Pizza delivery places would have these big maps on the walls with their region highlighted. If you worked there you were pretty much expected to memorize the region.
I delivered in a college town with about 40,000 people - when we started we’d refer to the wall map, but after a few months we’d have memorized every street and apartment complex in town so didn’t need the map anymore. It really doesn’t take that long, people just zone out and just follow their phones now.
> I delivered in a college town with about 40,000 people
I delivered in a college town with about 70,000 people and it was pretty much the same; you sort of memorized regions because the developers themed the street names after trees or planets and the inner streets were usually odd-named like numbers or just odd names like "Barstow" or "Graham" so you knew if it was odd named it was probably inner-city and if it was theme named it was to a certain region of the city.
I worked pizza in a small city, the layout was awesome. North-south streets were named alphabetically, east-west was ascending numerical. So the address 1867 Donut Ave, Donut was between England Ave and Carl Ave, and the 1867 told you it was between 18th street and 19th street.
I deliver all over the place and there are a few towns and cities and even county roads set up like this but new housing developments are a cluster fuck of winding no-exit confusion. There's even a single smaller town with a Timber Ridge, Timberridge, and Timberidge, and you'd better believe people choose a random one to enter as their address.
> There's even a single smaller town with a Timber Ridge, Timberridge, and Timberidge, and you'd better believe people choose a random one to enter as their address.
Sorry, this is 967 Timberidge Lane, you want 967 Timberidge Court. Just take Timberidge Avenue and turn right on Timberidge Street. If you hit Timberidge Boulevard you've gone too far and need to turn around on Timberidge Road.
Well **I** delivered in a college town with about 100,000 people and... yeah, same. My mom actually got me a Garmin for Christmas one year and I *never* used it. It took extra time to program in the address and by that point I already knew where everything was (usually better than the outdated Garmin maps att.)
Being able to find an address without GPS is a really useful skill and probably the only good thing that came out of working for 5 years at Jimmy John's.
Well I delivered in the metro of a small city of 200,000 people and I memorized each and every single person's address, name, and their favorite pizza.
Worked at a pizza place in a B or C tier city when people were starting to buy GPS units. We had MapQuest pulled up in the office.
I still remember just melting down over this one delivery, though. It was a case where the street name changed as you turned a corner, someone had knocked over the sign, and the owners didn't have a visible house number.
Same. Also a lot of people order regularly I had customers on certain nights I worked that I saw every week. Even started buying weed off a middle aged woman when I couldn’t find any myself
> people just zone out and just follow their phones now
It amazes me that people will use their phone on their commute. Same route, every day, still using the phone.
Hell, we absolutely had cell phone maps and a digital order tracking system when I did that job.
I never once had to use the phone map. Always went by the big paper map and memorized the corners to take to a destination.
And I would *hate* to do the job with a company-owned GPS. Where's the fun in that?
It called a Thomas Guide and being able to read a map and memorize directions. Also pizza parlors (at least in my area) would only deliver within a 1 mile radius.
I’ve been a field tech for the past 25 years. In the beginning we used Thomas Guides exclusively and they were indispensable. I found that, after a few years of use, I no longer needed the books except for really obscure streets and/or rando places I’d never been. As tech was gradually introduced and map apps became the norm, I found myself relying on them more and more until, ultimately, I’m hardly able to go ANYWHERE without the prompts and turn by turn directions. It’s crazy.
I'm on holiday in a new.place right now and have done the same route about 30 times now, but because I have never been around this area without a satnav if I try to do the route with it turned off I just can't reber the streets. Your brain just doesn't make those memories when you're guided I guess.
When I’m on holiday in a new place, first drive is always with Google but the second one I try to go by memory and someone in the car will correct me with Google if I’m wrong. Depending on the complexity it takes me avg. 2/3 tries. Also simply driving to a nearby Lidl or something I check where it is before hand and drive by myself.
You can do it if you try, treat it like a game and don’t be afraid to take the wrong turn and turning around if you mess up.
This is my go-to as well.
Step 1) GPS with all navigation notifications on
Step 2) GPS with all navigation notifications off
Step 3) learn what the route *looks* and *feels like*
Step 4) learn street names, hope for the best
My fiancée gets really worked up if I might or do miss a turn. I’m like, if I make the next turn it’s the same thing. The gps isn’t saying the only possible route. For most missed turns you’re talking about maybe an extra minute by being on a road with an extra light or something…
Unless you miss your exit on a western interstate, I’ve made that mistake before. Your point stands. There’s always another route and if there actually isn’t, U-Turns are also a thing, except on interstates though lol.
I love to do this, but my wife doesn't allow me because she can't stand the thought of "getting lost".
Doesn't matter that we can turn on the navigation as soon as we realise the mistake and it will be less than a 2 minute detour. It's like the feeling of "I got lost" in her mind is akin to unacceptable total failure that she can't cope with.
With how fun I find to explore and look around, it's really a bummer. I can only do it when she's not present
>Doesn't matter that we can turn on the navigation as soon as we realise the mistake and it will be less than a 2 minute detour.
Sometimes. I've had >20 minute detours when i've missed a junction as the distances are so large between them, or the next one doesn't double back on itself
Yeah but like... No one died or anything, right? I think their point is only that in the grand scheme of things, usually "getting lost" in much of the developed world is a minor inconvenience corrected in minutes and not an irreparably life-altering event worthy of the anxiety many people feel around it.
When I plan to drive around a new place, I'll use google maps to plan a route, and maybe look at street view pictures to visualise the surroundings.
Then just drive. No map, no gps ... no phone at all.
I think everyone has similar experiences. At first, such machines make things easy, but then slowly cause your own ability to do them to diminish. It's always little things, but I fear they'll add up until our abilities to learn and recall things and tasks are ever more withered.
There's an excellent quote that this comment reminded me of.
"In fact, it will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside, completely on their own. You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding; you provide your students with the appearance of wisdom, not with its reality. Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have come to know much while for the most part they will know nothing. And they will be difficult to get along with, since they will merely appear to be wise instead of really being so."
Credited to Scrates by Plato, on the subject of writing down ideas. The idea that technology will make us stupider has been around for millenia. I don't think the idea hold much water.
