Snickelways of York

Note: In May, I spent some time traveling through England. This is the first of maybe several posts from that trip.

In York, England a snickelway is a narrow passageway variously referred to as a"snicket", "gimmel" or "alleyway", the word being a combination of all of these. Mark Jones mapped the snickelways and wrote a guide book to them.

I took this photo as an example of a snickelway.

His book only includes the ones on the north side of the river Ouse. He created a path where you do not repeat your steps. This map nicely illustrates the circuitous route you need to follow to accomplish this.

This route takes a few hours to complete and if you're in York you will likely find other things you want to do. I covered almost the entire route because I am obsessed with these things. The route begins and ends at Bootham Bar, one of the city gates near the Minster, York's impressively large cathedral.

The middle area is where the most action is with a whole bunch of sneaky passageways and the Shambles (a medieval street whose buildings look like they could tumble over at any time).

Also in this area is Victor J's Bar, featuring their own "snicketway" map on the wall.

Jones fills the book with commentary,

very detailed instructions, various other current and historic facts about York and even advice for navigating "shopsnickets", passageways that require walking through stores and behaving as any normal prospective customer.

Emancipation National Historic Trail

It took over two years for the Emancipation Proclamation to reach Galveston, Texas. Specifically June 19, 1965 hence the Juneteenth holiday. Galveston was the largest slave market west of New Orleans. The newly emancipated fled Galveston to Freedmen's Town and other parts of Houston that had large African American communities.

via Texas Highways

In 2019 the US House of Representatives passed the Emancipation National Historic Trail Act. This act would create the second National Historic Trail centered on the African American experience, after the Selma to Montgomery trail in Alabama. The map above traces the approximate route of this trail.

Map for Bloomsday

I have not read Ulysses by James Joyce, few people have. Even fewer have understood it. To honor the annual Bloomsday festival going on right now, here is a map showing the wanderings and locations within the book. The map about as easy to understand as the plot itself.

I have not found much information on the map's author, Aimee Stewart. Her company seems to have disappeared from the internet. 

The routes of the main characters are color coded by episode (or chapter) and the line pattern represents the mode of transportation (walking, vehicle, dreaming or floating). The novel begins with Stephen Dedalus at the Sandycove Martello Tower on the coast near Dublin while the second episode features him lecturing about the Greek statesman Pyrrhus. The clocks indicate the time of day, as the entire novel takes place during a single day (Bloomsday - June 16th, 1904).

In episode 8, Leopold Bloom eats a cheese sandwich at Davy Byrne's pub while contemplating his wife's infidelity, then heads to the National Library.

The final episode consists of Molly Bloom's thoughts as she lies in bed with her eye-less husband. 

There is a very subtle grid on the map with a street index at the bottom. On the side next to the color legend is a list of symbols. The meaning of this is unclear as none of these appear on the map.

Stewart states "The novel needs to be made more accessible, especially to us Dubliners, so I hope this helps." I'm not sure it does.

Of course if you really want to clear things up you can look at this blurry copy of a map by Vladimir Nabokov who said "Instead of perpetuating the pretentious nonsense of Homeric, chromatic, and visceral chapter headings, instructors should prepare maps of Dublin with Bloom’s and Stephen’s intertwining itineraries clearly traced."

via Paris Review

Indigenous Map of Southern Ontario

Christi Belcourt is a Metis artist who "indigenized" the regional maps and surveys of Albert Salter into a map called "Good Land". 

One side of the map has the English text that most people are familiar with, while the other side uses indigenous place names and commentary.

This level of commentary can be seen in this zoomed in image showing Toronto and areas to the north. Highway 401, running along Lake Ontario is described as a graveyard for animals.

It would be nice to have a higher resolution version where the legend can be read but I can’t find one the Decolonial Atlas or on Belcourt’s web site.

The map title comes from Salters use of the term "good land" repeatedly on his map of the north shore of Lake Huron.

via UWM Libraries

More about the "Good Land" map can be seen on the Decolonial Atlas.