We just officially launched this website! Check out the announcement email below. And pass along this link to friends.

Dear friends,

As some of you may have heard, we’ve been hard at work collecting stories and images of streets named Main across the country. Our project, Mapping Main Street, is an experiment in collaborative documentary media, and we hope that you’ll participate and collaborate with us!

It all began last fall when “Main Street” became the political buzzword of the moment. We felt that when politicians and the media mentioned Main Street, they implied a singular place and culture. Against this reductive rhetoric, we pummeled Google with almost a million queries, and found that there are actually 10,466 streets named Main in the United States.

The goal of Mapping Main Street is to document every one of these streets. We started exploring Main Streets this summer, and it’s been an interesting adventure so farófrom the discovery of autographed photos of Ella Fitzgerald and Miles Davis in a dilapidated house in West Virginia to conversations with a transvestite prostitute in Chattanooga and menudo breakfasts on the Mexican border.

We’d love to have you collaborate in this mass documentary project by visiting one of the 10,466 Main Streets yourself and taking a photo or recording a story or video.

The only requirement for participation is that all photos, videos and interviews must be recorded on a street named Main. Take a look at the beta version of our website at http://mappingmainstreet.org. You can explore content already online and use the site to find some Main Streets in your neck of the woods. You can also receive updates by becoming a fan on facebook.

In August, two stories will air on NPR’s Weekend Edition. We’ll also feature four newly commissioned songs by Calvin Johnson, High Places, Ian Svenonius and Jason Cady. Each song will use field recordings collected on Main Streets across the country.

We’re looking forward to hearing about the Main Streets you explore. If you have any questions, just send us an email at info@mappingmainstreet.org.

See you on the road,

Kara Oehler, Ann Heppermann, James Burns & Jesse Shapins

Average house on Main Street in Castroville

A short residential street on the edge of the highway. We start taking photos and striking up conversations. Halfway the block, we hear a man calling at us to come back. Clearly not thrilled with our presence and his arms taught at his waist, he asks, “Is there a good reason why you’re taking pictures of my house?” I responded with “Yes!” and then I explained. He said, “With what I’m trying to do here, I can’t have any pictures posted of my house.” He was really upset. We didn’t ask “what he was trying to do here.”

A few houses down, we met a much friendlier soul. He told us his block of Main Street was safe but one block farther down the street it got dangerous. Maybe it had something to do with what people were trying to do over there.

We headed to this town because we’d heard about Full of Life Flatbread restaurant, a place that’s only open on the weekends. During the week, they survey local farmer’s markets to buy up fresh produce and conceive the next weekend’s menu. Before sitting down, we traveled up and down Main Street (1 block away), a residential street dead-ending into a field with central-coast vineyards lining the distant hills.

S&M Liquor

As we continued up Main Street out of the city limits through Lincoln Heights we passed the LA river and then spotted a mural of the Virgin Mary and S&M Liquors. We had to stop. When we pulled into the parking lot, we immediately met Rico. He asked me if I’d seen the fire down the block and warned that this was one of LA’s craziest corners. Before he had even finished his sentence, a woman in cut-off jeans shorts with stringy bleached blonde hair shot out running across the street while screaming at the top of her lungs at a man who has picking up the pace as she gained on him.

“See?” said Rico.

As we drove a few blocks further, we passed a wonderful, stoic, smiling older man selling peanuts and rainbow umbrella hats.

He smiled at us when we drove by.

Main Street crossing the LA river.

This very well might be the longest Main Street in the country. It spans from the northeastern edge of the city through downtown and then straight south almost all the way to Long Beach. We started our short tour downtown and made our way north towards the LA river.

Food warehouse along Main Street.

Up past the freeway overpass, we noticed a wild, decaying mural advertising some form of Wholesale market. We knew we had to stop. The parking lot was packed with people bustling in and out of this giant warehouse. Amidst the traffic, we noticed a man with a fishing net engrossed with a tiny coy pond cut out of the concrete sidewalk. It was unclear whether he was really trying to get a coy fish to eat (can you even eat coy?) or just practicing his own form of relaxation amidst LA’s chaos.

Surprising place to fish in a coy pond.

After walking past this man, we entered the largest wholesale food market we’d ever seen. It felt like a mega Wal-Mart shipping warehouse that served all of the larger LA’s regions Asian food establishments. People were traveling on forklifts between massive freezers and rows and rows of large boxes. In the meat freezer, you could buy an entire frozen pig head. In the dried food aisles, there were heaps and heaps of mushrooms and salted fish.

Inside the warehouse.