Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Waffle House America

Last year Deadspin posted this map showing the Waffle House-IHOP version of the Mason-Dixon Line.
http://deadspin.com/map-do-you-live-in-ihop-america-or-waffle-house-americ-510668232
  mapsbynik has added to this geographical foodways discussion by mapping the density of Waffle Houses.
http://mapsbynik.tumblr.com/post/82053920556/waffle-house-density-by-quad-the-map-shown-here
The map was done by taking USGS 30x60 minute map quad sheets, overlaying them onto Google Earth, and extruding the height based on the number of Waffle Houses. More details and data by quad can be seen at mapsbynik's tumblr site. Atlanta is the home base for the chain so their dominance was expected, however the degree to which it towers above the rest of the country is truly impressive.

USGS quads are not a common unit for this type of mapping (counties would be much more typical) but the quads work nicely for the Waffle House data pattern. Because the Atlanta area is spread among numerous counties, a county map would spread the data out. This would result in more of a boring low rise edge city look than the towering skyscraper we get here.

1 comment:

Michael5000 said...

Waffle House is my favorite thing about the South.