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It's funny.  Laugh. Media Television

Obsessively Detailed Map Of Springfield 371

An anonymous reader writes "With all these stories going around about governments' abilities to pinpoint our location via various means, it's quite surprising that one group of people have avoided them for so long. That dastardly family, The Simpsons, have been hidden in Springfield for far too long. Which brings us to the following obsessively detailed map of Springfield. From Jerry Lerma and Terry Hogan: "The mapping of Springfield began in the Spring of 2001 when we realized that no adequate map of Springfield existed either online or in print.""
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Obsessively Detailed Map Of Springfield

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  • simpsons hit n run (Score:5, Interesting)

    by shird ( 566377 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @03:42AM (#10243972) Homepage Journal
    Why not just have a game of simpsons hit and run? Gives you a pretty detailed 3d look of springfield. And its from the makers, so more reliable.
  • by gordgekko ( 574109 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @03:43AM (#10243975) Homepage
    I don't think there is any consistency to the locations in the series. The Simpsons' house alone has been located in a residential neighbourhood, beside Moe's Tavern and beside the nuclear power plant. How do you create a map where the locations are so fluid?
  • Why bother when... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lxt ( 724570 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @03:45AM (#10243983) Journal
    ...the writers themselves have said on the DVD commentaries that although in the first few seasons a concious effort was made to keep geography accurate, after that they found it easier (and funnier) just to mess about with it, meaning the Simpsons' house is in many places (next to moes, next to the power plant, etc.).
  • This ROCKS. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DrStrangeLug ( 799458 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @03:46AM (#10243986)
    Seriously, I love it. Yes, I understand that you can never have an accurate map of Springfield (there are contradictions across episodes) but this is about as good as you can get. BTW, wasn't the Michael Jackson Expressway (formerly the Dali Lama expressway) renamed to the Matlock Expressway ?
  • hey.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Spatula Sam ( 770957 ) * on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @04:02AM (#10244036)
    there's no Flanders' house! What gives?
  • by Kokuyo ( 549451 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @04:02AM (#10244037) Journal
    Even though you have a troll rating at the moment I write this I'd like to answer this question because I think it isn't trolling what you're doing... just a bit of missing the point ;).

    The Simpsons are funny if you are the kind of person to understand and like the jokes. You don't have to like them. But others do for the humor, for the political and social critics na dfor many more reasons. Sure, it's fictional. But what is not ficitonal in one or another way today? The Simpsons bring fans together and make them DO something together.
    So you can define this work as a way to waste your time or you can see it as a way to honor a piece of work that has brought and continues to bring people together.

    That is the reason why I think this project is plain cool.
  • Only bridge? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Fortress ( 763470 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @04:26AM (#10244094) Homepage
    Where's the only bridge out of town?

    From the episode "Bart's Comet"
    http://www.snpp.com/episodes/2F11.html

    I see at least three bridges.

  • by wertarbyte ( 811674 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @04:33AM (#10244108) Homepage
    And its from the makers, so more reliable.

    So you've never seen the simpsons at all...Springfield itself is moving around, sometimes it's at the ocean, sometimes near the desert or high mountains, the building in springfield are moving, sometimes the simpsons house is next to the quick-e-mart, sometimes next to the power plant, and even the rooms in homers house are changing.

  • Re:But in episode... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @04:48AM (#10244146)

    although wasn't the Simpson's house in eyeshot of ...

    The nuke plant.
    The Springfield brdige.
    Kwik-E-Mart ...
  • by Gordonjcp ( 186804 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @05:16AM (#10244212) Homepage
    ... and it's a very, very eerie moment. If you're kind of zoned in on something, it's surprisingly easy to ignore even quite loud alarms. If an alarm is as loud as, say, a fire alarm, it can be hard to shout over the top of it if you need to communicate instructions to people. So - make it all go quiet.


    As an aside, a theatre show that my sister worked on (she's a sound and lighting engineer) called for a very deep silence, just as you come into the last act. How do you come up with a silence sound effect? Well, from a minute or two before doors, right the way through, she had some white noise playing through the PA, very quietly but noticeably. Because it was there when you walked into the auditorium, you don't notice it. Then, when you drop it out...

  • by cluke ( 30394 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @05:33AM (#10244245)
    Yep, that about sums up the writers attitude. Do it right for a few seasons then get lazy-ass about it. Next to go was "We tried making it funny for the first few seasons, then found it was easier to just make it wacky"
  • by meeotch ( 524339 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @05:52AM (#10244286) Homepage
    imho one of the funniest things they ever did was to finally name the state as Kentucky [snpp.com] in the 11th season finale... leaving the fan community in an uproar all summer, only to change the line to "Missouri" when the episode re-aired prior to the season opener several months later. F*cking genius.

    mitch

  • by MrNiceGuySG ( 792990 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @06:10AM (#10244335) Homepage
    Northern Kentucky.. They actually came out and told us in episode that looked like a VH1 "Behind the Music" episode.
  • by yason ( 249474 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @06:18AM (#10244343) Journal

    I emailed the editors to tell 'em it was a dupe, but I guess I wass too late. The original story had better info.

    Maybe we should ask the editors to start up a new section called dupes.slashdot.org to better let people to ignore them :)

    Following the insanity of /., that'd probably soon be the place where we'd actually get to read all the real news.

