If you happen to live in one of the countries¹ in which Pixar has chosen to release their latest movie before now, then you might already have seen their latest 3D rendered movie, Up; in which the protagonist’s home is the last remaining property that stands in the way of enormous modern building developments.²

Unlike in Up however, the real life properties that find themselves in this situation don’t just float away, and their refusal to be moved has earned them the moniker of Nail Houses.

Edith Macefield moved into her home in Seattle in 1966, and in recent years turned down many increasingly large offers from developers looking to build on her land. In the end the developers decided to build the complex anyway, leaving her home boxed in on three sides. In the Street View images we can see the construction underway all around her little home, with her distinctive blue car parked outside visible even from satellite.

Edith sadly died in June last year, but since then her home was actually used as part of a publicity stunt promoting Pixar’s movie, and remains for the moment, as a reminder of what can be achieved by refusing to be steamrolled.

In Washington D.C., a Mr. Austin Spriggs reportedly turned down an offer of 3 million dollars for his property as it was directly in the way of a massive new development. Mr. Spriggs was apparently seeking a loan to open up a pizza restaurant on the premises, but when the Street View car passed, this was clearly still some way from becoming a reality.

It turns out that there are people all over the place who have decided, for the sake of pride, morals, or plain stubbornness, to remain in their homes no matter what. Here’s the home of a man who lives in the car park of the St. Alexius hospital in Bismarck, North Dakota. I wonder if he gets free parking?

Not even the biggest of companies can always get their own way either. At Microsoft’s Redmond West campus there’s one solitary private property, which was apparently left alone under the agreement that the house could stay there until the present owners died.

The phenomenon of “homeowner holdout” isn’t just constrained to private homes either. At Tokyo’s Narita Airport, the proposed layout of the tarmac was completely ruined by several farmers, who steadfastly refused to sell their land to the airport. You can see how the runways weave around the various farms that get in their way, as well as being split into tiny, useless segments by other bits of farmland.

I’m sure that this post only scratches the surface of this topic, so do you know of any nail houses in your area, and what’s the story behind them?

Wikipedia has more info on Nail Houses, and we wrote a story in 2006 about The Man Who Lives in the Middle of the M62. Thanks to Boing Boing and Deputy Dog.

Yesterday Google finally announced the launch of some fantastic new Street View imagery, covering Portugal, Switzerland and Taiwan. This means we can now use Street View to see some great previously featured sights, such as the current title holder of “world’s tallest completed building”, Taipei 101.¹

As part of the same announcement, imagery was unveiled of some slightly less traditional locations, including Laguna Seca Raceway, and Thunderhill Raceway Park, where the Street View car actually raced round the tracks.²

The remaining locations to receive imagery yesterday were even more unusual, San Diego State University and Legoland California. Both of these are fully pedestrianised, and the imagery was captured using the widely publicised Street View Trike.

Using the trike, Google captured some excellent images of Legoland California, many of which we’ve been linking to on our Twitter page – but there’s still lots to be found.

On the other hand, the imagery captured of San Diego State University is slightly less interesting. You might think that it would help entice students to the admittedly utterly picturesque California campus, but as far as we’re concerned, this looks like the most boring University campus in the world.

Why does nobody wave at the camera? Why is it that nobody chases the bike? Why do none of the students flash any naked body parts at the lenses? Naturally, not all students conform to the rowdy stereotypes we have in the UK, but why does nobody really react to the camera at all?

You might guess that they were all instructed not to react in advance, but even the people on guided tours don’t look very interested in the passing camera trike.

What’s perhaps most interesting is that the private properties mentioned here have been brought to your screens through the Street View Partner Program, which allows property managers to request that Google record images of their properties.

What other private places would you like to be able to take virtual tours of?

It’s Volcano Week 4 here at GSS. Volcanoes, about a week. You know the drill!

Newberry Volcano is an immense shield volcano located in central Oregon. In addition to a main volcanic caldera, the system is composed of many domes, cones, craters and lava flows across an area more than 32km in width in addition to two large fissures which extend outwards a considerable distance.

The central caldera, known as Paulina Peak, was created over hundreds of thousands of years and many eruptions; it now contains a pair of lakes fed by hot springs – Paulina Lake and East Lake. Extreme temperatures have been recorded beneath the caldera, leading to exploration with a view to creating geothermal power. The lava flow to the south of the lakes is known as Big Obsidian Flow.