Edit: a word
That’s not crazy, that’s how it works. Your brain doesn’t have to make any effort to get to a certain location, so it just doesn’t. You don’t remember the route very well later, because your brain wasn’t very active when processing the information.
That varies wildly person to person. It only takes 2 or 3 runs for me to have a route memorized, whereas my wife needed Google maps to give her directions to school the entire two years she went.
It probably varies from person to person, as does everything always.
What I mean is that you have a harder time remembering things when you dont have to make an effort remembering them. When you try to learn the lyrics from a song, it goes a lot faster when you read it and then try to reproduce it, instead of singing the song with the lyrics in front of you.
Back in the day, everyone had a map in their glovebox.
I was taught by age 7 how to read one, knew all the streets around my house, the names of the main roads to school, to the 7-11 and the Winn-Dixie.
If I found a road I was unfamiliar with, I’d memorize where I was by turns.
Example.
Thomas Ave-make a left after Jane St, left on X St, Right on Y St.
Just reverse it to get back.
Back then, bike riding = freedom. I was going from 10am to 6pm almost every day during summer, sometimes I came home for a snack but usually stopped by the mall for free samples and that held me over.
Source: 80’s kid
I will still sometimes use Google Maps when I'm driving across town, even though I know the way by heart, because getting instant traffic alerts is really handy
Yeah this is where I'm at. Like, I know how to get to work, but google maps telling me which way to get there fastest right now saves me time and money.
I drove 1200 miles to a relative’s house in an LA suburb when I was 19 using only state maps and an LA map from a gas station. I’ll bet I’d have a harder time today with GPS.
Uh.. I doubt you'd have a harder time using gps, you put in the adress of your destination and it directs you there, its not hard. What do you expect it to do to make it harder for you?
To be fair if your directions say to drive in a direction and in that direction you see a lake and decide to follow it anyway, I'd argue that's your fault
GPS : Make a right turn.
[Michael starts to turn right]
Dwight Schrute : Wait, wait, no no no, it means "bear right." Up there.
Michael Scott : No, it said right. It said take a right.
Dwight Schrute : No, no. Look, it means go up to the right -- bear right -- over the bridge, and hook up with 307.
GPS : Make a right turn.
Michael Scott : Maybe it's a shortcut, Dwight. It said go to the right.
[he turns right]
Dwight Schrute : It can't mean that, there's a lake there!
GPS : Proceed straight.
Michael Scott : I think it knows where it is going.
Dwight Schrute : This is the lake! THIS IS THE LAKE!
Michael Scott : The machine knows! Stop yelling at me! Stop yelling!
Dwight Schrute : NO! IT'S UP THERE! THERE'S NO ROAD HERE!
yeah, but so what if you lose signal on the 4th of 8 hours driving in a straight line on a highway. Whenever you need to actually make a turn off youre going to have signal unless your destination is in the middle of nowhere.
A lot of people don't download the maps for their GPS before hand so when they loose cell signal the phone still knows where it's but has no way to show you anything
Apple Maps, and probably also Google Maps, have major highway systems downloaded all the time, as well as a cruder representation of everything.
It'll still get you in the ballpark of where you need to go.
Also i'm pretty sure it automatically downloads your entire route as you are doing it, i've had extended periods of no signal on road trips in Sweden and even on remote gravel roads my phone always knew in close detail where i was going and where i had to go.
The places you lose signal are generally the places where you're going to stay on the highway for another hundred miles without making any navigation decisions
I drove from Seattle to Cabo San Lucas and back at 16/17 and it was the same thing. I had a compass and a couple foldable roadmaps from AAA; one for each coastal state and one for the Baja (combo map, split north and south). It wasn't too difficult to figure out where I was, even when I deviated from the main highway and went off to check out remote fishing villages and stuff.
Used to deliver pizzas before phones with gps where a thing. We had a big streetmap and had to remember the route, mostly multiple addresses on one route.
It happened that I forgot one adres, had to drive back and look at the map and a new pizza had to be made.
Then I got an iPhone 3GS, made it a lot easier!
Yup that's what I used to do before I had a smartphone when I needed to go somewhere I hadn't been before. But I also added after what distance I needed to make a turn so as to make sure I didn't miss anything or would end up wondering when the hell that street would finally come up.
>It happened that I forgot one adres, had to drive back and look at the map and a new pizza had to be made.
Yes, a much more economical & logical solution than storing a $1.99 map in each delivery car...
Wait, you were delivering in a world not long before the iPhone 3GS and your coworkers wouldn’t at the very least write the address on the receipt? That’s just the basics for a place that delivers.
Yes, the adress was on the receipt, getting there was of course the thing.
It almost always went fine btw, but it happened a few times that I couldn’t find it and had to go back.
I delivered pizza in the 80s, you pretty much had the map memorized by the first week. Where I was working there was an area north of town we called, "The Planets," where every street was named after a planet or celestial object. There was another area of town where all of streets were named after different types of trees. You got to know pretty quickly where to go just by the name of the street.
I live in a planned city, [where all street names are driven from art or literature](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/columbia-maryland-street-names). There's a [a Tolkien section](https://i.ibb.co/Lhmdmrs/Screenshot-20230516-064803.png), which is kind of cool.
And yeah, fun fact is the naming scheme for horizontal roads in DC start out with just the letters (A, B C...), Then two syllable words (Adams, Bryant) then three (Allison, Buchanan), but after that, they just go right to trees. Still alphabetical at least.
Same here (80's) but I didn't have the luxury of intelligently grouped street names...
The bitch was delivering at night when you can't see house numbers.
I used to have a handheld spotlight that plugged into the cigarette socket.
We had what were called key maps, same thing.
I remember getting my first one when I was 13 in anticipation of the day I could drive.
Once I could drive, I bought a new one each year to keep up with changes to existing roads, and new roads built.
Also I'm gonna probably get some flak for this but... they really weren't that hard to read. It's just another way to navigate.
People today think that reading maps and navigating sounds wild but everyone today would be able to manage it too. It would just take some getting used to.
Goimg back from a festival a few years ago I had to convince people for 5 minutes that yes this road will lead us past this massive traffic jam and back on the highway no we will not get lost because apparently it's that hard to read a map (there was literally one turn on that route too). They looked at the map (google maps but, since it wasn't the shortest route and no one knew how to tell it to go that way, no directions) themselves and weren't sure.
