Are You Really Hungry? (a "B" rating food map of Santa Monica and Westwood)

View Are you really Hungry? in a larger map


     How many times have I been looking for information online such as large fires in california in the past year, good places to eat, or even job announcements and wished I could find the information in map form. With Neogeography, these maps can be easily made available to anyone with a gmail account via google maps. I'm not sure if there are indeed other services that provide the same map mashup services, but nonetheless, this service brings about a large amount of convenience, but also it has some serious consequences. As everyday non-professional map makers are becoming ever more present online, we need to evaluate the consequences of this information processing.
    
     I have made a map above of all the restaurants in the Santa Monica and Westwood areas that got less than an 'A' rating by the LA County Dept. of Public Health. We might ask what consequences this could bring, but I remember my Grandmother looking down in disgust at any place that did not get an 'A' rating, forever banning it from her list of destination places to eat. Now, even though I have eaten more than questionable food in more than questionable places overseas, I have inherited this stigma that she had towards less than A rated places. The amount of others that share this stigma I assume to be substantial.

     By my making this map, all restaurants and markets listed on the less than 'A' list of the County's website are easily seen and located. The main effect of this map is that these businesses will get less patronage due to the apparent black list that the map places them on. The information presented by the map is biased, in that it does not list the past rating that these places were given as does the county website. It is important to note that most of the places got A ratings for many years and it might just be that they were caught at a bad time when the B rating was given. Also, this could affect the surrounding businesses of areas that have several B rated establishments. All in all, this map was put together by one person with a lack of knowledge on the subject area and with an illogical bias. How many other maps are out there like this that are unregulated and unchecked to see how accurate the information is.