An upcoming venue on Alan Sparhawk’s tour. (Photo by Matthew James)

Alan Sparhawk is on tour again this week, and this post briefly discusses his new album, including Geoguessr challenges looking at the five locations where he is scheduled to play over the next seven days and another looking at the upcoming European leg of his tour.

At the beginning of November, Sparkhawk began touring, performing songs from “White Roses, My God,” his first album since the 2022 death of his wife and musical partner Mimi Parker. In its column The Playlist, The New York Times praised the single “Can U Hear,” writing, “The album’s first single, is certainly an unconventional expression of grief, with its droning electronics, sputtering beat and eerie Auto-Tuned vocals. But that digitized wail is unmistakably mournful, and there is something admirably bold in the way Sparhawk, as ever, rejects the expected.”

The album was released in September. While dates change and locations are sometimes added and removed, the original schedule shows 39 performances across the United States and Europe until June 2025.

A venue from the upcoming European leg of the tour. (Photo by Matthew James)

When Sparhawk performs in the Duluth area, even those who don’t attend can have a concrete sense of the performance through a familiarity not only with the music but the local spaces in which it is performed, whether that’s a venue familiar from Homegrown or simply a spot not so far out on Lake Superior.

When on tour, the performances become a bit more of an abstraction. This Geoguessr challenge makes them more concrete by visiting five venues that Sparhawk will perform in this week in the United States and then five upcoming venues in Europe, including both Streetview imagery from outside the show location and Photospheres from right next to the stage. Each round has a time limit of five minutes.

PDD Geoguessr #34 Part A: Alan Sparhawk on Tour in the United States

PDD Geoguessr #34 Part B: Alan Sparhawk on Tour in Europe

How to Play Geoguessr

GeoGuessr can be played on a laptop or desktop and on Android or IoS mobile devices with the GeoGuessr app. Just click on the link that fits how you play. You can create an account to keep track of your scores and see how you compare to other players or just click on the link above to play as a guest without having to create an account or log in.

Every game consists of five locations based on a theme chosen by the game creator. You are shown a Streetview image stripped of all the informational labels that are normally overlayed onto the image. Unless the challenge specifically restricts it, you can move around and look for clues like street signs and business names to find out where you are. The image below shows a basic overview of the Geoguessr screen layout and controls.

Once you think you know the location — or are nearly out of time — you use the inset map to place your marker where you believe the round started. After you hit “Guess,” you will see how close you were to the correct location and how many points your guess earned. The closer you are to the location, the higher your score, with a maximum score of 5,000 points. On a map that covers a small area, like the Gary-New Duluth neighborhood, being off by a few blocks will cost you a lot of points. On a map that has locations from around the world, you will get nearly all the points just for finding the right city. The maximum error for a perfect score also changes by map size, but in general if you are within 50 feet (15 meters) you will always get the full 5,000 points.

Not often, but every now and then, GeoGuessr gets a little buggy. If the underlying Streetview imagery has changed since the game was made, sometimes it repeats the last round, gives a black screen, or doesn’t allow a guess to be made. If that happens, please let me know and I’ll update the challenge.

At the end of the five rounds, an overview screen shows your score for each round in addition to your guessing time and how far off you were from the correct location. The correct locations and your guesses are also shown on a map and you can click on any of the round numbers to review the locations. Additionally, the final screen in a challenge will show how you rank compared to the top scorers of the challenge. When choosing your user name, keep in mind that your user name and score per round will be visible to other players of the challenge.

If you have feedback on this challenge or ideas for future challenges, please share them in the comments below.