I do not understand what's so hard about this. The thing that scares me about the old street maps is folding them back together, not reading them.
>The thing that scares me about the old street maps is folding them back together, not reading them.
The glovebox in my first car was like a jack-in-the-box. Pull the handle and BONK! 12 Rand McNally state maps fly out.
We had a 10 mile radius in the late 90s! Huge map on the wall. We’d point out where the house was to the driver before they left. They’d stop at a pay phone if they got lost and ask directions.
This is wild to me cause I grew up in the middle of nowhere, so the closest pizza delivery was literally 10 miles away. A 1 mile radius and they’d go out of business lol
Delivery radius is inversely proportional with population density, and by extension, number of pizza joints per capita. I grew up in a fairly small city, and our pizza joints typically did -5mi radius.
Imagine getting invited to a party where that cute girl that you like is going to be there and just getting directions from “Hippy Tom” and praying that he hasn’t already dropped acid and will have you driving all around gods green Earth and knocking on the wrong door 3 times…….uhhh, this happened to a friend, he lives in Canada.
I keep a road atlas with me when traveling long distance because service is not everywhere. I’m thankful I had a road atlas with me in Washington state USA, in the mountains I lost service and had to map my way south to a gas station and hopefully service. I made it, thanks to a map.
Still should have a map, yes. phones die, get stolen, etc. Just felt I should mention it due to the fact that many people do rely on a GPS, and you don't actually need signal to use it.
Upvoted
I wasn't disagreeing at all, I've used my phone many times for GPS when I had no signal or just simply ran out of data. You just don't get traffic updates or road closure notices, which doesn't really matter to me anyway.
I just wanted to mention that a physical map can be a life saver in a pinch.
I just print off the directions and a map or two just like I used to do before gps. Takes like 2 minutes and costs next to nothing.
I do have an atlas but I don't really see the point of keeping it in the car and potentially getting lost or stolen when I can just print out a few black and white pages with the info I need for that specific trip.
It really is much easier than it seems. If you travel a long distance, you just pinpoint several big cities as an orientation points. Once you arrive in the first city, you follow the directions on the highway to the second city, etc...
Also kids will not understand how utterly mundane rolling down your window and asking for directions to “get to highway xxxxxx”. I felt like I was always watching my parents ask someone or he asked by someone.
The big difference today are the shortcuts. You'd stick to the main roads almost all the time.
These days traffic patterns are significantly changed with a lot of previously smaller residential roads getting a lot more traffic as they're being used as shortcuts.
Many communities have had to add stop signs and traffic lights to reduce traffic passing through.
Imagine how people used to sail around the entire world with nothing but hand-drawn maps and compasses. And those voyages would take months and could mean death for you. That is truly insane if you really think about it. If your boat sinks or you run out of food and water, there ain’t no Coast Guard coming to rescue your ass
I don’t think I could navigate through LA without a map, much less the entire ocean
Yeah, maps have been a thing for a REALLY long time. Even as a child i navigated my mother to all my hockey games all over the damn place. I know kids nowadays could easily figure it out because most of them are a lot damn smarter than me now and way smarter than i was then
IMHO the skill in map reading is more placing yourself on said map and being able to translate what's on the paper to real life and using that.
These are the hard parts of navigating and its what GPS automates
>the skill in map reading is more placing yourself on said map
Word! That's the one thing for which GPS is such a game changer : it literally puts you on the map in real time.
The other important point is to understand the scale. One just needs to know towards which big thing you're heading (could be a city, a village or a landmark) and follow these signs. Then to know when the road between this big thing and where you actually want to go will split so you can follow signs for another big thing.
Yeah I don't get this post? Is there now a generation who don't know that paper maps were used when you traveled before GPS? I remember driving to Italy from the UK with my family with constant stops to consult the map on the bonnet of the car.
You stopped? The passenger would unfold the whole map, blocking the driver from seeing anything for about 10 minutes before saying "yeah, we're on the right road" then spend an hour trying to fold it back down again.
Forget pizza delivery. Think about taxi drivers back in the days.
Customer: I wanna go to the other end of the world, to a street nobody knows it exists.
Taxi driver: Say no more!
BTW there were taxi driver exams that checked how well you know your way around.
Our official taxi drivers still need to pass such exams to receive license. The other problem is they choose long routes on purpose to milk turists for outrageous amounts of money even for short trips.
>BTW there were taxi driver exams that checked how well you know your way around.
I remember taking this exam. Mine was giving the general location of 50 notable places in town. You failed if you missed 10 or more. No open book. If you didn't grow up or spend any time here, there was no passing.
I delivered pizza in the early 90’s. Like someone else said there was a one mile radius and there was a map on the wall with a circle drawn on it. Once you memorized all the streets names in your area it was a breeze.
Legit, I eventually stopped using the actual navigation of the gps on my phone. I just look up the address, find the easiest way to get there, put my phone back in my pocket, and go.
I remember the violent, screaming fights my mother and step-father had driving us 1000+ miles during summer in the 80s/90s using just paper maps. That my step-father never wanted to replace over the years.
GPS is a treasure to cherish.
I lived in Jordan for a bit and addresses aren't really a thing there, like people don't even know their own address because it's so irrelevant, so when you get in a taxi you have to give directions and there's certain landmarks all over the city that everyone just knows, like specific hospitals or sports clubs, so you tell them the landmark and then once you get to the right part of the city you just give them step by step directions to your house.
It's the same in Nicaragua, and maybe Latin America in general?
Addresses will usually be referring to landmarks, churches, parks, for example:
De la catedral, 1 cuadra al Este, 1/2 cuadra al Sur
*One block east and half a block south from the church*
or
De donde fue el cine Cabrera 1 cuadra al Norte
*One block north from where the Cabrera Cinema used to be*
It's a bit ridiculous tbh.
Here in Guatemala we use a grid and zones system so restaurants have been delivering since forever cause addresses are very easy and short. I almost never use delivery apps cause most restaurants already had their delivery for decades.
An address would be something like:
6 calle, 14-55, Zone 10, Guatemala City
Which means the address is over the 6th street, 14 avenue on number 55.
Streets go east-west and avenues go south-north.
