This Week in Awesome (3/17/12)

A belated happy St. Patrick's Day to everyone. You've been good, so I've got a whole big bucket of internet awesomeness for you this week...

A designer with an interest in public transit maps who critiqued the MBTA's system maps a while back, and was challenged by the map's designer to do better, decided to take a swing at doing just that. They're unofficial, unfortunately, but I think he did a nice job. (Transit Maps via Universal Hub)

Jalopnik collected a bunch of crazy chases from Bollywood movies. If you have nothing better to do for half an hour or so, they're highly entertaining.

A New Yorker art editor takes us behind the scenes and shows a bunch of the magazine's rejected cover designs. (Blown Covers via The Awl)

Old photos of roadside restaurants, with the added attractions of old cars and glorious signage: it's almost too much awesome for my brain to handle. (Retronaut via Curbside Classic)

And finally this week, a double shot of vintage time-lapse video. First, a 1968 film of a walk up Broadway in New York, condensed to two and a half minutes. But that means the images fly by really fast, so someone took it upon himself to post a slowed-down version to YouTube. (New York Times City Room blog)

A few days later, MIT posted a time-lapse video of a drive through Cambridge, Boston, and Brookline done by one of its professors in the mid-1960s, using a dashboard-mounted camera. (Universal Hub) Bonus: visit the original UH post to see a lively discussion in the comments that helps to identify the route taken and to narrow down the time frame in which it was filmed. Great stuff.