Google Streetview for Opera auditions and more!

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My old house (my new one isn't up on Streetview yet)

Google Streetview is now in Canada. The Google service that lets you see available areas up close and personal is a lot of fun to play with but also has a ton of practical purposes (beyond seeing if your husband is headed out of the local strip club.) From an opera perspective, being able to see where you're going before you need to be there would be a great thing on audition day. A couple of weeks ago I went down to Michigan to audition for Arbor Opera Theater. Unfortunately it was homecoming weekend for the University of Michigan and so there was bound to be ridiculous traffic. I wanted to be able to have a sense of where I was going before I needed to navigate that chaos on an already stresesed out audition day and so I took a look around the neighborhood via streetview so that things would feel a little more familiar on the day of. Maps will get you to the general area but if you're headed down to a Toronto Operetta Theatre audition and want to know exactly where to go before you get there then you'd be all set. Have a concert at the Queen Elizabeth in Vancouver? Time to track down the stage door!

All in all, it's a pretty neat tool with more uses than I can think of at the moment. What do you see yourself using it for?