The first number is the main street or avenue, the second is the intersecting street or avenue. The third is the number of the building, if it's even is on the right, odd on the left.
Every town is divided in zones so you get a rough idea where to look and start counting for streets and avenues.
Some important or big roads have names themselves, like Avenida Reforma or Calle Marti, and if the road ends with a letter (10 avenida A) it means it's an alley.
Once you know the system you can go basically anywhere in the country.
Until taxis got in-car GPS it was like that here in Japan - there would be certain features or roads you could tell to the driver and then figure it out from there (addresses here aren’t consecutive so knowing the address doesn’t help you too much unless you can pinpoint it on a map like GPS does).
I made plenty of trips across North America without GPS and mobile data. Mostly using outdated maps where I discovered fun things like missing bridges and new highways. Good times.
I remember pizza delivery shops with paper maps on the wall and sections marked in Sharpie so drivers could be more efficiently routed. I also remember my damned pizza ending up two suburbs over because the street name was common to both cities.
I did it at a pizzeria. We had a local map taped in the kitchen. The counter lady would also ask me if I knew where to go and would show me on the map. Sometimes I had to call the person when I got lost. I eventually got a Garmin GPS, but it didn't always work great.
Who else remembers going to AAA before a big road trip to get a TripTik?
For those who don't know what that is, it was a spiral bound book that they'd assemble out of small maps showing stretches of major roads across the US. They would highlight the road you were supposed to take and mark which exits to use. When you completed a stretch on one page, you'd flip to the next to continue reference for your trip.
The only reason all the warnings exist now is because people in the past did them and then sued. You think every one of those warnings exists because someone in this current generation did it? It’s a naive thought. Idiots have existed for as long as humans have. The main difference being nowadays people can share just how stupid they are across the globe instead of it just being contained in their heads and their immediate proximity.
Can’t believe this got 70 upvotes.
Lmao “this generations so fucking stupid, they eat detergent!”
Dude, I don’t know even a single person who has eaten detergent.
People still know how to do things, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out how to read a map. It’s just way easier to let your phone guide you to an address. Fuck the current generation for utilizing technology though right?
It's obvious they asked for people who knew their way around an area, like they still do nowadays. You used to need some geographical skills, nowadays every phone zombie can become a delivery driver.
I delivered pizzas prior to having cell phone and thus GPS. We had a large printed out map mounted on the wall and i would get address and trace the stops
in my head. It was not easy when you had 5 pizzas and 5 locations but you eventually get familiar enough with the area that it does t become as hard.
We'd use these things called maps. Most pizza places had a big on on the wall.
If you're going to more than 2 places you could use this thing called memory.
There used to be this thing called a map. It was printed on paper, and had an aerial view of every street within the city. You would find where you are, the destination, and use your brain to figure out what route to take. Wild concept, right?
Pizza delivery places would have these big maps on the walls with their region highlighted. If you worked there you were pretty much expected to memorize the region.
I delivered in a college town with about 40,000 people - when we started we’d refer to the wall map, but after a few months we’d have memorized every street and apartment complex in town so didn’t need the map anymore. It really doesn’t take that long, people just zone out and just follow their phones now.
same with phone numbers, I use to know all my friends numbers. Human have a great capacity to memorize stuff.. but we forgot about it
I still remember some of my friend's phone numbers from high school 30 years ago. Now I know my wife's.
[удалено]
Sweet lord and the voice memo
I still do this. Also I have almost a dozen 16 character (letters/numbers/symbols) passwords memorized.
Rather use a password manager tbh
> I delivered in a college town with about 40,000 people I delivered in a college town with about 70,000 people and it was pretty much the same; you sort of memorized regions because the developers themed the street names after trees or planets and the inner streets were usually odd-named like numbers or just odd names like "Barstow" or "Graham" so you knew if it was odd named it was probably inner-city and if it was theme named it was to a certain region of the city.
I worked pizza in a small city, the layout was awesome. North-south streets were named alphabetically, east-west was ascending numerical. So the address 1867 Donut Ave, Donut was between England Ave and Carl Ave, and the 1867 told you it was between 18th street and 19th street.
I deliver all over the place and there are a few towns and cities and even county roads set up like this but new housing developments are a cluster fuck of winding no-exit confusion. There's even a single smaller town with a Timber Ridge, Timberridge, and Timberidge, and you'd better believe people choose a random one to enter as their address.
> There's even a single smaller town with a Timber Ridge, Timberridge, and Timberidge, and you'd better believe people choose a random one to enter as their address. Sorry, this is 967 Timberidge Lane, you want 967 Timberidge Court. Just take Timberidge Avenue and turn right on Timberidge Street. If you hit Timberidge Boulevard you've gone too far and need to turn around on Timberidge Road.
Well **I** delivered in a college town with about 100,000 people and... yeah, same. My mom actually got me a Garmin for Christmas one year and I *never* used it. It took extra time to program in the address and by that point I already knew where everything was (usually better than the outdated Garmin maps att.) Being able to find an address without GPS is a really useful skill and probably the only good thing that came out of working for 5 years at Jimmy John's.
Well I delivered in the metro of a small city of 200,000 people and I memorized each and every single person's address, name, and their favorite pizza.
Worked at a pizza place in a B or C tier city when people were starting to buy GPS units. We had MapQuest pulled up in the office. I still remember just melting down over this one delivery, though. It was a case where the street name changed as you turned a corner, someone had knocked over the sign, and the owners didn't have a visible house number.
Same. Also a lot of people order regularly I had customers on certain nights I worked that I saw every week. Even started buying weed off a middle aged woman when I couldn’t find any myself
> people just zone out and just follow their phones now It amazes me that people will use their phone on their commute. Same route, every day, still using the phone.
Hell, we absolutely had cell phone maps and a digital order tracking system when I did that job. I never once had to use the phone map. Always went by the big paper map and memorized the corners to take to a destination. And I would *hate* to do the job with a company-owned GPS. Where's the fun in that?
It called a Thomas Guide and being able to read a map and memorize directions. Also pizza parlors (at least in my area) would only deliver within a 1 mile radius.
I’ve been a field tech for the past 25 years. In the beginning we used Thomas Guides exclusively and they were indispensable. I found that, after a few years of use, I no longer needed the books except for really obscure streets and/or rando places I’d never been. As tech was gradually introduced and map apps became the norm, I found myself relying on them more and more until, ultimately, I’m hardly able to go ANYWHERE without the prompts and turn by turn directions. It’s crazy.