  • MMORPG? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @06:39AM (#10244387)
    Am I the only one that thinks that now that a full map of Springfield is out there its only a matter of time before someone capitalizes and makes a Simpsons MMORPG. All of Springfield could be rendered 100% accurately now. Woo-wee!
  • Re:old! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @06:46AM (#10244401)
    which always makes me wonder.

    Why has taco not touched slashcode to make real improvements for almost 5 years?

    a simple modification to make the editor's side of the system to require a pull up query of all stories based on keywords in the headline would kill 90% of the dupes.

    I know that slashdot is and never has claimed to be a journalism site, but the amount of dupes is getting way out of hand.

    how about no ONE editor can publish a story but requires a second editor to approve the first approval?
  • Re:MMORPG? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ConceptJunkie ( 24823 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @07:52AM (#10244573) Homepage Journal
    At the very least, someone could take an engine like CrystalSpace and make a Virtual Springfield, like the non-3D game that came out several years ago. The game was cool, but was too limited, and as a non-3D environment, it used animations to render travelling from point to point rather than doing it on the fly. Using a 3D engine would be far better, like the Simpsons Hit and Run levels on steroids.

    Perhaps a collaborative project where people can submit locations on the map which are compiled together in a single environment. I'd do it, but I'm just a grandiose idea guy. ;-)

  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @08:32AM (#10244736)
    I have heard it is Springfield, Oregon.. Matt Groening lived up in Oregon, there is also a Shelbyville up there. Additionally, there are references to various characters as landmarks, street names,... I think Superintendant Chalmers and Principal Skinner.

    Also, there is an episode where Homer pulls out this chart of states they are banned from (the episode where they go to Florida, I think) and Oregon is one of 3 or 4 that they are not banned from...

    Ask anyone from Oregon, they will probably be able to explain all the little tie-ins with the area better.

  • Re:MMORPG? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kzinti ( 9651 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @09:58AM (#10245441) Homepage Journal
    There is no such thing as "completely accurate". Maybe it was just definitively wrong.

    There are at least two Simpsons driving games: Hit & Run and Road Rage. We have them both for the kids' gamecube, and they're a lot of fun.
  • by Russ Nelson ( 33911 ) <slashdot@russnelson.com> on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @10:17AM (#10245599) Homepage
    So where is the georeferencing information? I want a World File!!
    -russ
  • Re:But in episode... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ayaress ( 662020 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @11:34AM (#10246412) Journal
    (it must exist in a higher-dimensional space)

    Actually, I believe Springfield is a network of interconnecting plates which levitate. These plates reconfigure themselves into whatever layout is funniest at any given time, and the whole assembly moves to new locations, which is why Springfield is within an afternoon drive of every major traffic location in the US and Canada, including Hawaii. This does, however, raise questions as to why the Simpsons flew to Australia and Japan.

    Although the Simsons' live adjacent to the Nuke plant in one episode, they have a picket fence (not a chain-link and barbed wire fence) accross their back yard with another row of houses behind it in another. In one episode, there's an air view of the area in which the Simspons' discover that everybody in Springfield has a pool except them, but in other episodes, shots of the Flanders' back yard reveals no pool.

    In one episode, Moe's is less than a block from the Simpson's house, but at the end of the Flaming Moe's episode, there's a panning shot revealing several blocks of Flaming Moe ripoffs in both directions from Moe's. Sometime's, Moe's is on a corner, sometimes its next to the music store where Lisa got her saxaphone, and in the episode where they hit oil under the school, it was sandwitched between the nuke plant and the school, with nothing else around but a thin chemical haze from the drill site.

    All this can easily be explained by the levitating plate theory, since the superior intelligence controlling Springfield simply reconfigures the city into a more amusing and/or ironic layout. I can only assume that Shelbyville, and possibly Capitol City, are also on the plate construct, as they are the only cities at a fixed distance from Springf field, and probably experience the same phenomena.

    As for the episode where Homer becomes sanitation director and destroys the city, I believe that the plate design originally included some comparatively pristine wilderness area, which became Springfield Site B when they moved the city.

    Yes, I watch WAY too much Simpson's. Yes, I'm also the same person who went equally in-depth explaining plot inconsistencies in all five Star Trek series and Farscape. No, I don't have a girlfriend, if you have to ask.
  • by The Only Druid ( 587299 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @11:36AM (#10246449)
    You're missing the even more subtle joke: the episode says "...this kentucky/missouri family..." referring to their quote-unquote real life status, not the characters they supposedly portray in the show.

    Remember, the show essentially posited that its not animated, but rather enacted by a real family. As such, wherever the 'real' family is located/from, the show they act in may be in a different location.
  • by EvilSuggestions ( 582414 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @03:38PM (#10249172)

    L.A. writers? How about it's Portland creator? Recall that Mr. Groening is from a city that's within an hour or two drive of an ocean, a desert, mountains, multiple forests, a big-ass gorge, and, oh yeah, a nuclear power plant.

    Having streets named Flanders, Quimby, Van Houten, Kearney (the bully), and Terwilliger (Sideshow Bob's last name) its kind of a dead giveaway too.

    In fact, this site [movingtoportland.net] has it's own map, very much in the style of the Springfield map in this article, that shows various spots around Portland and their relationship to the show.

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