Finally! You can walk through Prospect Park from the comfort of the Tea Lounge.
The interior of Brooklyn’s backyard, including all of its wooded trails and winding paths, is now appearing in Google Maps new Street View, the latest Google Maps feature that provides street-level panoramic views of roads and places from all over the world.
In the past, that view was limited to streets, but now, Google braniacs have gotten people out from behind the driver’s seat and onto their feet — and, of course, Prospect Park was one of the first places they put boots on the ground.
A Google spokesman told us that interior walks and rides through the parks were taken with a combination of Google’s Street View car; its Street View Trike, which is a three-wheel pedi-cab with a camera system on top; or the Street View Trekker, which is a 40-pound wearable backpack also equipped with a camera system on top.
The Trike is ridden and the Trekker is walked through pedestrian walkways or trails and constantly gathering images of the scenery as they go.
Computer users with an internet connection can now double-click through the massive green space’s many paths click-by-click, but some Prospect Park-goers aren’t so thrilled about the new high-tech way to travel through Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux’s grassy man-made masterpiece.
“The park is beautiful – why look at it through a computer screen?” asked Jena Battaglia of Park Slope. “Go outside and walk around and see it for yourself.”
The park isn’t the only place in Brooklyn that has been filmed for posterity. Some Brooklyn storefronts and restaurants including Cobble Hill’s Pane e Vino (this reporter’s favorite eatery) and the popular Middle Eastern market Sahadi’s on Atlantic Avenue are now also featured on Google Street View.