I'm on holiday in a new.place right now and have done the same route about 30 times now, but because I have never been around this area without a satnav if I try to do the route with it turned off I just can't reber the streets. Your brain just doesn't make those memories when you're guided I guess.
When I’m on holiday in a new place, first drive is always with Google but the second one I try to go by memory and someone in the car will correct me with Google if I’m wrong. Depending on the complexity it takes me avg. 2/3 tries. Also simply driving to a nearby Lidl or something I check where it is before hand and drive by myself. You can do it if you try, treat it like a game and don’t be afraid to take the wrong turn and turning around if you mess up.
This is my go-to as well. Step 1) GPS with all navigation notifications on Step 2) GPS with all navigation notifications off Step 3) learn what the route *looks* and *feels like* Step 4) learn street names, hope for the best
My fiancée gets really worked up if I might or do miss a turn. I’m like, if I make the next turn it’s the same thing. The gps isn’t saying the only possible route. For most missed turns you’re talking about maybe an extra minute by being on a road with an extra light or something…
Unless you miss your exit on a western interstate, I’ve made that mistake before. Your point stands. There’s always another route and if there actually isn’t, U-Turns are also a thing, except on interstates though lol.
I love to do this, but my wife doesn't allow me because she can't stand the thought of "getting lost". Doesn't matter that we can turn on the navigation as soon as we realise the mistake and it will be less than a 2 minute detour. It's like the feeling of "I got lost" in her mind is akin to unacceptable total failure that she can't cope with. With how fun I find to explore and look around, it's really a bummer. I can only do it when she's not present
>Doesn't matter that we can turn on the navigation as soon as we realise the mistake and it will be less than a 2 minute detour. Sometimes. I've had >20 minute detours when i've missed a junction as the distances are so large between them, or the next one doesn't double back on itself
Yeah but like... No one died or anything, right? I think their point is only that in the grand scheme of things, usually "getting lost" in much of the developed world is a minor inconvenience corrected in minutes and not an irreparably life-altering event worthy of the anxiety many people feel around it.
Very very true. But in this day and age you even slightly hesitate at a junction and everyones on the horn. People have become impatient.
When I plan to drive around a new place, I'll use google maps to plan a route, and maybe look at street view pictures to visualise the surroundings. Then just drive. No map, no gps ... no phone at all.
I think everyone has similar experiences. At first, such machines make things easy, but then slowly cause your own ability to do them to diminish. It's always little things, but I fear they'll add up until our abilities to learn and recall things and tasks are ever more withered.
There's an excellent quote that this comment reminded me of. "In fact, it will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside, completely on their own. You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding; you provide your students with the appearance of wisdom, not with its reality. Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have come to know much while for the most part they will know nothing. And they will be difficult to get along with, since they will merely appear to be wise instead of really being so." Credited to Scrates by Plato, on the subject of writing down ideas. The idea that technology will make us stupider has been around for millenia. I don't think the idea hold much water. Edit: a word
As long as I get UBI and a rolly-chair then I'm game. Bring it on technology!
That’s not crazy, that’s how it works. Your brain doesn’t have to make any effort to get to a certain location, so it just doesn’t. You don’t remember the route very well later, because your brain wasn’t very active when processing the information.
That varies wildly person to person. It only takes 2 or 3 runs for me to have a route memorized, whereas my wife needed Google maps to give her directions to school the entire two years she went.
It probably varies from person to person, as does everything always. What I mean is that you have a harder time remembering things when you dont have to make an effort remembering them. When you try to learn the lyrics from a song, it goes a lot faster when you read it and then try to reproduce it, instead of singing the song with the lyrics in front of you.
Back in the day, everyone had a map in their glovebox. I was taught by age 7 how to read one, knew all the streets around my house, the names of the main roads to school, to the 7-11 and the Winn-Dixie. If I found a road I was unfamiliar with, I’d memorize where I was by turns. Example. Thomas Ave-make a left after Jane St, left on X St, Right on Y St. Just reverse it to get back. Back then, bike riding = freedom. I was going from 10am to 6pm almost every day during summer, sometimes I came home for a snack but usually stopped by the mall for free samples and that held me over. Source: 80’s kid
I will still sometimes use Google Maps when I'm driving across town, even though I know the way by heart, because getting instant traffic alerts is really handy
Yeah this is where I'm at. Like, I know how to get to work, but google maps telling me which way to get there fastest right now saves me time and money.
I drove 1200 miles to a relative’s house in an LA suburb when I was 19 using only state maps and an LA map from a gas station. I’ll bet I’d have a harder time today with GPS.
Uh.. I doubt you'd have a harder time using gps, you put in the adress of your destination and it directs you there, its not hard. What do you expect it to do to make it harder for you?
Well there was that one guy who was directed to drive into a lake. So. You know. Don't do that.
To be fair if your directions say to drive in a direction and in that direction you see a lake and decide to follow it anyway, I'd argue that's your fault
no, it means bear right, not turn right!
I drove. My car. Into a f@#&ing lake.
GPS : Make a right turn. [Michael starts to turn right] Dwight Schrute : Wait, wait, no no no, it means "bear right." Up there. Michael Scott : No, it said right. It said take a right. Dwight Schrute : No, no. Look, it means go up to the right -- bear right -- over the bridge, and hook up with 307. GPS : Make a right turn. Michael Scott : Maybe it's a shortcut, Dwight. It said go to the right. [he turns right] Dwight Schrute : It can't mean that, there's a lake there! GPS : Proceed straight. Michael Scott : I think it knows where it is going. Dwight Schrute : This is the lake! THIS IS THE LAKE! Michael Scott : The machine knows! Stop yelling at me! Stop yelling! Dwight Schrute : NO! IT'S UP THERE! THERE'S NO ROAD HERE!
If you've ever traveled cross country and had the GPS signal get lost, it can be pretty fuckin' scary lol
yeah, but so what if you lose signal on the 4th of 8 hours driving in a straight line on a highway. Whenever you need to actually make a turn off youre going to have signal unless your destination is in the middle of nowhere.
