You’ll never take my land!
Wednesday, 14th March 2007 by James Turnbull
Boing boing have recently featured stories about people who refuse to sell their homes to developers, no matter what the price.
This first house in Bismark was once part of a residential area, but as the nearby St. Alexius Medical Centre expanded they needed more and more parking space and bought up the land of all the adjacent houses. With the exception of one.
The house and its garden space are now directly opposite the emergency room so the owner must be either deaf or he really likes the sound of ambulance sirens.
Our second homeowner in San Jose refused to sell up to the developers of the nearby HP Pavilion indoor arena so is now completely surrounded by parking. I wonder if he gets free tickets on gamedays?
Previously on Google Sightseeing: The Man Who Lives in the Middle of the M62.
Thanks Boing boing and its readers.
Look at this jackass’s house – they wanted to make a nice big park, but this guy just refused to budge…
View Placemark
here’s one, just outside of boston. View Placemark
On a similar note:
View Placemark
They built a parking lot around this tiny cemetary. I used to drive past this often when I lived on Long Island. 🙂
The story and picture of “China’s Most Incredible Holdout” traveled around China’s blogs and the original story was lost, elaborated on, and then pieced together and rediscovered by Chinese netizens, and finally translated into English by “bridge bloggers.”
See my blog for a summary of this story and links to the “bridge blogger” and chinese stories, if you get a moment.
The story was investigated and reconstructed again, but ultimately not verified in terms of facts and figures. The power of this picture is that it over rides the specifics!
And, now the story of “China’s Most Incredible Holdout,” is appearing in Boing Boing and many blogs around the world in yet another incarnation. Very Interesting!
This is not as clear as the other examples because at the time the image was captured the surrounding retail park wasnt finished but this house View Placemark contains a little old lady who refused to sell up to a well known supermarket chain and is still there to this day wedged between a carpark and a furniture warehouse. All the other houses around have been cleared.
I can’t seem to find it, but supposedly there was a little old lady who refused to sell her house in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and the casino built around her house — quite literally around her house. The story goes that she has even turned down Donald Trump — I’m not finding anything — maybe someone else can link to some info.
I think this is one, also, just west of the Microsoft campus in Redmond, WA:
https://www.googlesightseeing.com/maps?p=&c=&t=k&hl=en&ll=47.659675,-122.142683&z=18
Reminds me of the film “Batteries not included”!
This is one of the fairly famous cases… and probably the most ridiculous.
View Placemark
This guy is blocking the construction of a runway at Narita International in Tokyo. When I landed there in 2002 he even had a large derogatory sign in English expressing his displeasure with the airport.
Great Stuff
RE: Tokyo Airport
Does it look to anyone else that all the features on the planes on the ground, along with the roofs of the airport buildings, have been altered?
Yes Alan you are right. i dont know about the roof, that may just be glare, but the planes have been ‘greyed’ out havent they?
It only lends fuel to the fire about the Google anti-free -advertising conspiracy theory doesnt it. Seems a bit extreme though if you ask me. Unless its some sort of ‘homeland security’ paranoia thing the meaning of which i have no idea about.
https://www.googlesightseeing.com/maps?p=&c=&t=k&hl=en&ll=57.200838,-2.20211&z=18
Interesting. Have they done this at all airports? The 6 planes in the link above (Aberdeen Airport) appear to have been altered in someway.
I can’t find any US airport that have been altered… If it was a security issue you’d think it would happen there the most.
Im from bismarck and i had never herd of the house in the middle of the hospital. I was born there btw.
There’s a similar story to Tokyo’s Narita airport, where a farmer has refused to sell his land. The result can be seen in this picture and seen from Google Earth.
Check it out! The owner of the China’s “hold out” house has been found! And, a pioneering “bridge blogger” has translated a long interview with him. Nice picture too!
http://www.ugotrade.com/2007/03/22/interview-with-chinas-most-incredible-holdout/
Actually, that house right next to the HP Pavilion (which is about 100 yards from our condo) has been demolished since the last Google satellite flyover – if they ever update, I’m afraid that it’s going to disappear from the map!
You can see in this one, there was a little old lady in Sidney, BC, Canada who refused to sell her property north of the new location for the fire hall. They have built the building around her house – talk about sirens!
View Placemark