Continuing today’s Google Maps Mash-up theme, here is a new WashPost site that I find interesting: LocalExplorer

While it has local retail, home sales, and schools listed on a Google Map, my favorite tab is local crime. You can map your favorite spots and check out recent crimes by location and type. Clicking on each bubble, you get a pop-up of the crime description & date.

For the most fun, throw in your & your friends addresses to see who lives in the hood and who just fronts like they do. Case in point 20005 vs. 20011.

You would think Logan would be all nice and Petworth soaked with Georgia Avenue crime reports, but you would be wrong. Both have their trouble spots but by red dots, Petworth seems an oasis of safety.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Wayan Vota

Married, mortgaged, and soon to be a father, Wayan Vota is in the fast lane to mid-life respectability – until the day his brood finds his intimate journal of global traveling and curses him with the ever-eternal reply “I’m gonna be just like you, Dad!”