"There are 565 "best pizza" spots in NYC. Junior's Cafe in Queens has the "best pizza in town." As does Rosario's in Lower Manhattan, and Big Daddy's Pizza in Brooklyn. At least that's the case, according to the establishments' respective signs. We know this because Brooklyn-based artist Yufeng Zhao has built a searchable database of all the words across the New York City streetscape."
"Think of it as a search engine for every visible word that's appeared on streets, storefronts, buses, or construction fences in the city, since 2007, when Google Street View launched. The result is a linguistic map of the city that never sleeps, distilled from 17 years of Google Street Views, and more than eight million images."
"All Text NYC, as the search engine is called, launched in December 2024, which means it hasn't yet caught up with the Zohran Mamdani poster craze. Nor has it seen the billboard ads for this year's Tony Award winning musical Maybe Happy Ending. For Zhao, All Text NYC is a time capsule of the city between 2007 and 2024, and the data supports it."
All Text NYC is a searchable database that catalogs visible words across New York City's streetscape from 2007 through 2024. The collection was distilled from 17 years of Google Street View imagery and more than eight million images. The dataset includes business signs, street signs, flyers posted on windows, and recognizable graffiti. The index reveals repeated phrases and claims, with many businesses asserting they are the "best" and recurrent entries like "Never forget" (363 occurrences) and " Covid " (close to 10,000 occurrences). Creator Yufeng Zhao describes the project as a time capsule of urban text and signage.
Read at Fast Company
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