The Great Hunter's Point to Bay Farm Island Submarine Relays
TLDR
This map contemplates a submarine race from Hunter's Point in San Francisco to Bay Farm Island in Oakland, with a quick loop around the Shoals of Tijuana.
Juicy details
Attracting submarine racers from around the world, each crew handcrafted its sub in the years leading up to the race using only the finest artisanal parts. On race day, every submarine received two cases of Bean Brew No. 5(™) (a nuanced Saison brewed with Reineck hops) as fuel for the relay. Submarines were judged based upon the speed with which they completed the course, the uniforms of the crew, and the drinking ability of the captain. Racers set off from Hunter’s Point at dawn, completing 4 circuits around San Francisco Bay, before heading south for the Shoals of Tijuana, and finally hurdling northward again to finish the relay at Bay Farm Island.
One of my favorite features of this map are the submarines, some of which were hand drawn by IDEO colleagues, while others were cobbled together with cast off shapes and objects from the Noun Project. Can you spot the shower head propelled submarine?
Another niche feature of Bean Brew No.5 was the envelope which held the drinking survey on the back of every bottle. The envelopes are from an amazing restaurant in Melbourne, Australia, which was nice enough to give me an entire stack to bring back to San Francisco.
Format
- Format
- Silk Screen
- Size
- 24" by 18"
Prints available
Silk Screen · 24" by 18"
Zoomed details
The Bean Brew story
Bean Brew came about as a home brewing project transformed into a mapping project. It worked like this:
- I would brew a batch of beer (generally a Saison) into about 16 large format bottles.
- Every batch had a theme, which was almost always ridiculous, but just plausible enough to maybe be true? Accompanying this theme was a survey, which at first actually asked people about their Bean Brew beer drinking experience. However, these questions quickly went rogue.
- The 16 bottles of beer were given away at first. In later years they were actually sold in highly exclusive batches. The beer was drunk. Usually without too much hounding, every person who obtained a bottle returned their survey results to Bean Brew HQ.
- I analyzed these results with the help of my slide rule, then designed a map visualizing the Bean Brew experience.
- The Bean Brew designs were then dispatched to Texas, where my friend Rand used his mad crazy printmaking skills to transform them into four-color silkscreens. Rand was always very busy (or falling off of ladders) and the silkscreening process generally took many months to complete.
- On a happy day many months after the original beers were consumed, every person who participated in the experience received a beautiful map.