Newberry Volcano is noted for creating many different types of lava, with a corresponding variety of landscape features being created as a result. The entire system is protected as the Newberry National Volcanic Monument. Apollo-era astronauts trained in areas of the volcano that resemble the moon’s surface.

Some of the most prominent features are buttes – tall cinder cones which result from a single eruption, including this cluster north of the lakes.

One of the most prominent is Lava Butte, which is approximately 150m tall, and has the Lava Lands Visitor Center at its base. Lava Butte is visible in a quite scenic Street View image from nearby Highway 97 … though it appears to have been so cold that one of the camera lenses froze over!

There are three large lava fields (mostly flat areas of volcanic rock) to the southest of the caldera – Devil’s Garden, Squaw Ridge and Four Craters. Extending from the edge of the latter is the imaginatively-named Crack-in-the-Ground, a 20m deep and 3km long fissure which is popular with hikers.

Equally creatively-named are the two nearby large maars, or explosion craters – Big Hole and Hole-in-the-Ground.

Driving along the isolated Highway 90 in Texas, you may be hoping to find somewhere to buy water, food, or perhaps petrol for your car.

And look! There on the horizon, a fast approaching convenience of some kind!

However, undoubtedly the last thing you need to cope with the unforgiving landscape is a new pair of Prada shoes.

But hey, it’s better than nothing, right? Unfortunately, even if the street view driver did want a new Italian designer handbag, he or she would still be out of luck, as it’s closed.

In fact, this store is always closed, and has been since 2005 when it was first, er… opened. As it turns out, this particular Prada boutique is a permanent art installation, created by cruel Scandinavian artists Elmgreen and Dragset.

Thanks to Diego Gonzalez.

Unless you’ve been living on the, er, Moon, you can hardly have failed to notice that today¹ marks the 40th anniversary of the historic landing of the Apollo 11 mission – during which, Neil Armstrong became the first human being to ever set foot on the Moon.

Apollo 11 was launched on a Saturn V rocket at 9:32 AM on July 16, 1969 from Launch Complex 39-A at Cape Canaveral in Florida. The same pad is also used for Space Shuttle launches, including the recent launch of Endeavour. Apparently, when a fully fuelled rocket is on the pad, the minimum safe distance for people is 5km! However, on the day that the Street View car visited it did get close enough to get a distant view of the launch tower rising above the swampland.

At the nearby Kennedy Space Center we can see a replica Space Shuttle, as well as the Rocket Garden (a display of Redstone, Titan and Atlas rockets) and the Space Mirror (or at least its shadow) – a 13-metre high memorial to those who have lost their lives in space.

Over at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, the Saturn V rocket that we looked at four years ago is now under cover unfortunately. Still, at least we can gaze down on the very building in which the brainy Mission Control folks kept things running smoothly.

Of course Houston wasn’t the only place keeping tabs on the astronauts. As anyone who has seen the movie The Dish will know, at the time Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon, it was on the “wrong” side of the Earth; which meant the historic TV signal was actually relayed via Australia.

The best pictures came from the Parkes Observatory in New South Wales, but the signal was also picked up at Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station near Canberra. Sadly, Parkes is only visible in low-resolution (although you can glimpse the dish through the trees on Street View), and Honeysuckle Creek, while in high-res, was closed in 1981 and subsequently demolished.

And what of the first man on the moon? Neil Armstrong was born in the small town of Wapakoneta, Ohio, and during his school years his family lived here on West Benton Street. The town is obviously proud of its famous son: in the vicinity we can find roads named Neil Armstrong Drive, Lunar Drive, Gemini Drive, Saturn Drive and Apollo Drive – the latter four located near the Armstrong Air & Space Museum, where exhibits apparently include the Gemini VIII spacecraft, Apollo 11 artefacts, a moon rock, and “multimedia presentations of the sights and sounds of space”².

Finally, let’s have a look at the moon itself! Google Moon has come on a bit since it was unveiled on the landing’s 36th anniversary, meaning you can even look around in Street View-esque panorama mode at the landing sites. And, in case you haven’t heard, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter recently managed to photograph 5 out of the 6 Apollo landing sites, with sufficient detail that you can make out the lunar module descent stages, and even, in one case, the trails of footprints left by the astronauts! Google has some way to go to match that sort of resolution, but as it happens, they are holding a special Google Earth news conference later today…

There’s more to see on our previous coverage of Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center, you can watch a real-time recreation of the landing at We Choose The Moon and join in with various celebratory events at NASA’s site.