Street Fight
Saturday, 16th June 2007 by Alex Turnbull
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Here in central San Francisco, it seems there's a violent drama unfolding as the Google Street View car passes by. A bit of friendly rough and tumble, or a more serious altercation? You be the judge...
Note: For this post, images that are directly beside each other were captured at exactly the same moment. All images are posted in chronological order.
As the Google car drives down Shrader Street, we can see that there's a guy standing on the sidewalk, wearing a hat and a black jacket, holding his hands behind his back. There also appears to be some building work going on.
In the next frame we can see the black hat dude is currently talking to a guy in a tan jacket.
Then all of a sudden, the guy in the tan jacket seems to take a swing at the guy in the hat!
In the next frame, the guy in the tan jacket has grasped the hat guy round the chest, and is on top of him, seemingly pounding into him! The other guys on site are looking a little shocked.
By the next frame the scuffle is over, but the two men have moved quite a long way down the street in a single frame - perhaps they ran here? It certainly looks like the tan jacket guy is chasing the other guy.
The chase continues as the Google car turns the corner into Hayes Street. Notice that the hat guy is no longer wearing his hat - it was knocked off in the scuffle. He is looking a little worried however.
After that, the tan jacket guy turns back up the street to where he came from, but he's stopped on the way by a woman who seems keen to discuss something with him. Meanwhile, hat guy skulks off down the street.
Tan jacket guy is still talking to the woman, but judging by his body language I'd say he isn't overly keen to continue that conversation. At this very moment, the Google car passes right by the hat guy, affording us a pretty good close up of his profile.
Now you'll have to decide for yourself, but it looks a lot like he has a bleeding nose, right? He's definitely got a sore looking neck, and is that blood above his ear?
There's one more close up shot of the hat guy before the Google car leaves him too far behind, in which we can again see that he's definitely got something on his face...
So, can anybody offer any other explanation of what happened here? Or even better, does anyone recognise any of these people?
About the author
Alex has decided that his title will be Senior Vice President of Stuff.
What are the odds of that happing while the van passes by
Google maps brought out the voyeur in us all – street view is taking that to a whole new level. Up until this, I thought the whole privacy debate was a bit of a red herring, but here is an incident where there were obviously unwilling parties – at least one of them didn’t choose to do this in a public place. I wouldn’t want that aired publicly if it was me. Darned interesting though!
Best Google thing ever? Definitely front page of Digg worthy. Everyone push it.
This seemed to be a good site, and I so I was hoping it would survive to the Google street voyeur mania. But now you even ask around to know who these people are?
Come on, let’s think about it. Maybe what Google is doing should be a little discussed.
Hey, that’s my cousin Tony!
….oh wait, he lives in Cleveland…
The odds? In San Francisco? About 9 in 10. That city is a dive. On a daily walk to work of 8 blocks I would routinely see a mugging and a couple people shooting up in the gutter. This is in the soma-mission area.
Most common odor in SF? Urine. The whole city stinks of it on a warm day.
Driving the whole city likely took a number of days – probably dozens of crimes on those shots.
This is the coolest thing I’ve seen in a while…
BEST POST
Looked unprovoked to me, Black hat guy now has excellent evidence to prosecute tan jacket guy. Does that mean I’m a witness, I may have to appear for the prosecution, hope so I’ve always wanted to go to San Francisco.
Several more shady things happening in Google Street View here: http://paralleldivergence.com/2007/06/03/the-private-lives-of-google-street-view/
I am offering a $1000 bounty to the first person who can find two real live people (ie. humans) having sex. Myself and “Little Elvis” will be sole judges of what qualifies (this means they will have to be a man and a woman).
looks like a tweaker stealing from a construction site to me. in fact looks like a tweaker i see around the TL all the time on my way to school.
“(this means they will have to be a man and a woman).”
Good luck with that in San Franciso.
Am I the only person that thinks that google is infringing on privacy rights… I mean if you get photographed, one could sue for, I think its called something like image or likeness theft since google makes money from their site via advertising and hence making money using your image (likeness) without your permission. I think that its absurd that they can get away with this behavior although not surprised that they can.
Gian writes: “Am I the only person that thinks that google is infringing on privacy rights…”
I really don’t see what the problem is. All of the photos are taken from public streets, they are low-resolution, and they are taken once in a blue moon (if even more than once at all).
