The Boston Diaries

The ongoing saga of a programmer who doesn't live in Boston, nor does he even like Boston, but yet named his weblog/journal “The Boston Diaries.”

Go figure.

Monday, October 29, 2001

Andytown, Florida

Welcome to ANDYTOWN, FLORIDA!

Population: 500

GATEWAY to the West! Next stop, 87 miles.

Please don't feed the aligators. Thank you.

Non-existant sign for a non-existant city at the intersection of US-27 and Aligator Alley (now I-75) linking South Florida to Naples on the west coast of Florida.

In 1980 I received a free road atlas from the AAA as a promotion. I was 11 at the time, and right at the corner of Aligator Alley and US 27 was a small town with the amusing name of Andytown. I always wanted to visit the place as a kid, it being so close and all, but never did get a chance to. By the time I got a car in 1989 it was apparent that such a town never did exist, since in the 10 years I had been living in South Florida I had never heard mention of this town, but by then, I had heard that map makers usually add non-existant objects to maps in order to “copy protect” their maps.

A few days ago I told Spring this, and she found it amusing. I figured that since I have nothing else to write about, I might as well write about the copy protection mark that is Andytown, Florida.

As I was making the entry, I thought it might be fun to do a Google search for Andytown. I'm not sure what exactly I was expecting, but I wasn't expecting the town to actually exist! There are a lot of map sites offering to sell maps of Andytown and my thought was Boy, Rand McNally is going to great lengths to promote a town that doesn't exist. Spring thought that many people had the same map and thought that the town actually existed. Most of the information I had pointed to 26°07′30″ N, 80°22′30″ W. Very odd.

Looking further, I found out that Andytown existed after all but was demolished in 1979 to make way for the expansion of Alligator Alley, which may explain why I never heard of it (as I moved to South Florida in 1979).


“Amazon registered for first www-amazon.com … ”

While doing some research on Andytown I mistyped the URL for Google and instead of hitting a period between the “www” and “google,” I hit the dash and ended up at some domain squatter's site.

And no, it's not great.

Obligatory Picture

An abstract representation of where you're coming from]

Obligatory Contact Info

Obligatory Feeds

Obligatory Links

Obligatory Miscellaneous

Obligatory AI Disclaimer

No AI was used in the making of this site, unless otherwise noted.

You have my permission to link freely to any entry here. Go ahead, I won't bite. I promise.

The dates are the permanent links to that day's entries (or entry, if there is only one entry). The titles are the permanent links to that entry only. The format for the links are simple: Start with the base link for this site: https://boston.conman.org/, then add the date you are interested in, say 2000/08/01, so that would make the final URL:

https://boston.conman.org/2000/08/01

You can also specify the entire month by leaving off the day portion. You can even select an arbitrary portion of time.

You may also note subtle shading of the links and that's intentional: the “closer” the link is (relative to the page) the “brighter” it appears. It's an experiment in using color shading to denote the distance a link is from here. If you don't notice it, don't worry; it's not all that important.

It is assumed that every brand name, slogan, corporate name, symbol, design element, et cetera mentioned in these pages is a protected and/or trademarked entity, the sole property of its owner(s), and acknowledgement of this status is implied.

Copyright © 1999-2024 by Sean Conner. All Rights Reserved.