Thursday, August 02, 2018

Where & When New York Eats


A new interactive map reveals where New Yorkers like to eat and what they like to eat when they get there. Bites of the Big Apple is an animated map which plays through one whole day of food related Instagram posts in the Big Apple. To make the map Crimson Hexagon identified the most popular food and drink hashtags used in New York during the 6th-12 May 2018 and where & when in the city those tags were posted.

In truth I don't think the map reveals anything particularly insightful about New York's eating habits. For example it will probably surprise no-one that the map shows a lot more people eating in new York restaurants at lunch-time than people eating at four in the morning.

However the map does have some nice touches. I particularly like the circular (clock) mask on the map which has an animated line rotating around it to show the currently displayed time on the map. I also like the block neighborhood inset map which allows users to quickly pan to different New York neighborhoods.

The map also includes a drop-down menu which allows you to filter the Instagram posts by type of food & drink. I guess there may be more insights to be had into New York's dining habits by looking at where & when individual foods or drinks are taken. For example where & when cocktails are being taken or where & when New Yorkers like to eat oatmeal.


If you are interested in the pulse of New York over the average day then you might also like the Manhattan Population Explorer. The Manhattan Population Explorer is a mapped visualization which allows you to explore how the population of Manhattan changes block by block for each hour of every day.

You might also enjoy Chris' NYC Taxis: A Day in the Life, a mapped visualization of the journey of one New York taxi over the course of 24 hours.

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