parked in the car park of the council building next to the fire station on the Ridgeway (B169), just opposite Warren Road.

I was going to take a photo but that would've meant getting out of my car and being questioned by hoodies.

I'm actually quite surprised the local yoof's hadn't nicked the camera.

Additionally, I saw the Google car driving down Forest Rise (Walthamstow, just off the A104) a few months ago, so I may have been immortalised.

I've managed to bore myself with this post. God knows how must feel after reading it.

So tell me are the Google Health and Safety ****wits quietly having a fit in the corner....

climbing onto the roof of a car on the offside without proper steps? hahahahahaha

No, that's the bodyshop at the bottom of Mayfield Road - nowhere near the New Town!

How do I get to be a Google street mapper? I would love to be paid to drive around in a pimped-up black Opel/GM/Vauxhall car with a huge camera stuck on roof.

Has anybody tried to follow the car in the hope they get onto google street view (when it finally comes out here in the UK) - Wonder if there Is a name for this type of behaviour? Google Stalking? maybe?

I feel like a bloke wondering how a thing like that drove through NE London without ending up on bricks.

Next to Brakesafe? In which case it's almost identical to the one off East London Street. The sooner there's some sort of feature on Google Maps where you can see real life photographs of places the better...

Just noticed this morning that the streeview cars followed (preceeded?) this years Tour de France. The main route, plus a few side trips, shows up clearly. Wonder where they are now...

Spotted outside my office in Leeds Brown Lane West (Leeds) - 10.42am 06/08/08

Needless to say I was waving at it like an idiot as it did it's first pass before stopping at the Butty Wagon for a cuppa.

See pics below:

http://www.opendoordesign.co.uk/google-street-car/

Marvin, is that you? Miss you buddy...

Dent Arthur Dent

PS: Mine's the one with all the fish...

...I used to sit on its roof scoffing penny sweets with rebellious mates of mine, aged 12 3/4. Particularly good spot as you could escape in any one of 3 directions when spotted, you could hide behind the skylights on the garage roof and the black roofing felt warmed it up to a pleasant sunbathing temperature in even the lightest sun (a rare event in Edinburgh...)

Childhood innocence, ruined by Google. Now any old 2.0 hoods will find that spot.

Google stalking? That would be "Gawking" ("Galking"?) ?

Right, so is all of the UK such a dump?

that being a Google spy is not the career of choice for failed used car salesmen?

Well i know where the norwich car lives cos i walked past it on the way home after dumping my car off for its regular weekly servicing.

Now i wonder o7,

who do i contact to get the job driving a a nice black Googly car around the southwest.

I've got 10 years NCB, a spotlessly clean licence, done a huge amount of driving (must be over 300,000 miles) across the south of england over the last 20 years and am willing to relocate to plymouth/exeter for 6 months.

The job center do also seem to be very keen to offload me after being on the dole for over 6 months, due to the current IT implosion.

Should i drop off my application under the wipers of the norwich googly car?

Mines the one on the backseat drapped over the skinny spare tyre. :)

"Is all of urbanized England such a dump?"

Remove urbanized and you have hit the nail on the head.

ingerland is a massive pile of horse manure and dont let anyone tell you differently

Wrong again! it's the one near the junction with Liberton Road. The one in the centre of this map:

http://maps.google.co.uk/?ie=UTF8&ll=55.920315,-3.168011&spn=0.002191,0.004651&t=h&z=18

IMHO, it looks pretty smart for a bodyshop. A touch of art deco in the architecture there!

You are not one of that female fashion dullard duo that are never off the TV are you? if so, for goodness sake, get off the TV, I like to watch mentally stimulating stuff when I'm not at work, not you and your mate banging on about what you think about clothes.

back to the story, perhaps they have been the target of the local yoof, welcome to the UK!

Can I appeal to these scumbags, if they must dsmage a vehicle to target these instead of those belonging to the rest of us tax paying, hard working and law abiding citizens.

After all, a new Opel to Google is pocket change.

> Is all of urbanized England such a dump?

+

> ingerland is a massive pile of horse manure and dont let anyone tell you differently

Shropshire is quite nice around the edges :P

But yeah... when the average population density of the UK is nigh on 250 people per square kilometre (it's 31 in the US btw) and almost all of those people have the artistic sensibilities of a house brick it's hardly surprising.

Until recently there were only three schools of architecture in the UK, blocky, ugly and chruches (now we cah add gherkins... whoohoo).

the more ... shall we say, vibrant.... no, shitty is the word I'm after - parts of Worcester on Tuesday too. Unfortunately no pics, but if you see a silver car passing by the Chestnut, then that's us driving back to work at lunchtime.