news northwest

Data journalism project #2: Map of Washington’s retail marijuana stores

It’s the second project in my Overly Ambitious Data Journalism Challenge: a map of all licensed retail marijuana stores in Washington, many of which began operating today.

I used TileMill to make the map and relied heavily on lifeandcode's TileMill tutorial on Data for Radicals. The map is embedded on the page via an iframe, and I mostly just copied the html and css from my initial project page for the rest of it.

Thoughts on TileMill and Mapbox

TileMill is an amazing and really powerful mapping tool that lets you import multiple shapefiles and .csv files as layers, then style them using Carto, which is similar to CSS. In the past, I’ve used Google Maps for simple tasks like this, but TileMill has a lot more flexibility for styling, and also seemed much more intuitive to me in its handling of multiple shapefiles and layers. One disadvantage seems to be that you can’t import data from a Google Spreadsheet which auto-updates - you have to download a static csv.

Even from this really quick intro, I got a lot more ideas for things that would be fun to map. I had to download a few shapefiles from the Washington Geospatial Portal and there are so many geographic datasets there that would make for fun or interesting maps.

I had some trouble figuring out how version control worked when you export a revised project to Mapbox (the company that makes TileMill and has virtual map and project hosting). That’s something I’d like to play with more and really get nailed down.

Overall, TileMill seems like a really powerful mapping tool that I’d definitely like to use more in more complicated/multilayered geospatial data projects. I’d also like a better understanding of how to use Mapbox, as well as other interactive export options from TileMill for people who are a bit more familiar with code.

Reflections/self-eval

If I’d been making this map with the newsroom in mind (instead of with the goal of learning TileMill), Google Maps probably would have been a better choice for its speed, as well as its context: state lines, major cities, etc. are clearly marked. (The Seattle Times used Google Maps for the same task yesterday.)

Figuring out the details for how a map will embed works can be tricky. It took a lot of time to get the map centering and displaying how I wanted it to, and even after that it still looked a bit wonky.

iframes in general are frustrating beasts to wrangle. While they can be quick and easy, and are certainly a necessity for people who don’t know how to code, this project underscored how much I’d like to learn to use the Mapbox API and some of the other TileMill options that give you more control on how your project is displayed.

Aside from some bumps at understanding TileMill exports, I was happy with how quickly I threw this project together. The whole thing took about 2 hours from start to finish, and without all my hiccups, I think I could have had it done in under an hour.

I also need to start doing the projects on my list that involve writing (or at least tweaking) some JavaScript, or else I’m going to run out of the quick-and-dirty ones like this.

420 Carpenter, out in Lacey, is the only one (so far) in Thurston County to win one. 420 Carpenter won the license, with 23 other retail stores in the state through a lottery by the Washington State Liquor Control Board. From WSLCB’s release:

Embroidery

So I know that it may not hold a lot of meaning to you, but Backspace is a Portland All-Ages Coffee Shop/Venue/Internet cafe, and they have recently been told by their landlord that if they don’t have $10,000 by the first of January that they need to basically GTFO. Backspace is not just a venue, though, it’s a pivotal part of the local community, I have numerous personal friends who have had the opportunity to play shows thee, and to lose it would be crushing for so many people. They don’t just have concerts, though, they have monthly art shows, and the biggest weekly poetry slam on the west coast. It’s a place of art, a place for people of all ages to expose themselves to culture which, in Portland, can be hard for people under 21 to find access to.

Honestly, if you want to know exactly what this place means to the local community, just read the comments on the campaign, hell read the campaign at all.

I know it’s the holidays and money is tight for a lot of people, but if people could give ANYTHING at all it would help to save a place which means so much to so many people, and even if you can’t give monetarily, reblogging and getting the word out can help just as much.

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