One of my favorite things to do ... tour neighborhoods of my youth with Google Earth!

[mr_lebowski]

Anybody else a fan?

I think it's so friggin' cool, being able to drop into your old streets in your old hood, and just cruise around like you're there?!? See how things have changed, and how they're still the same? It's badass.

Touring places like Repulse Bay, Hong Kong, or Orinda, CA, or Quincy, CA ... places I grew up ... I just love it. Of course, I physically visit Orinda regularly cause I'm in the Bay Area frequently, but when I get homesick I can just drop on in with Google Earth anytime. I can cruise right by my folks house in Walnut Creek if I want to.

Seriously it's one of the coolest inventions EVAH!

Edit: It's also really cool for checking out the area in places you might stay on holiday, the neighborhood around an AirBnB you might rent, or a Hotel you're thinking of staying, etc.

I prefer the more powerful desktop app (still free), myself, but it works pretty good right in Chrome as well.

[cilla4progress]

1. Great idea!

Will do this evening! Thanks!

[lamp_shade]

2. I just did that recently. The Mohawk Valley... my home town of Little Falls.

What a trip.

[mr_lebowski]

3. Right? For such a simple concept, it's actually really friggin' cool, man :) (nt)

[kcr]

4. I grew up in Flint, so a lot of the places of my childhood memories are no longer, but

my house is still standing and still looks pretty much the same, and they renovated the park where I used to play. It had become pretty run down over the years, so I was happy to see that.

[snort]

5. Chino Valley AZ

to remind myself how fortunate I am to no longer live in that shithole.

[mr_lebowski]

14. Lol ... I'm in AZ now, but grew up in an absolutely beautiful part of the Bay Area

... so I have kinda the opposite experience lol ...

In fact, my old hood looks so ridiculously idyllic ... all the same houses, but what were $200-500K homes then (mid 70's) ... are now all $2-$5M homes, nearly all have new facades. Ours was much le$$ but it was nestled among a lot of amazing places, and we bought it from my grandparents who'd bought it in the early 1950's (paid cash, $20K) so they sold to my folks for a great price, only reason we could afford to live there.

[snort]

19. I escaped to PDX.

Bought in 2014 before the prices really skyrocketed so feeling pretty lucky. Where abouts in AZ, without being too specific of course?.

[mr_lebowski]

21. Put it his way, there's probably 6 LDS Churches within a 2 mile radius of my house ...

And 1 about 100 yards away ... that narrow it down enough for ya?

Honestly the friggin' Feds know exactly who I am, I pretty much advertise it with all the clues I give on DU and all over my internet posts.

Oh, yeah, plus I'm white, a US citizen, my family is wealthy, and I have some REALLY rich friends, including my employer, a Blue-Blood NE Liberal who's family came over on the damn Mayflower ... who I'm indispensable to ... so COME GET ME F***ERS!

You coppa's got nothin' on ME!?!

[snort]

29. My mother's maiden name was

Greer. So yeah, that narrows it down.

[mr_lebowski]

30. I think we both know the general EV region ... ;) (nt)

[lucca18]

6. Thank you. I'm going to install the desktop app today.

[MineralMan]

7. That is fun, or even Google Maps and Street View

I went and found my grandparents' house in Arizona a while back. I spent lots of time there every year. I even screen captured a Street View photo of it and printed and framed it for my mother, who grew up in that house. She was amazed.

Another time, my wife was attending a conference in Nashville, so I tagged along. The conference wasn't anything I cared about, so I used Google Maps in Satellite view to scout a couple of fishing spots near the hotel. I could zoom in on the river and even see enough to pick out places that should hold fish.

When we got there, I drove right to those spots, and had some excellent shore fishing to while away some time.

Cool beans.

[shanti]

8. I like it

but it takes up a lot of memory on my laptop.

[GemDigger]

9. Google Earth is used by me 6 days a week for pleasure. The reason it isn't 7

is because I am on my other map which basically shows me the same thing (but shows active mine claims, topos and more). But sometimes I like to have them both open at the same time. One in topo mode and GE for its aerial view.

Google Earth has brought me to places I will never go and mountain tops for 360 views I will never see. I love it but it needs updating : )

Edit to add: One time a friend in NM was taking a long drive so as we chatted on the phone (she had speaker on) I took the same ride on Google Earth for about 50 or so miles, then I went ahead of her because I had no speed limit.

[GulfCoast66]

10. Same here. Always shocked at how small our houses were.

Compared to the one I live in now. We can’t wait to downsize.

[misanthrope]

23. That's something I noticed many years ago

It's also noticeable in the town where I live because historic housing has been so well preserved here. Houses that were once considered comfortable and well-suited for raising a family are now considered "starter homes" for young couples with no kids yet. Once they start growing their families, they don't feel satisfied until they are in homes that in my childhood would have been considered "rich people's houses."

One great grandmother grew up on a farm in the rural south but lived in small apartments as long as I was alive. She was content. My maternal grandparents were civil servants who lived in a couple of small two-bedroom brick homes. For people who spent their youth in the Great Depression, it was enough. The safety and comfort I felt in the modest homes of my relatives as a kid wasn't because of their size, it was because of the emotional connections with those who inhabited it.

Our nation has drifted so far from that ethos. The evidence of our society's rampant materialism and consumerism is all around us. It's a big, big part of the cancer that has gnawed at this nation's soul, kicked into overdrive since the Reagan era.

[nolabear]

11. An astounding amount on the coast isn't there but I love stalking New Orleans

Katrina literally obliterated most of where I grew up on the Gulf Coast. New Orleans, though, I swear nothing can kill it. It just all becomes part of the story.