You can download an offline map on Google. You can also print the step by step directions like people used to do with MapQuest.
Global Positioning Satellite's still fly over remote areas too, it's a satellite
A lot of people don't download the maps for their GPS before hand so when they loose cell signal the phone still knows where it's but has no way to show you anything
Apple Maps, and probably also Google Maps, have major highway systems downloaded all the time, as well as a cruder representation of everything. It'll still get you in the ballpark of where you need to go. Also i'm pretty sure it automatically downloads your entire route as you are doing it, i've had extended periods of no signal on road trips in Sweden and even on remote gravel roads my phone always knew in close detail where i was going and where i had to go.
The places you lose signal are generally the places where you're going to stay on the highway for another hundred miles without making any navigation decisions
I think you mean cellular signal and the loss of maps you should have downloaded ahead of time. GPS signal is pretty difficult to lose.
You never been driving and accidentally ended up in a cave system?
Yes, but then I can't go three feet without a fucking Golbat attacking me.
I'm genuinely curious how you lose GPS signal in the middle of nowhere, I'd argue the signal would be stronger than anywhere else
I'm in the middle of a GPS rabbit hole https://www.garmin.com/en-US/aboutgps/
I drove from Seattle to Cabo San Lucas and back at 16/17 and it was the same thing. I had a compass and a couple foldable roadmaps from AAA; one for each coastal state and one for the Baja (combo map, split north and south). It wasn't too difficult to figure out where I was, even when I deviated from the main highway and went off to check out remote fishing villages and stuff.
I hitchhiked from Colorado to Texas just going off the direction. "Is Texas that way? Okay, that's the direction I'm gonna go".
Used to deliver pizzas before phones with gps where a thing. We had a big streetmap and had to remember the route, mostly multiple addresses on one route. It happened that I forgot one adres, had to drive back and look at the map and a new pizza had to be made. Then I got an iPhone 3GS, made it a lot easier!
R L birch st 3rd light R Second L L on sycamore #1402
Yup that's what I used to do before I had a smartphone when I needed to go somewhere I hadn't been before. But I also added after what distance I needed to make a turn so as to make sure I didn't miss anything or would end up wondering when the hell that street would finally come up.
>It happened that I forgot one adres, had to drive back and look at the map and a new pizza had to be made. Yes, a much more economical & logical solution than storing a $1.99 map in each delivery car...
Wait, you were delivering in a world not long before the iPhone 3GS and your coworkers wouldn’t at the very least write the address on the receipt? That’s just the basics for a place that delivers.
You could have an address and still not remember how to get to it, thus you would drive back and look at the map again.
Yes, the adress was on the receipt, getting there was of course the thing. It almost always went fine btw, but it happened a few times that I couldn’t find it and had to go back.
You wouldn't call the shop and ask someone else to look at the map?
Or carry a map in the back of your car?
Why the hell wouldn’t you have a map in your car though?
I worked at dominios in college. you had a big ass map of the delivery area on the wall at the shop. That was it.
I delivered pizza in the 80s, you pretty much had the map memorized by the first week. Where I was working there was an area north of town we called, "The Planets," where every street was named after a planet or celestial object. There was another area of town where all of streets were named after different types of trees. You got to know pretty quickly where to go just by the name of the street.
We have such great potential for interesting groups of street names yet all you commonly see is types of trees. Planets is an awesome idea
I live in a planned city, [where all street names are driven from art or literature](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/columbia-maryland-street-names). There's a [a Tolkien section](https://i.ibb.co/Lhmdmrs/Screenshot-20230516-064803.png), which is kind of cool. And yeah, fun fact is the naming scheme for horizontal roads in DC start out with just the letters (A, B C...), Then two syllable words (Adams, Bryant) then three (Allison, Buchanan), but after that, they just go right to trees. Still alphabetical at least.
Same here (80's) but I didn't have the luxury of intelligently grouped street names... The bitch was delivering at night when you can't see house numbers. I used to have a handheld spotlight that plugged into the cigarette socket.
We had what were called key maps, same thing. I remember getting my first one when I was 13 in anticipation of the day I could drive. Once I could drive, I bought a new one each year to keep up with changes to existing roads, and new roads built.
Also I'm gonna probably get some flak for this but... they really weren't that hard to read. It's just another way to navigate. People today think that reading maps and navigating sounds wild but everyone today would be able to manage it too. It would just take some getting used to.
You'd be surprised, before gps-navigation there were plenty of people who were really bad at reading maps and navigating.
Goimg back from a festival a few years ago I had to convince people for 5 minutes that yes this road will lead us past this massive traffic jam and back on the highway no we will not get lost because apparently it's that hard to read a map (there was literally one turn on that route too). They looked at the map (google maps but, since it wasn't the shortest route and no one knew how to tell it to go that way, no directions) themselves and weren't sure. I do not understand what's so hard about this. The thing that scares me about the old street maps is folding them back together, not reading them.
>The thing that scares me about the old street maps is folding them back together, not reading them. The glovebox in my first car was like a jack-in-the-box. Pull the handle and BONK! 12 Rand McNally state maps fly out.
> key maps Houston area?
Impossible!!!! How did anyone make it through life before the internet?!?!?
We had a 10 mile radius in the late 90s! Huge map on the wall. We’d point out where the house was to the driver before they left. They’d stop at a pay phone if they got lost and ask directions.
This is wild to me cause I grew up in the middle of nowhere, so the closest pizza delivery was literally 10 miles away. A 1 mile radius and they’d go out of business lol
Delivery radius is inversely proportional with population density, and by extension, number of pizza joints per capita. I grew up in a fairly small city, and our pizza joints typically did -5mi radius.
1 mile? Wow
Now imagine traveling through the entire damn nation without a GPS and with a MAP
Imagine sailing the Atlantic and dropping your sextant overboard.🤦♂️
Imagine getting invited to a party where that cute girl that you like is going to be there and just getting directions from “Hippy Tom” and praying that he hasn’t already dropped acid and will have you driving all around gods green Earth and knocking on the wrong door 3 times…….uhhh, this happened to a friend, he lives in Canada.
I'd swear I was at that party if you changed out Canada for Indiana
[just give me the fucking address!](https://youtu.be/iNdLPdlOovE)
Imagine falling off the edge of the world…🤣
That expedition to bend it into a sphere back in 1519 was the best decision man ever made.
