Search all text in New York City
17 comments
·August 13, 2025Kortaggio
This write-up about the site is also fascinating: https://pudding.cool/2025/07/street-view/
dang
Added to top text. Thanks!
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wilson090
This would probably make John Wilson's job a lot easier (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_To_with_John_Wilson)
m_kos
GitHub of the person who prepared the data. I am curious how much compute was needed for NY. I would love to do it for my metro but I suspect it is way beyond my budget.
LeifCarrotson
I would wager the compute for the OCR is cheap. Just get a beefy local desktop PC, if it runs overnight or even takes a week that's fine.
It's the Google Maps API costs that will sink your project if you can't get them waived as art:
https://mapsplatform.google.com/pricing/
Not sure how many panoramas there are in New York or your metro, but if it's over the free tier you're talking thousands of dollars.
dang
Related. Others?
All Text in NYC - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42367029 - Dec 2024 (4 comments)
All text in Brooklyn - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41344245 - Aug 2024 (50 comments)
egypturnash
I typed in "fart" and none of the results on the first page were actually the word "fart".
throwaway984393
[dead]
shibeprime
520 matches on "hotdog" 8084 matches on "massage" in no particular order
IG_Semmelweiss
HN hug of death
tills13
I _love_ this but it's pretty bad. I searched for "Morgue" and one of the matches was the "2025 Google" watermark which it thought was "Big Morgue"
Again, a complex problem and I love it...
ya1sec
amazing. look up some graffiti writers you know
IAmGraydon
As others have mentioned, the idea is so cool, but the text recognition is abysmal.
WorldPeas
hah, it can find all the KEST GAK stickers now: https://www.alltext.nyc/search?q=kest
JackFr
Can’t find me any REVS tags. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revs_(graffiti_artist)
Instead shows me thousands of “Rev“
theodric
Cool concept, but the accuracy seems quite low. The hits for "pedo" are pretty hilarious, though! https://www.alltext.nyc/search?q=pedo&p=2
https://pudding.cool/2025/07/street-view/