By 2020, You Can See Hawker Stalls With Google Street View

Always craved for a closer look at all your favourite hawker stalls? Well, by 2020…

That might just be a reality.

Google Street View will soon be part of a whole new initiative to chronicle Singapore’s 114 hawker centres…

Which means that finding your favourite carrot cake or roti prata stall could soon be a breeze.

By 2020, You Can See Hawker Stalls With Google Street View

On Tuesday (30 July), Google, the National Heritage Board (NHB), the National Environment Agency (NEA) and the Federation of Merchants’ Associations, Singapore announced the initiative to photograph Singapore’s hawker stalls and to publish the images on Google Maps by early 2020.

Commencing with Chinatown Market, Geylang Serai Market, Tekka Market, Maxwell Food Centre and Golden Mile Food Centre, Google will embark on a quest to retrieve immersive, 360-degree indoor images of more than 6,000 hawker centres located across Singapore.

The photos will be taken with a 360-degree camera system mounted on a backpack. The Google Street View Trekkers, as they’re called, will be carried around indoor and outdoor areas of the hawker centres. Photos are captured every two seconds or about one every step.

Bringing Hawker Culture Into The Future

Programme manager of Google Street View APAC Amit Morya said: “This initiative helps bring this (hawker) culture into the digital age.

“By documenting the 114 hawker centres across Singapore, we plan to help more people get a glimpse into this fascinating part of Singapore culture, and ultimately help local hawkers get more business documentation.”

And Ms Juliana Suraidi, a third-generation hawker who operates a Muslim food stall in Chinatown Market, agrees.

“Not many people know that there are Muslim stalls in Chinatown Market,” the 44-year-old added.

“We also actually have many Indonesian and Malaysian tourists coming here, but they usually don’t know that we are here. Some of them ask the other stallholders and that’s when they are brought here.”

Privacy

Now I bet you’re wondering:

“Oh no, what if there’s a coincidence and I’m there when they’re taking photos and they coincidentally take my good-looking face? What happens? Will I become famous? Will everyone recognise me? Will Kevin Feige rope me in to be the next face of Marvel? Oh no, I’m shyyy.”

Well if you’re wondering that, worry not.

To capture the images, a team of four or five people will traipse around the hawker centres in pairs, carrying the aforementioned trekkers (that weight about 18kg).

And while they will undoubtedly capture faces of bystanders, Mr Morya stressed the importance of privacy.

“Our software technology is quite state-of-the-art. It automatically detects human faces and blurs them out,” he said.

Meanwhile, it seems that the efforts genuinely coincide with the interest of patrons.

Mr Alvin Tan, NHB’s deputy chief executive for policy and community, said: “We wanted to create a comprehensive data bank of all the hawker centres in Singapore.

“We wanted to make this data bank accessible and searchable by our locals as well as overseas fans of hawker culture, so they can actually use the data bank to find out more information about each hawker centre and its offerings from the comfort of their homes.”

Mr Tan also noted that the initiative will assist NHB and NEA in tracking the evolution of the stalls inside the hawker centres.

“It’s great for us in terms of our heritage archival knowledge. We will be able to capture the hawker centre and its stores at that point in time,” he added.

Hawker Centre galore

Nowadays, it’s all about the digital life.

Online hotel reviews.

Online food recommendations.

Basically, online services of just about any kind.

Just about everything’s going digital.

And really, I can’t help but marvel at it all. Sure, it might sound like a really bad idea considering all the films that denounced digitalisation (Terminator, Matrix), but in the end…

Checking out your favourite hawker stall online is just cool af.

And so with that in mind, stay tuned for 2020.

Because it’s gonna be one hell of a ride. 🙂