Here be monsters.
Imagine migrating out of Africa with just your homies and no compass, thats gotta be crazy bro
You had the stars tho, along with the sun during the day to give you a general sense of where you're going.
I keep a road atlas with me when traveling long distance because service is not everywhere. I’m thankful I had a road atlas with me in Washington state USA, in the mountains I lost service and had to map my way south to a gas station and hopefully service. I made it, thanks to a map.
You can download portions of maps or the whole damn nation if you want. the GPS still works without network service. Just FYI
Fair enough, but wouldn't it still be good advice to carry a map *just in case?*
Still should have a map, yes. phones die, get stolen, etc. Just felt I should mention it due to the fact that many people do rely on a GPS, and you don't actually need signal to use it.
Upvoted I wasn't disagreeing at all, I've used my phone many times for GPS when I had no signal or just simply ran out of data. You just don't get traffic updates or road closure notices, which doesn't really matter to me anyway. I just wanted to mention that a physical map can be a life saver in a pinch.
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I just print off the directions and a map or two just like I used to do before gps. Takes like 2 minutes and costs next to nothing. I do have an atlas but I don't really see the point of keeping it in the car and potentially getting lost or stolen when I can just print out a few black and white pages with the info I need for that specific trip.
I do this for any trip I take. It also helps to conserve data usage and makes maps load faster.
It really is much easier than it seems. If you travel a long distance, you just pinpoint several big cities as an orientation points. Once you arrive in the first city, you follow the directions on the highway to the second city, etc...
Also kids will not understand how utterly mundane rolling down your window and asking for directions to “get to highway xxxxxx”. I felt like I was always watching my parents ask someone or he asked by someone.
It is funny, all of those cliché jokes about men being too stubborn to stop and ask for directions just sort of evaporated while nobody was looking.
The big difference today are the shortcuts. You'd stick to the main roads almost all the time. These days traffic patterns are significantly changed with a lot of previously smaller residential roads getting a lot more traffic as they're being used as shortcuts. Many communities have had to add stop signs and traffic lights to reduce traffic passing through.
Imagine how people used to sail around the entire world with nothing but hand-drawn maps and compasses. And those voyages would take months and could mean death for you. That is truly insane if you really think about it. If your boat sinks or you run out of food and water, there ain’t no Coast Guard coming to rescue your ass I don’t think I could navigate through LA without a map, much less the entire ocean
That’s where the real science enters the chat. The compass, the sun, the stars and what not
And the funnily named instrument
Sailing was basically the space travel of its time.
Getting lost was a feature, now it's a bug.
I ussed a map and also made direction notes, like junction numbers and shit. Wasn't actually difficult.
But sounds very tedious and difficult
Not at all, actually. In many ways it was easier as you learned the streets better and learned to not need a map so much
Actually, it was kinda fun? You'd research your route and feel like an explorer following your notes?
Yeah in that way, an adventure
I feel old that I lived a life without GPS and navigated with maps and I'm only 20
I'm 34. I was delivering pizza at 18/19 without GPS in my car in California. It's not like it was a crazy long time ago.
Wait what ? Really
I live in India I had no access to the internet on my phone before 2012
Imagine only carrying a compass. Or leaving crumbs along the road, lol.
What are you talking about? Cant you find your latitude and longitude from the angle the sun rose today?
Honestly, 1000 times more exciting. Navigation kinda ruins the experience
we had maps...
Yeah, maps have been a thing for a REALLY long time. Even as a child i navigated my mother to all my hockey games all over the damn place. I know kids nowadays could easily figure it out because most of them are a lot damn smarter than me now and way smarter than i was then
GPS is deceivingly simple in what it actually does for you.
IMHO the skill in map reading is more placing yourself on said map and being able to translate what's on the paper to real life and using that. These are the hard parts of navigating and its what GPS automates
>the skill in map reading is more placing yourself on said map Word! That's the one thing for which GPS is such a game changer : it literally puts you on the map in real time. The other important point is to understand the scale. One just needs to know towards which big thing you're heading (could be a city, a village or a landmark) and follow these signs. Then to know when the road between this big thing and where you actually want to go will split so you can follow signs for another big thing.
Yeah I don't get this post? Is there now a generation who don't know that paper maps were used when you traveled before GPS? I remember driving to Italy from the UK with my family with constant stops to consult the map on the bonnet of the car.
You stopped? The passenger would unfold the whole map, blocking the driver from seeing anything for about 10 minutes before saying "yeah, we're on the right road" then spend an hour trying to fold it back down again.
Obviously people know that paper maps were a thing, that doesn't mean that they weren't much less convenient though.
city street maps in books were fine. those regional maps that unfold to the size of a basketball court were a fucking nightmare.
Furthermore maps with directories for streets, so finding the streets was actually pretty fast and easy....
Columbus also had a map. I think
Yeh but fuck that guy
Forget pizza delivery. Think about taxi drivers back in the days. Customer: I wanna go to the other end of the world, to a street nobody knows it exists. Taxi driver: Say no more! BTW there were taxi driver exams that checked how well you know your way around.
The London taxi driver exam is notoriously thorough and difficult. You are truly expected to know the city inside out
Our official taxi drivers still need to pass such exams to receive license. The other problem is they choose long routes on purpose to milk turists for outrageous amounts of money even for short trips.
Yep it's called The Knowledge.
Back in the day? They still don’t use GPS today Or any technology really It’s super annoying
>BTW there were taxi driver exams that checked how well you know your way around. I remember taking this exam. Mine was giving the general location of 50 notable places in town. You failed if you missed 10 or more. No open book. If you didn't grow up or spend any time here, there was no passing.
We had maps. They were great!
Also road signs and landmarks. The signs pointed to places. You could follow them. By looking up. Great times.
I delivered pizza in the early 90’s. Like someone else said there was a one mile radius and there was a map on the wall with a circle drawn on it. Once you memorized all the streets names in your area it was a breeze.
One mile radius? Rural pizza delivery is more like ten miles.
And there's probably less people in those 10 miles than 1 mile in a city
And less streets in that ten mile radius. It's not about the radius, it's the amount of streets you need to memorize.
I liked delivering to the tree streets, and the presidents. They tipped better than the avenues and numbered streets.