Every time you walk down the street, you are recorded on countless surveillance cameras, and you have no opportunity to review the photos or see what they are doing with them. Chances are, you will feature in thousands of surveillance photos this year and not in a single Google Street View frame.
The only reason people seem to be so up in arms about this Google thing is that it’s in their face. Might be more sensible to take a step back and consider what really matters.
hi guys
“Google is a trademark of Google Inc. who are neither associated with this website nor endorse it in any way.”
Hmm, that’s funny — would that be this Shrader St. that isn’t covered by Street View? http://preview.tinyurl.com/2kmp76
And #6: coolest thing you’ve seen in a while? Check out “cable television” — it has fighting on all the time.
@Andy, we’re still going to stick to the main theme of our site (posting interesting stories about cool things to see on Google Maps/Earth Satellite views), but now and again we will post Street View stuff – if we think people will be particularly interested in it. Judging by the amount of interest this story has received, I’d say this story justifies being here.
@Scott, only one block of Shrader Street is covered, but that’s the part on which this scene takes place.
Personally all things street viws just turn me off. What I (and I hope most GSS fans) enjoy about this site is a shared curiosity of seeing the wonders of our world from a bird’s eye perspective that we dreamed of as kids – looking down on places and objects we know from the one angle that is not permitted to us, getting the perspective of Trafalga Square from a hot air balloon view, seeing the afternoon shadows of the Duomo Cathedral in Florence, learning about the geography and geographical and even political history of Africa – these are the things Ive learnt and loved here. Not street fights, Guys. Not Paparazzi. Not chance encounters with indecency or incorrect behaviour. So keep up the previously great work! (And sorry for the certain spelling mistakes!)
Great post.. but I doubt that anything here could be used successfully to bring charges.. We don’t see what happens before or after.
btw.. Anyone know where I can get a domain for free? :/
Where is the link to this? Im suspicious….
“What are the odds of that happing while the van passes by”
On Hayes…mmmm…20% or so.
Awesome pix man….
jobin martin, what are you talking about?
haha, I would be kinda shamed of my self if this would be me..
@Ben – I appreciate your, and other regulars, position. In fact we totally agree with your reasons for being interested in Google Sightseeing! We too are much more interested in stuff we wouldn’t normally be able to see in day-to-day life… which is why we decided to start the Street View Forum, so that people who were interested would have somewhere to discuss these sightings, and the rest of us could continue doing exactly what we’ve always done. We might well still post Street View sightings, but very likely only at the weekends, and probably not that often! So you’ll still get the same number of regular posts, but in addition, the cream of the crop of street views. We sincerely hope that’s a strategy everyone will be happy with.
@umm – each picture is a link!
@rob, you won’t get a response – as you’ll have realised these are all Digg users commenting on this post, whom I doubt will be back to respond…
Alex: Great – and don’t forget Italy!
I’ll bet the black hat dude was taking a leak, and the tan jacket guy decided to set him straight. 🙂
I was wrong before and judging by the first image tan jacket guy is clearly just enforcing a new law
I think GSS is doing great. Even after 2 years, it’s still my number one RSS-feed!
Looks nothing like the the arcade game does it? Where’s the sonic booms?
YAWN
Seriously, this is what people are doing? I am completely bored. I wonder how many people came here expecting to see something neat like me and saw this instead…
Man, after this story i can already see a bunch of hoaxes comming out.
-Adam
hey man, It’s a miracle. I love this situation. way 2 go!!!
If you follow the guy in black along the street you see him get into a car. Going back to the car you can get his plate number – 5DNM920. Anyone with access to the right database might be able to find the guy and ask him what happend.
he was really talking crap and that’s why he got his ass wopped
the newa media put this stuff on tv all the time , so how can it be a privacy issue they are out side. if they wanted privacy go inside!! not out on main st
Am I correct in that there are vans driving around taking pictures that creat the ‘street level’ photos? WOW!! This is an amazing new toy.
ha ha, unlucky people
Gian writes: “Am I the only person that thinks that google is infringing on privacy rights…”
No i don’t think they are. anything they show you could see by walking down the same street!! They blur the faces so that you can’t really tell who the people are without already knowing them!! ( doesnt really seem to blur the photos above though!)
also the UK is the most watched country! if you think StreetView is a breech of data protection or other privacy rights, then should all CCTV cameras be taken down?? they don’t blur out anything!
Um, when i click on the pictures, they don’t bring me to the places indicated. I don’t see any of this fighting.