Have you ever wondered what life in your neighborhood might say about you? Well, this online map offers insightful, humorous (and sometimes offensive) depictions of what it means to live in different parts of Toronto.
Hoodmaps, developed by Pieter Levels, was originally aimed at helping visitors to new cities avoid touristy areas and explore more authentic parts of global cities.
While similar maps have been developed before, Hoodmaps overlays the labeling of specific neighborhoods in each city onto an interactive, zoomable map that uses crowdsourced data to create its creative descriptions.
Users also have the ability to navigate each city based on office, hipster, rich, university, tourist, and “normie” areas.
However, since everyone has the ability to change the labels, some descriptions have veered into offensive territory, so in this article we’ll limit ourselves to just the funny descriptions that have been widely upvoted by other users.
From Dundas Square (also called “Time Square for Canadians” on the map) to Summerhill (where “the good LCBO” is located, according to the map), you’ll get lost for hours as you soar over all of the city’s diverse neighborhoods.
Here’s what the interactive map had to say about some other areas in Toronto:
- Queen and Spadina = the most entertaining McDonald’s
- Eglinton Avenue = forever under construction
- Distillery District = all beers
- Billy Bishop Airport = teleportation station in New York
- University of Toronto St. George Campus = Stress Pheromones
- Port Lands = party in a swimsuit
- The Danforth = Greek hipsters with kids
- Scarborough Bluffs = couples banging in cars
- Sherway Gardens = the one mall from Mean Girls
- Baldwin Village = Squirrels fight with rats over trash
- Fort York = bait for the housing crisis
- High Park = oxygen, sometimes cherry blossoms
- Roncesvalles = sweet house and stroller show
- Liberty Village = where people live who think they are hip
- Park Lawn and Lake Shore = oh, another condo?