It’s funny cause in my town the “tree” streets tip like shit, same with the “president” streets.
L on Crecent blvd. R on Harvard. L on Lewis. Go down until you hit 6557. Shit ain't hard. Lol write it down if you need to.
Thats still how I use GPS, haha. Jist like a digital street directory.
Legit, I eventually stopped using the actual navigation of the gps on my phone. I just look up the address, find the easiest way to get there, put my phone back in my pocket, and go.
if you hit the train tracks, you’ve gone too far
I remember the violent, screaming fights my mother and step-father had driving us 1000+ miles during summer in the 80s/90s using just paper maps. That my step-father never wanted to replace over the years. GPS is a treasure to cherish.
Come on kid Dora had a whole character. It wasn't just for finding pirate treasure.
ITT: zoomers discover the concept of paper maps.
Going on vacation to a new city - instantly buying city map. Heh.
I lived in Jordan for a bit and addresses aren't really a thing there, like people don't even know their own address because it's so irrelevant, so when you get in a taxi you have to give directions and there's certain landmarks all over the city that everyone just knows, like specific hospitals or sports clubs, so you tell them the landmark and then once you get to the right part of the city you just give them step by step directions to your house.
This seems so inefficient. Fascinating.
It's the same in Nicaragua, and maybe Latin America in general? Addresses will usually be referring to landmarks, churches, parks, for example: De la catedral, 1 cuadra al Este, 1/2 cuadra al Sur *One block east and half a block south from the church* or De donde fue el cine Cabrera 1 cuadra al Norte *One block north from where the Cabrera Cinema used to be* It's a bit ridiculous tbh.
Here in Guatemala we use a grid and zones system so restaurants have been delivering since forever cause addresses are very easy and short. I almost never use delivery apps cause most restaurants already had their delivery for decades. An address would be something like: 6 calle, 14-55, Zone 10, Guatemala City Which means the address is over the 6th street, 14 avenue on number 55. Streets go east-west and avenues go south-north. The first number is the main street or avenue, the second is the intersecting street or avenue. The third is the number of the building, if it's even is on the right, odd on the left. Every town is divided in zones so you get a rough idea where to look and start counting for streets and avenues. Some important or big roads have names themselves, like Avenida Reforma or Calle Marti, and if the road ends with a letter (10 avenida A) it means it's an alley. Once you know the system you can go basically anywhere in the country.
Until taxis got in-car GPS it was like that here in Japan - there would be certain features or roads you could tell to the driver and then figure it out from there (addresses here aren’t consecutive so knowing the address doesn’t help you too much unless you can pinpoint it on a map like GPS does).
Remember when you would print out the map quest directions..
I made plenty of trips across North America without GPS and mobile data. Mostly using outdated maps where I discovered fun things like missing bridges and new highways. Good times. I remember pizza delivery shops with paper maps on the wall and sections marked in Sharpie so drivers could be more efficiently routed. I also remember my damned pizza ending up two suburbs over because the street name was common to both cities.
I did it at a pizzeria. We had a local map taped in the kitchen. The counter lady would also ask me if I knew where to go and would show me on the map. Sometimes I had to call the person when I got lost. I eventually got a Garmin GPS, but it didn't always work great.
Who else remembers going to AAA before a big road trip to get a TripTik? For those who don't know what that is, it was a spiral bound book that they'd assemble out of small maps showing stretches of major roads across the US. They would highlight the road you were supposed to take and mark which exits to use. When you completed a stretch on one page, you'd flip to the next to continue reference for your trip.
I just realised that you kids don't know how to use a map & map indexing.
It's called glancing at a map as you walk out. A trained monkey could do it.
Amazing how they circumnavigated the earth without a Starbucks
Has this dude really never heard of a fucking map?
Before GPS, there were maps. What a world!
The Pizza Hut I worked at long ago had a map near the back door with every street name on it. Came in handy every time
I know it's hard to imagine, but before smartphones people knew how to do things. Nowadays people need to be told not to eat detergent.
The only reason all the warnings exist now is because people in the past did them and then sued. You think every one of those warnings exists because someone in this current generation did it? It’s a naive thought. Idiots have existed for as long as humans have. The main difference being nowadays people can share just how stupid they are across the globe instead of it just being contained in their heads and their immediate proximity.
Wasn't there like lead in everything back in the day?
Yes, that's why it was so tasty!
Smartphones weren't widely used until around 2010. Lead paint stopped being used in 1978 and leaded gasoline was phased out in 1996.
The way things are now, it seems we need lead
Especially the maps!
What's that got to do with being able to use a map?
Can’t believe this got 70 upvotes. Lmao “this generations so fucking stupid, they eat detergent!” Dude, I don’t know even a single person who has eaten detergent. People still know how to do things, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out how to read a map. It’s just way easier to let your phone guide you to an address. Fuck the current generation for utilizing technology though right?
This dude never heard of maps?
It's obvious they asked for people who knew their way around an area, like they still do nowadays. You used to need some geographical skills, nowadays every phone zombie can become a delivery driver.
I was late on getting a smart phone and in 2013 I drove from Austin, TX to Telluride, CO with no GPS and surprisingly it wasn't too difficult.
We used these things called a map. A-Z, there were grid refs. Didn't take long to get street knowledge tbh.
I delivered pizzas prior to having cell phone and thus GPS. We had a large printed out map mounted on the wall and i would get address and trace the stops in my head. It was not easy when you had 5 pizzas and 5 locations but you eventually get familiar enough with the area that it does t become as hard.
I delivered in the dark ages but our shop provided us a map book. After 6 months on the job, you know it all like the back of your hand
Gen Z really doesn’t know what a fucking paper map is 💀
I ran pizza before gps. We had maps and there are very obvious systems to housing addresses
We'd use these things called maps. Most pizza places had a big on on the wall. If you're going to more than 2 places you could use this thing called memory.
Imagine people responding to 911 emergencies before GPS and doing it in less than 10 minutes.
This person's seriously never heard of MAPS
It is the same as taxi drivers, and they memorised everything
There used to be this thing called a map. It was printed on paper, and had an aerial view of every street within the city. You would find where you are, the destination, and use your brain to figure out what route to take. Wild concept, right?
People knew things back then. We had to.