Something I have meant to do for a long time is map my receipts. I started doing this months ago but got distracted, as I often do. This week the mapping truly began.

I mapped a couple hundred receipts, and will leave it at that for now, adding new locations going forward. I am limiting this to the 5 boroughs of New York City area for now, but will add receipts from other parts of the country as I find quick ways to do so for hundreds of receipts at a time.

There is nothing surprising to me about the pattern of activity reflected in this map. This map only shows some locations where I have made purchases and saved — and then scanned — the receipts over the last 19 years. Under that limited criteria it hardly shows everything. How could it? Many establishments do not issue receipts unless asked, many receipts are from unknown locations, and from the 5000+ receipts on this web site I have mapped only a limited cross-section.

For the most part I scan and post receipts in approximately chronological order. Sometimes I find an old receipt in a drawer or stuck in a book, and I post that along with more current receipts. Several months ago I found large boxful of old paperwork and nonsense (including receipts) from my earliest time in New York, and those receipts from 1990-1993 were added to the site en masse. I may some day arrange the receipts in chronological order, but as time passes I start to feel I am sitting on a mountain of directionless detritus-cum-content that needs some executive guidance. Hah.

To illustrate how this map only shows a surface of activity: I have but one receipt from the Bronx (Yankee Stadium. Does that even count?) but I used to go up into the Bronx all the time when I lived in Washington Heights. I guess I never bought anything while I was there. I had no money in those days. I am happy to see some ink-stained Parc Lincoln Hotel Rent Receipts from 1990, even if the receipts say “Lincoln Square” and the place was never called that while I was there. There should be a lot more receipts from those days.

For now I only have one receipt per address. I have dozens if not hundreds of receipts for some locations. I am not sure how practical it is to have multiple receipts per address but if there is a way then I will find it. I will try because there is meaning in listing the multiple businesses that had been located at a single address. A book store near me has changed name and ownership 3 times since I’ve lived here. All 3 of those business names should rise up when one hovers their mouse over the location. Additionally, places like Rockefeller Center or Grand Central Station have several businesses at one address. In some cases I can compensate for that with individual coordinates for each place, but the interior of these compounds are not clearly map-able.

I feel a certain happiness when a business that moved from an address or that has completely gone out of business still rises up when I point at their old address. It confirms my belief that data does not have to be current or up-to-date to be meaningful or useful. I imagine a mapping service which shows the name of every business that ever existed at a given address, and one which shows every resident that ever lived in a house or apartment. I have complained in the past that retail stores and restaurants should be required to have a sign on their premises listing what businesses formerly occupied that space. I still believe that. There is something to be said for maintaining the memory of what used to be at a certain location.

Some months ago I started tagging the receipts. Grocery store receipts, for instance, were tagged with some semblance of the items purchased, such as Meat, Center Cut Pork Chops, and (my favorite) Unknown. I largely gave up on tagging after concluding that I simply had the wrong approach to the job. My directionless zeitgeist overtook my limited skills for logical archival planning.

I did, however, arrive at an interesting category of receipts: Handwritten Receipts. These handwritten scrip remind me of why I started keeping receipts in the first place:

It was soon after I had moved to New York late in 1990. At a diner near Canal Street I ordered and was served a bowl of soup and a glass of Sprite. I consumed this magnificent feast and approached the counter to pay. I looked at the check and saw that the cashier had carefully written the words:

1 BOWL SOUP 1 GLASS SPITE

I wanted to keep that handwritten receipt but the cashier wouldn’t let me. She may have given me a printed receipt from the cash register, I don’t remember, but as the Intertubes have made it easy to share such magical detritus I have come to regret not saving the Glass of Spite receipt that made me laugh at a time when I had little to laugh about. It still became a conversation piece for me, and if I remembered the location of that diner I might return to it and order a bowl of hate, that I might wash it down with a glass of spite.