Oh, the places we went (without Siri)

~ MaryG

What’s the best way to explore a new city?

I just gotta point out that before smart phones, “exploring a new city” was completely different. Young people have no idea.

First, if you were driving there, you could get completely lost just finding the city, because you had to rely on maps—fold-out paper maps or atlases (books of maps). There was no Siri, there was no Google Maps, there was no MapQuest or Waze. There was no phone in your car. There were road signs and your own God-given sense of direction.

In the olden days, the absolute best way to explore a new city, was to meet up with a friend (or a friend of a friend) who lived there. If you were lucky, they’d let you crash on their couch. At night, they would take you to some local dive bar where you met their friends and got a feel for what it was like to actually live in their city.

In the day, you wandered around visiting record stores and coffee shops and tourist sites that you’d heard of by word of mouth (talking to other humans).

My friend Julie and me kicking around San Francisco in 1988. We stayed with a high school friend of hers. We’d driven up from LA where we’d also stayed with a friend in West Hollywood. Fortunately, it was hard to get lost on that drive up from LA. We knew if we kept the Pacific Ocean on our left, we’d get there eventually.

28 thoughts on “Oh, the places we went (without Siri)”

  2. Oh, the good old days. Of my husband driving, screaming at me to navigate from a faded, ripped paper map you could never… ever… fold back into position.
    No Yelp, no GPS, no sat nav.
    How did we ever manage?
    🤣

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  4. Young people have no idea what life was like w/o a smartphone or the internet. We had to be resourceful because we were never operating with a lot of information. I’m not sure how I’d manage today without my smartphone.

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  7. I love paper maps. I love that you can look all directions at the same time. Embarking on a road trip tomorrow and a paper map offers options at a glance. I also love the history that comes on the back of paper maps and explains things like how Dead Man’s Creek got its name, what does Ulladulla mean in the Indigenous language, and which famous celebrity was born in said town. Siri sux. We’ve become lazy.

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  9. I used to familiarize myself with as many names of towns as possible so that when I did get lost, I could just think oh that’s familiar head that way. Granted that only works in your own state. I live in Allentown Pa, there is also an Allentown Nj just like there is a town in central Pa called Jersey Shore, not to be confused with actual Jersey Shore coastal towns in NJ 😵‍💫🤔

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