I haven't done it in a long time.Thanks for reminding me!

[Captain Stern]

12. I've done that.

The places that I've checked out on Google Earth aren't near as interesting as yours, but it was still fun.

When I was a child back in the sixties, my father was stationed at a base in Mainz, Germany.

I remembered that there was a cemetery right behind our military housing that had a pedestrian bridge going over a highway to another cemetery. I checked out google earth (almost fifty years after I lived there), and I actually found the highway with the pedestrian bridge connecting two cemeteries......and the building I lived in was still there also.

I've also found the address of the place my father grew up in (1920's), and I was pretty surprised that place was still there. I'd never seen it in person, but it was still pretty much how he described it to me.

[mr_lebowski]

13. Sounds interesting to me!

It's a very fun thing to do for anyplace that has meaning to a person, doesn't have to be a place that matters to ANYONE else

[csziggy]

15. I've even done it for the house my grandparents lived in when my Dad was an infant

We have pictures they took of him in the yard and on the street that shows their house, the neighbors' houses, and the houses across the street in LaSalle, Illinois. Aside from the trees either being gone or much larger, the neighborhood looks much the same.

My Dad didn't remember living there - he was only two when the family moved to Florida. Unfortunately, the town he did remember - Agricola - has been gone since the 1950s. It was a company owned town and they had mined all the phosphate around the town and wanted to mine the lad under the town. So they sold the houses and mined it. There is nothing left but the road that still has the town name on it.

The house I grew up in and the house I remember my grandparents living in both came from Agricola, as did a lot of houses in that area. The house I grew up in is now gone but much of the neighborhood is still the same - and there is still a house with a fall out shelter in the back yard - something that was a "secret" during the 1960s but that every kid knew about.

[90-percent]

16. here's a cool historic overlay map site

https://www.historicaerials.com/viewer

i want to do an accurate overlay of where the railroads were in my current neighborhood. this kind of does that a little.

i also did google earth for the last home i lived in in freeport illinois that we moved from in 1959. located it from address of old letters and generology.com. eerie seeing pics of a place i havent seen since 1959!

triggers lots of childhood memories.

-90% Jimmy

[mr_lebowski]

17. That IS cool! Thanks for sharing ... (nt)

[bikebloke]

18. Retracing bike trek routes

I thought I'd use Google Street view to see the road I pedaled back in '91. In France I rode over the Col de Busang. A really hard switchback after a days' ride. Since then, they redid the road, so it's less steep a climb. For some reason, it wasn't as exhausting in Street View than actually struggling up the mountain.

[FakeNoose]

20. Yes! It's so cool to see my old neighborhoods and "drive thru" on Google Earth

I've revisited several places from my childhood, teens and early 20's. I didn't realize anyone else did it too, I thought I was the only nostalgia nut. I live in Pittsburgh now, but I grew up in Saint Louis and I haven't been back there for over 40 years. But Google Earth took me there, and I even found my old schools and my grandparents' houses.

[mr_lebowski]

25. One of the coolest 'tech' things ever in my book!

[Demovictory9]

22. i've looked at childhood schools. Never as I remember them. Much smaller.

[mr_lebowski]

26. Yeah, the 'size' thing is trippy ...

Everything seemed so much BIGGER ... when you were small, yeah?

[misanthrope]

24. I'm sort of a cartophile, so yeah.

It stirs a lot of memories.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

27. I've done that - found the house we lived in when I was 3-4 years old.

It still looks like I remember it. I found another house we lived in later but it was hard to recognize because so many trees had grown up in front of it. I love Google Earth. I also use it to find places in TV shows and books - I even located and explored an obscure little town in Iceland that was featured in a movie.

[blaze]

28. If I'm driving somewhere new

I'll "drive" it on Google first so I'll have an idea of some the landmarks to look for.

[albacore]

31. Combine Zillow with Google maps....

...and check out your old neighborhood.

I grew up in Detroit, and the house I grew up in is a helluva bargain. $26K (NOT a typo) But you have to live in Detroit.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/18972-Fielding-St-Detroit-MI-48219/88252722_zpid/

[Hortensis]

32. I'll "walk" if possible places l'm reading about,

if not view from above. Amazing and wonderful. Also sometimes sobering when you know dreadful things are happening there.

[dustyscamp]

33. I like going back to places Ive been to during family roadtrips and sightseeing adventures w friends

I'm gonna get a vr headset to make google earth more fun and immersive

[EX500rider]

34. They still don't have streetview for where I grew up in Costa Rica : (

And the sat view is kind of lo-res...I check every so often to see if they have updated it.
I did find streetview very useful before I went to Medellin, Colombia, it helped me keep out of the scarier looking neighborhoods.

[Ponietz]

35. Dude

Thanks for this. I walked home from elementary school again tonight.

[mr_lebowski]

36. It's a blast, right?

I've done that before too, from more than one elementary school to more than one old house

[Ponietz]

37. As fun as any amusement park ride I've ever experienced

[HAB911]

38. Oh yeah!

[skip fox]

39. I love it.

I have used it extensively writing fiction.

[Tracer]

40. I use Google maps when I'm reading novels.

For some reason, I must have a picture of where the protagonist of a novel is, when the author describes his/her movements around a city --- especially when the city is in a foreign country. So I spend some time looking up the area on Maps.

For instance, I just finished a good mystery set in Iceland: (The Reckoning, by Sigridsdottir sp.?). Never having been to Iceland, it was very helpful.

Of course, I've also "driven" down my old home's street too.